National Poetry Month is celebrated every year during the entire month of April to highlight the impact of poets, increase awareness of poetry, and encourage the reading and writing of poems. Launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996, it is the largest literary celebration in the world, featuring events like Poem in Your Pocket Day (April 30) to celebrate poets’ vital role in culture.
Japanese poetry differs greatly from Western poetry in areas such as forms, themes and elements. For those who do not know the art of Japanese poetry, some basic definitions before I write a death poem, as my creative act.
Jisei means a death poem. A poem written near the end of one’s life, these death poems were written mostly by samurai, monks, poets or writers facing death in a calm and honorable manner.
Jiseiku means a death poem that is a general articulation of death in a haiku death poem.
Jisai means farewell to the year, that is, the end or death of the current year. It is used as a metaphor for the ending of the four seasons of the year.
Hence, jisei is a general word meaning death. Jiseiku is a specific form of death poem referencing the writer’s own death. Jisai is a seasonal word meaning the death of a season, but not the death of a human being.
So one can say that the word jisei, when broken down into two syllables—ji (meaning word) and sei (meaning world, inheritance)—is a death poem reflecting the writer’s words and left for the world to inherit and contemplate upon the writer’s life and the meaning of their death poem.
Haiku developed out of a tradition of renga, or linked verses. A haiku was typically a short verse of three lines made of 5-7-5 syllables. A second verse would have two lines of 7 and 7 syllables. The third verse would repeat the form of the first and the fourth would repeat that of the second and so on.
Tanka is poetry of 31 characters. It is written in 5-7-5-7-7 in Japanese.
Seppuku means ritualistic suicide.
In the Hulu streaming series Shogun, one of the central characters, the traitor Yabushige, was ordered to commit seppuku by his master, and he wrote the following death poem:
Death Poem
My dead body
Don’t burn it
Just leave it in the field
And with it
Fill the belly of some hungry dog
Below is my death poem, or jisei, written in the tanka form for a dishonored bonsai master who has been ordered to commit seppuku by his master, or shogun.
Live Another Four Hundred Years
Winter has now come
I have lived ninety years
No more springs for me
Bury my body under
A spring seeding black pine (On-matsu)
—Homer Gee Greene Jr.
Summer Haiku
Summer bonsai trees
Vigorous thriving green growth
Radiance of life
—Homer Gee Greene Jr.
