Kaga no Chiyo

Kaga no Chiyo Poems

The morning glory!
It has taken the well bucket,
I must seek elsewhere for water.
...

Putting up my hair
no more
my hands to the kotatsu
...

A butterfly -
What dream
is making your wings flutter?
...

Rouged lips
forgotton -
clear spring water.
...

Airing out kimonos
as well as her heart
is never enough.
...

Butterfly on a maiden's path
now behind
now in front.
...

From the mind
of a single, long vine
one hundred opening lives.
...

Grazing
my fishing line -
the summer moon.
...

Just for today
using men
for rice-planting.
...

Again the women
come to the fields
with unkempt hair.
...

for Kansenjo

The old days
beautifully in bloom -
...

since morning glories
hold my well-bucket hostage
...

Kaga no Chiyo Biography

Chiyo-ni ( 1703 - 2 October 1775) was a Japanese poet of the Edo period, widely regarded as one of the greatest female haiku poets. Born in Matto, Kaga Province (now Hakusan, Ishikawa Prefecture) as a daughter of a picture framer, she began writing haiku poetry aged 7. At age 12, she became the disciple of the great poet Matsuo Bashō, and by the age of 17, she had become very popular all over Japan for her poetry. Her poems, although mostly dealing with nature, work for a unity of nature with humanity. Her own life was that of the haikai poets who made their lives and the world they lived in one with themselves. Chiyo-ni's teachers were the students of Bashō, and she stayed true to his style, although she did develop on her own as an independent figure. Today, the morning glory is a favorite flower for the people of her home town, because she left a number of poems on that flower.)

The Best Poem Of Kaga no Chiyo

The Morning Glory!

The morning glory!
It has taken the well bucket,
I must seek elsewhere for water.

Kaga no Chiyo Comments

Fabrizio Frosini 04 December 2016

in her biography (on this page) it is stated: ''At age 12, she became the disciple of the great poet Matsuo Bashō''. It couldn't be, of course, since Chiyo-ni's birth-date is 1703: 7 years after Bashō's death (: Nov.28,1694) . Her teachers were two of Bashō's disceples.

9 0 Reply
Fabrizio Frosini 14 September 2016

Kaga no Chiyo 加賀千代 Chiyo from Kaga or Kaga no Chiyo-Ni 加賀千代(尼)/(かがのちよ(に) - JO 女 means woman, often added to the name of a haiku poetess. NI 尼 means nun, taken on when she became a Buddhist nun. *** KAGA is the placename, from where she came. *** as a nun, she took the name 'SOEN'. Being a Buddhist nun in those days did not mean living in a monastery or nunnery. Soen/Chiyo-ni continued her simple life of writing and friendship. Another of her friends was a fellow nun, Kasenjo, who had been a prostitute in her youth. This isn't as strange as it sounds, as Japanese culture considered prostitutes socially marginal but not shameful or sinful, so they fairly often became nuns in their later years.

16 0 Reply
Fabrizio Frosini 14 September 2016

Fukuda Chiyo-ni (Kaga no Chiyo) (福田 千代尼) is considered one of the foremost women haiku poets. She began writing at the age of seven and studied under two haiku masters who had themselves apprenticed with the great poet, Basho. ''... In 1755, Chiyo became a Buddhist nun - not, she said, in order to renounce the world, but as a way 'to teach her heart to be like the clear water which flows night and day.' '' (Jane Hirshfield)

18 0 Reply

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