Help with Japanese HW... anyone know haiku?

[acerunner]

Hey I was wondering if any one here is good at making up haikus. It's for my Japanese class tomorrow, and it has to "be symbolic".

Mine went like:

Samui kawa
Something something (+past tense for verb "to fly")
Kabuto mushi

Translated roughly to: Flew to the other side of the cold river, beetle... or something. I need help remembering what that middle bit said... and of course it must have only 7 sylables... I dunno if this makes any sense. Please don't yell at me.

:p

[jenl]

How did you manage to lose only the middle of a haiku?

向こうに飛んだ?
(mukou ni tonda)
Just a guess from an English-speaker.

http://altjapan.typepad.com/my_weblog/files/beetle.jpg - and here's a nice photo of kabutomushi!

For bonus points, do you know the reason the first and last lines of this haiku conflict? If you don't, try having a read here: http://etext.virginia.edu/japanese/haiku/saijiki/

[acerunner]

jenl wrote:
How did you manage to lose only the middle of a haiku?

向こうに飛んだ?
(mukou ni tonda)
Just a guess from an English-speaker.

http://altjapan.typepad.com/my_weblog/files/beetle.jpg - and here's a nice photo of kabutomushi!

For bonus points, do you know the reason the first and last lines of this haiku conflict? If you don't, try having a read here: http://etext.virginia.edu/japanese/haiku/saijiki/

I think that was it! Thanks so much!!! :O :O

[Valatunda]

acerunner wrote:
Samui kawa

Wouldn't you use 冷たい (つめたい) for something like a river?

There is an interesting jeKai entry on the differences between 寒い and 冷たい.

[tōkai devotee]

Yes, I agree you would use 冷たい　for river, or any water for that matter, but then it wouldn't fit into the haiku would it? It'd be too many syllables.

[Mike Cash]

Valatunda wrote:

acerunner wrote:
Samui kawa

Wouldn't you use 冷たい (つめたい) for something like a river?

There is an interesting jeKai entry on the differences between 寒い and 冷たい.

This may interest you.

[jenl]

(Although really one could play a little with those restraints)

We could work around it with a little punctuation (sorry, no IME on this computer)

samui, kawa
mukou ni tonda
kabutomushi

(cold -
flew across the river
- rhinoceros beetle)

Additional wordplay here, perhaps: mukougawa can also mean "other side" and kawamukou is "other side of the river".

Traditional haiku use a single seasonal image word to focus the poem. samui usually suggests winter, kabutomushi suggests summer. So it's a bit odd to see them together, that's all I was saying before.

Related: there is an internet-based saijiki here: http://www.haiku.jp/saijiki/index.html

Here is an example for kabutomushi:
子は知つているくぬぎ樹のかぶと虫 - 稲畑汀子 (I think there's meant to be a small 'tsu' there in shitte)

A child knows
the sawtooth oak's
beetle
- Inahata Teiko
(people who are better at this than me - is 'は' being used to show contrast here, implying that an adult would not know this? It's hard to show that in English.)

None for samui, but they list samusa:

日の落ちて波の形に寒さあり - 稲畑汀子

fading sun -
in the shape of the waves
is the cold
- Inahata Teiko

I'd love a 歳時記 of my very own, but it might be difficult to source one here in England unless I can figure out how to get amazon.co.jp to ship here.