Anthropomorphism personification

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Anthropomorphism - Pro and Con

Anthropomorphism (personification, gijinka　擬人化)
is usually avoided in traditional Japanese haiku, since it collides with the idea of "shasei", but of course, there are exceptions when a very special effect is aimed at.

Personally, I try to avoid it and only make use of it when the haiku situation really calls for it. Within the tradition of shasei, sketching from nature, it is better just to observe and not interpret your experiences.


I will try and find some material here.

Please add your findings in the comments.

Gabi Greve

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Kigo using personification

The use of a certain kigo out of the large stock of availble words gives the haiku its special flavor and makes it unnecessary to use more plain personifications. That is why the study of kigo is so important to understand Japanese haiku, it contains the essence and the soul of it.

But there are also kigo that use personification directly:

frogs borrowing human eyes (kawazu no me karidoki)


..... mountains smile/laugh (yama warau) SPRING
..... mountains dripping (yama shitataru) SUMMER
..... mountains put on make-up (yama yosou) AUTUMN
Mountains sleep (yama nemuru) WINTER


Wind shining (kaze hikaru)


and the use of metaphors

silk worm, "mulberry child", kuwago



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Personification and translations

船と岸と話してゐる日永かな
fune to kishi to hanashite iru hinaga kana

a boat and the shore
are talking together . . .
days getting longer

Masaoka Shiki　
Tr. Gabi Greve

a boat and the shore ... Japanese haiku-shorthand for
(a person on) the boat and (a person on) the shore.
This is not a personification of the boat and shore doing the talking.

The scene could well be in the evening, when it is still light. Husband on board and the wife on the shore, discussing his homecoming. A lot of fishing is done from a small boat close to the shore to get seewead out of the water, for example, or uni (sea urchin) or abalones. Sometimes the men are out fishing and the whole family is on the shore to process the sea urchins for shipping (they get spoiled easily). They are well withing talking distance, this is a family scene, talking back and forth, once a year enjoyed by small fishing communities in Japan.


Sometimes translations look as if the Japanese poet had used personification, but the problem lies within the haiku-shorthand of the language.
This is a hard one for translators to cover the meaning without a footnote.


This could also be seen as Metonymy

Metonymyis a figure of speech in which a thing or concept is called not by its own name, rather by the name of something associated in meaning with that thing or concept.
..... Metonymy and related figures of speech are common in everyday talk and writing. Synecdoche and metalepsis are considered specific types of metonymy.
Polysemy, multiple meanings of a single word or phrase, sometimes results from relations of metonymy. Both metonymy and metaphor involve the substitution of one term for another.
In metaphor, this substitution is based on some specific analogy between two things, whereas in metonymy the substitution is based on some understood association or contiguity.
... Metaphor and metonymy ...
- - - More in the WIKIPEDIA !

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One more example by Yosa Buson

春雨やものかたりゆく蓑と笠
harusame ya mono katariyuku mino to kasa

spring rain -
a mino-raincoat and a rain-hat
talk to each other

. Spring Rain .


Again, no personification, but the people who use the coat and hat.

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かすむ日の咄するやらのべの馬
kasumu hi no hanashi suru yara nobe no uma

on a misty day
they chat...
horses in the field

by Issa, 1812

R. H. Blyth reads the kanji verb in the middle phrase as uwasu: "gossip"; A History of Haiku (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1964) 1.369-70. The editors of Issa zenshu^ read it, hanashi ("talk"); (Nagano: Shinano Mainichi Shimbunsha, 1976-79) 1.84.
Either way, Issa imputes "human" action to the horses. Or, is he challenging our preconceptions that would draw such a hard, clear line between "human" and "animal?" I suspect that the latter is true.
Tr. and Comment, David Lanoue


I suspect this is not a true "personification", but Issa hears the humans tending to the horses and puts it this way, just with the boats and the shore.



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Some Thoughts by Jane Reichhold

Rosa Clement:
Many times I have heard from reviewers and publishers that anthropomorphism and personification are not good in haiku. However, Basho, Issa, Buson and others wrote haiku using anthropomorphism...

Jane Reichhold:

FOR THE USE OF PERSONIFICATION:

1. The personification of inanimate things is a basic part of our language. We so easily speak of the head, feet or legs of the beds, tables and chairs; rivers run, and we even allow that 'time flies.' Thus, it becomes very hard to determine when the author has broken the rule by personifying something which shouldn't be.

AGAINST THE USE OF PERSONIFICATION:

1. English language haiku rules have been handed down to use requiring that we avoid personification. This could have come about from the idea that haiku were not poetry and should not use poetical techniques (such as metaphor and simile). When the pioneers were introducing haiku to English writers they were reacting against the prevailing poetry fashions and wished to present haiku as something very new and different - non-poetry poetry.

Therefore, Spiess and others made rules hoping that if they were followed our haiku would be more like the Japanese examples and much less like the poetry being written in English at the current time. Not using personification does separate the haiku from lyrical poetry - which many people see as a definite plus.

Read the full discussion HERE
© Jane Reichhold /　Rosa Clement


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The traditional subject matter of haiku is the world of nature of which humans are an integral part. Basho (1644-94) advised haiku writers to "enter into the object, perceiving its delicate life and feeling its feelings, whereupon a poem forms itself" (tr. Makoto Ueda).

