The Moon in Japanese poetry: from the Kokinshū to Bashō

In Japanese poetry the Moon is a constant presence, and almost always an autumnal one. From the Heian period, between the ninth and twelfth centuries, contemplating the night star became a ritual moment of court life, and since then poets have made it the symbol of nostalgia, solitude and fleeting beauty. To understand this tradition one must start from a custom still alive today: tsukimi, the festival of moon viewing.

Tsukimi and the autumn Moon

Tsukimi is celebrated on the night of the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the traditional lunar calendar, when the full Moon of autumn is considered the most beautiful of the year. The custom came from China, where the same night was devoted to the Mid-Autumn Festival. According to the sources, the Heian aristocrats also observed it reflected in the water of garden ponds or in a cup of sake, composing poems for the occasion.

In popular practice the Moon is offered rice dumplings called dango, stalks of susuki, Japanese pampas grass, and produce from the harvest. In classical poetry, and later in haiku, the word tsuki, Moon, is a kigo, a seasonal word: used on its own it indicates autumn, while the moons of other seasons require a qualifier.

Homesickness and distance

One of the most famous poems about the Moon was written far from Japan. Abe no Nakamaro, a young official sent to China in 717 to study, made a career there and was never able to return home. According to tradition, before an attempt to sail he composed a short poem: watching the Moon rise over the sea, he wondered whether it was the same Moon he had seen come up over Mount Mikasa, at Kasuga, near Nara.

The poem was included in the imperial anthology Kokinshū, compiled at the beginning of the tenth century, and later in the collection Hyakunin isshu, a hundred poems by a hundred poets. The Moon appears in it as a bridge between two worlds: the same star shines on the land of exile and on the lost homeland. The Moon is also linked to the oldest Japanese prose narrative, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, in which Princess Kaguya, found inside a bamboo stalk, finally returns to her lunar kingdom.

Saigyō and Bashō, wandering monks

The monk poet Saigyō, who lived between 1118 and 1190, sang above all of cherry blossoms and the Moon. In a famous poem he expressed the wish to die in spring, beneath the blossoming cherries, at the full Moon of the second month: tradition holds that his wish came true almost to the letter. For Saigyō the Moon was both the beauty of the world and an image of the enlightened mind of Buddhism.

Five centuries later Matsuo Bashō, master of haiku, set off several times to see the Moon in celebrated places. In 1687 he went to Kashima, where rain hid the full Moon from him, and in 1688 he reached Mount Obasute, in the Sarashina region, linked to the legend of an old woman abandoned on the mountain. From those journeys came two short poetic diaries combining prose and haiku.

From the Heian court to Bashō's paths, the Japanese Moon is never merely an object to be described. It is an occasion for recollection, a measure of passing time, a sign of the impermanence of things. In the brevity of Japanese poetic forms, its light alone is often enough to evoke an entire state of mind.