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- Momi suru Oto 籾する音 The Sound of Hulling Rice -
source : agri_school/a_kome
drying and hulling rice in the Edo period
乾燥・もみすり（江戸時代（元禄））
. WKD : momisuri 籾摺 hulling rice .
kigo for late autumn
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momi suru oto 籾する音
大和國長尾の里と云処ハ、さすがに都遠きにあらず、山里ながら山里に似ず。あるじ心有さまにて、老いたる母のおハしけるを、其家のかたへにしつらひ、庭前に木草のおかしげなるを植置て、岩尾めづらかにすゑなし、手づから枝をたハめ石を撫ては、「此山蓬莱の嶋ともなりね、生薬とりてんよ」と老母につかへ、慰めなんどせし実有けり。
「家貧して孝をあらハす」とこそ聞なれ、貧しからずして功を尽す。古人も難事になんいゝける。
冬しらぬ宿やもミする音あられ
fuyu shiranu yado ya momi suru oto arare
source : itoyo/basho
竹の内滞在中のことを綴った句文
source : bashouan.com/Database
The mountain village of Nagao in the province of Yamato is not so far from the capital and thus not quite a typical "mountain village" . . .
It has the atmosphere of the "Holy Horai Mountain" of ancient China.
. hoorai 蓬莱 Buddhist mountain Horai .
a mountain in China, where people would live forever.
The farmer had built a separate room (inkyobeya 隠居部屋) for his aging mother in the back yard.
The village is located close to
. Temple Taimadera 当麻寺 .
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no winter is known
in this home - hulling rice with the sound
of hail
Tr. Gabi Greve
Written in 1684, 貞亨元年、Basho age 41.
This hokku has the cut marker YA in the middle of line 2.
. のざらし紀行 Nozarashi Kiko .
夏炉一路
Basho visited the area around Takenouchi Village 竹之内村 and Nagao 長尾.
He observed a son hulling the rice carefully to give good food to his old mother.
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- by Chris Drake
fuyu shiranu yado ya momi-suru oto arare
hail hits a house
where there are no winters --
rice-hulling sounds
This is a late autumn hokku from the middle of the 9th month (October) in 1684, when Basho was visiting someone in the Nagao area south of Nara, not far from Taima Temple, where Chujo-hime was believed to have woven her large Pure Land Mandala.
The man, a wealthy farmer, was warm-hearted and took care of his aged mother very well. He built her a small house behind the main house where she could have some privacy, and he designed a garden around her house that looked like Mt. Horai (Penglai in Chinese) on the legendary Daoist Island of Immortality located somewhere out in the eastern sea. On this island there were said to be no winters or pain, fresh fruit was always available, and an elixir of immortality could be taken. Basho says the farmer designed the garden as the closest thing possible on this earth to the island's elixir of immortality, since he wanted his mother to live many more years.
Hearing and seeing this, Basho greeted the man with the above hokku. It has irony, hyperbole, and humor. The house (actually two houses, the main house and the mother's smaller house in the garden) is so warm with human feeling that winter never really comes to it, and yet the first hail of the winter seems to be falling on it now, making quite a racket. How could this possibly be? The answer of course is that the sound isn't made by hail but is the somewhat similar loud grinding sound made by people just outside hulling rice with a stone or earthen mortar. In this way Basho praises his host more strongly by denying the opposite, telling him his house is truly a Daoist paradise on earth filled with familial love and warmth in which the closest thing to winter isn't related to winter at all: the hail-like sounds turn out to be related to the source of warm food.
The farmers just outside or perhaps in a special workroom of the house aren't beating the rice but are operating one or more advanced mortars (invented in China) in which a revolving upper grindstone has replaced the less efficient pestle used in earlier centuries.
If you scroll down to the bottom of the first site below you can see a contemporary picture from the Edo period of five farmers operating a hulling mortar with a long wooden crankshaft.
福岡・浮羽町の諏訪神社
source : syokunou.ne
stone mortar 石臼（いしうす）
The second site has a photo from the early part of the 20th century.
The mortars must have made quite a noise!
source : kamiya-e/mukasinokurasi
Chris Drake
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. Basho visiting - Hoorai san 蓬莱山 Mount Horai-San - Mikawa .
. WKD : momisuri 籾摺 hulling rice, polishing rice .
kigo for late autumn
. Cultural Keywords used by Basho .
. - KIGO used by Matsuo Basho 松尾芭蕉 - .
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