Haiku and Shinto

A shugendo practitioner blowing his own conch-horn

The haiku group I belong to published a small volume in 2007 entitled Seasons of the Gods on the theme of Shinto. It contained an afterword by Toji Kamata, who has described himself as a freelance Shinto priest. He’s written some great articles about prehistoric times, and he’s fond of shugendo (mountain ascetism).  I attended one of his lectures once at the Kyoto Arts College, which he started off by blowing on a conch-horn. That got students’ attention!  He then went on to talk about the Shinto aspects of Hayao Miyazaki’s films, thereby linking the ancient traditions with the mindset of today’s young.

Here are a couple of short extracts from Toji Kamata’s short piece on ‘Haiku and Shinto’.

The stillness –
Great rocks take in
Cicada cries.

In this haiku by Basho, the ‘voices’ of both rocks and cicadas may be heard in communication, or interpretation, with each other: a living world networked together.  Animal, vegetable or mineral; wind, snow, earth or stone; sun, moon, and stars; mountains, rivers, grasses, trees – in haiku, any one of them may take centre stage.

…….

The shortest poem in the world, haikai (or haiku), is a form of literature that expresses itself by catching both the dynamism and the inner workings of the life creation energy residing in all the phenomena of the universe.  The enjoyment of this haikai world, in which ‘not only people, but everything speaks’, is something I truly love.

Heaven, earth and man,
Each to tell its story –
A banquet indeed!

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For a selection of Shinto haiku from the same volume, please click here.

The Hailstone Haiku Circle has a webpage called Icebox. 
Seasons of the Gods was co-edited by Stephen Gill, Duro Jaiye, Hisashi Miyazaki and Jane Wieman.
Orders can be made here: http://hailhaiku.wordpress.com/publications/