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- fuyugomori 冬篭り winter confinement, winter isolation, wintering -
fuyukomori, fuyu komori - hibernation; staying indoors during winter
In rural Japan, especially in the Northern areas along the coast of the Sea of Japan, the winter is long and brings enormous amounts of snow. There was nothing much to do that sit back and wait it out. The farmhouses where difficult to heat and the family huddled around the hearth (irori) in the kitchen. It was a tough time to live through with great endurance.
Animals like bears sleep through the whole cold season, also called fuyugomori.
sashikomoru さしこもる【鎖し籠もる】- To keep the doors and windows shut and stay indoors.
- - - - - tojikomoru 閉じこもる 閉じ籠もる】 - rookyo suru 籠居(ろうきょ)する
It could be done in any season, but in winter the home was kept closed to keep out the cold.
The history of the futon in the Edo period - keeping warm with what you have ...
. WKD : fuyugomori, fuyu-gomori 冬篭り winter seclusion .
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さし籠る葎の友か冬菜売り
さしこもる葎の友かふゆなうり
sashikomoru mugura no tomo kabuna uri
Staying indoors, the only friend
At the house of the bedstraw is
The vendor of winter greens!
Tr. Oseko Toshiharu
- - - - -
are you a companion
to those creepers secluded away?
winter vegetable sellertrans. Barnhill
Barnhill's comment:
Winter: winter greens. 1688-89. Basho is living in winter seclusion, with no visitors and his hut covered with creepers. Farmers would walk around selling the meager winter vegetables, such as Chinese cabbage. A scene of a someone living secluded in humble circumstances.
- - - - -
staying indoors
the only friend of bedstraw
a vendor of greens
trans. Reichhold
Reichhold's comment:
1688--winter. Bedstraw, also called goosegrass ('Galium spium'), was used to stuff mattresses for the poor. In winter, Basho has two reliable friends to keep him well, and both were green plants.
Is Reichhold suggesting that Basho's futon is stuffed with bedstraw?
And that Basho is using "bedstraw" as a figure of speech to mean himself?
Ah, if only Basho had used 'fuyugomori' (winter seclusion) instead of 'sashikomoru' (staying indoors), it would make the translation somewhat easier, in my opinion. "Staying indoors" begs the question of who is staying indoors. Barnhill cleverly works around this by saying it's the creepers that are "secluded away." I think we are to take it to mean that Basho is identifying himself with the creepers.
And I would use "peddler" rather than "vendor," since vendors can have stalls, and don't necessarily sell their wares going door-to-door.
. . Discussion by Larry Bole
. . . . .
From the haiku of Basho we can see him at age 45, buy some greens and prepare his meager meal all by himself. The peddler was the only person he had seen and talked to in quite a while. His home, overgrown with mugura cleaver weeds, had just this one friend who came by once in a while.
Written in 元禄元年, Basho age 45（雪まろげ）yuki maroge collection
WKD - mugura 葎 (むぐら) cleavers .
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Basho used "sashikomoru" again in a three-link sequence he wrote with Kyoriku and Ranran in 1692:
kangiku no tonari mo ari ya ike daikon - (Kyoriku)
Right there! Near
the winter chrysanthemums--
a buried radish.
fuyu sashikomoru hokusoo no susu - (Basho)
Kept in during the winter --
soot on my northern window.
tsuki mo naki yoi kara uma o tsurete kite - (Ranran)
There's no moon--
last night, I came here
driving a horse.
trans. Pei Pei Qiu
In the Cold Parts of Northern Japan where it snows a lto, here is a seasonal custom concerning the window and protecting it from the cold winds of the area by adding strong wooden plates.
. WKD : kitamado fusagu 北窓塞ぐ closing the North window .
kigo for early winter
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まづ祝へ梅を心の冬籠り
先祝へ梅を心の冬籠り
mazu iwae ume o kokoro no fuyu-gomori
Anyway celebrate I will
This winter hibernation
With apricot blossoms in my heart.
Tr. Takafumi Saito
Written in 貞亨4年, Basho age 44 - Nozarashi Kikoo 野ざらし紀行
Matsuo Basho for his disciple Tsuboi Tokoku 坪井杜国, Nagoya.
Tokoku had been put in exile for a crime he did not even commit. So if he would stay in hiding maybe next spring things will turn out better.
. - Tsuboi Tokoku 坪井杜国 - .
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冬籠りまた寄りそはんこの柱
冬籠りまたよりそはん此の柱
fuyugomori mata yorisowan kono hashira
Winter hibernation
Against this pillar
I'll snuggle once again.
Tr. Saito / Nelson
locked in for the winter -
again I'll be nestling close
to this post
Tr. Ueda
- - - - -
Winter seclusion -
once again I snuggle up
against this pillar
This haiku is thought to be derived from a poem by Po Chu I :
In my leisurely life
again I lean against this post
- Tr. and comment by Bill Wyatt
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金屏の松の古さよ冬籠り
. kinbyoo no matsu no furusa yo fuyugomori .
a golden folding screen with an old pine
屏風には山を画書いて冬籠り
屏風には山を絵書て冬籠
. byoobu ni wa yama o egaite fuyu-gomori .
a mountain painted on a folding screen
and more hokku by Basho about golden folding screens.
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難波津や田螺の蓋も冬ごもり
. Naniwazu ya tanishi no futa mo fuyugomori .
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折々に伊吹を見ては冬籠り
ori ori ni / Ibuki o mite wa / fuyu-gomori
Written in 元禄4年, Basho age 48.
At the home of Miyazaki Keikoo 宮崎荊口 and his second son, Sensen 千川 in Ogaki.
Mount Ibukiyama can be seen from there.
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fuyugare 冬枯れ withering of plants in winter
冬枯れや 世は一色に 風の音
fuyugare ya yo wa isshoku ni kaze no oto
Winter solitude —
In a world of one color
the sound of wind.
Basho, Tr. Robert Hass
- - - - Part of a comment by Robert Hass:
There may be a tension between “color” and “wind.” The “world” is one color. It isn’t cold, it isn’t necessarily earth or nature frosted over. It is simply one color. This seems to imply there is one unchangeable object. That object may be perceiver and perceived. The wind moves. It produces sound. We know that sound is not a steady drone.
Change resides in what seemed static being. There may be a physiological explanation for “winter solitude.” The sun doesn’t shine as much, certain chemicals don’t get produced, we feel down. Any such explanation does injustice to “solitude.” Your loneliness is not another’s: we’re all different. We’re lonely inasmuch we are individuals. That solitude, like winter itself, has seeds of change within. The sound of wind betokens a world with many colors and the communication of the poem itself.
source : www.ashokkarra.com
The Japanese is not "winter solitude" but "withering in winter" of plants.
. fuyugare 冬枯れ winter withering .
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. WKD : fuyugomori 冬篭り winter seclusion .
. Cultural Keywords used by Basho .
. - KIGO used by Matsuo Basho 松尾芭蕉 - .
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