We try to avoid projecting human viewpoints into natural things. So as not to humanise (and so patronise) the things of Nature, the English haiku poet is wary of personification and anthropomorphism, even though their use is tolerated in ancient and even modern Japanese poetry.

Japanese poets, benefiting from a long cultural tradition, usually include a 'season word' (known as kigo) or a 'seasonal activity' (kidai) which creates an ambience for the poem. For the Japanese reader, the season word releases a whole schema of more or less predictable associations. This homogeneity of response is not generally available to the western haiku poet to play upon.

Nevertheless, haiku in English often do include an image which enables us to see the chosen season in depth as well as detail. This said, the 'seasonless' haiku is also common in English.

Read more here
© British Haiku Society


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The number of people who are aware that haiku is not simply a form has risen dramatically, but it sometimes seems that the number of people who are not has risen even faster.
Giroux notes three kinds of faults in beginners’ haiku:
a strained attempt to be profoundly philosophical;
anthropomorphism that makes things speak instead of allowing them to speak;
and the use of trite season words and the use of self-consciously Japanese subject matter (Giroux, 154–56).

Read more here
© Lee Gurga


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Personification: A Taboo In English Language Haiku?
Writes Art Durkee:

"Issa's body of work is full of 'rule-breaking' haiku. He often breaks away from purely imagistic haiku, and uses personification and anthropomorphisms in his famous animal and insect haiku, ascribing to them the same emotions humans have; some of his haiku are forthrightly humorous rather than contemplative; others are purely philosophical, and contain only one image, not the two contrasting images often required by the 'rules'; still others are one-sentence haiku, rather than two fragments with a turn, or hinge."
art durkee.blogspot.com

Exciting as Issa's openly animistic haiku are, he knew the dangers of overuse, and relied on multiple aesthetic tools and a variance in subject matter.

To be fair to Dr. Speiss, there’s validity to the segment of his statement regarding the necessity of using these tools, unless necessary. No tool should be overused. There is more than one tool in the toolbox.
Read more here
© Robert Wilson, Simply Haiku

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Initial exploration of HAIKU by non-Japanese was like gunmo taizo wo naderu (a lot of blind men feeling a great elephant) whereby one says that the elephant is a tree trunk and another says that it is a giant fan, and so on. The loud voices saying that HAIKU was Zen, or HAIKU was not poetry, or HAIKU was Here and Now, or HAIKU was the product of the HAIKU moment, or HAIKU was nature poetry, or HAIKU was a verse in present tense, or HAIKU was devoid of ego, or HAIKU was an extremely serious and sacred business, or HAIKU reached some mysterious and profound truths captured in a few words,
or HAIKU was not anthropomorphism,
and all other hundreds of things rang out across the world and muffled any other voices saying things to the contrary.

©　Susumu Takiguchi, WHR 2008


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Issa's body of work is full of "rule-breaking" haiku.

He often breaks away from purely imagistic haiku, and uses personification and anthropomorphisms in his famous animal and insect haiku, ascribing to them the same emotions humans have; some of his haiku are forthrightly humorous rather than contemplative; others are purely philosophical, and contain only one image, not the two contrasting images often required by the "rules"; still others are one-sentence haiku, rather than two fragments with a turn, or hinge.

©　art durkee . blogspot.com

.....

chirr-chirr! insects also
work their looms...
stars of Tanabata

shan-shan to mushi mo hata orite hoshi mukae
しゃんしゃんと虫もはたおりて星迎

Kobayashi Issa, 1818
Tr. David Lanoue

.....

Gijinka (personification or pathetic fallacy)
Gabi Greve



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candlenight -
is the beetle looking for
enlightenment ?


Dear Gabi,
I like this very much, and have a question.
We get drilled into us so much not to use personification and I know you're very experienced in haiku. When do you decide to make an exception (you personally)?


Dear Friend,
I try to avoid personifications and anthropomorphism as much as I can, since I believe haiku should state the objective observance, not the subjective judgement about it. I only use it when the situation really calls for it.

Here is the story to the above haiku.


It is candlenight in Japan.
A few good friends have gathered around the old pond, with the odd frog jumping in once in a while too for good measure.
In the darkness, we enjoy the conversation, then the silence, then talk again.

Plop, another frog. Silence deepens.

A firefly zips by and I tell my friends about this haiku, written a few days ago in some haiku forum after a discussion on the subject

temporary enlightenment -
just a bunch of
fireflies

Everybody chuckles ... yea, yea, the follies of us human beings ...
And silence again in the darkness.

Staring toward the white calla lily, a small spider makes its way toward the innermost flower parts. Slowly, stopping, sensing what ?

Everyone gets focussed on the spider and then another little beetle on the white flower next to it. Candlelight makes this scene especially unworldly. Like under a giant spotlight, all we see now is the spider.

And then someone asks:

Is the spider looking for
enlightenment ?

...

So my particular haiku is not really a personification, but a report about a situation during that candlenight.


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a house with eyes
to watch
as autumn deepens

Gabi Greve
Discussion of this haiku


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Reference

***** My Haiku Theory Archives
Especially the "Haiku Rules"!


Shasei .. 写生 sketching from nature
..... Camera snapshots versus oil paintings

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