"Two Deer" by Nakajima Kaho (1866-1925)
by Stephen Addiss
One of
the most interesting questions about haiga, especially when done by a single
poet-artist, is the level of artistic skill needed in the painting. Because most
haiga have been created by poets rather than trained artists, are we to judge
their images the same way we do other paintings?
There
are several issues in this regard, the first of which is the haiku aesthetic of
not overtly displaying technical virtuosity, but rather aiming at simplicity of
style and depth of effect. Does this mean that artistic skill is not required in haiga? A parallel to the poems themselves may be useful here. While we don’t
want to be dazzled by elaborate verbal technique, we do appreciate certain kinds
of expertise, both in subtle signification and in the sounds and rhythms that
the haiku create. Above all, the rich and subtle use of words can convey more
than they directly state. We are invited, in the best haiku, to contribute to
the total effect through our own creative understanding and appreciation.
If we apply the same
standards to haiga, we can see that there are certain kinds of skill necessary, but these do not
necessarily demand great technical proficiency with the brush, pencil, pen,
crayon, chalk, pastel, or whatever tool is being used. Of course, both practice
and opportunities for sustained looking—focusing attention to one’s own work and
that by others—can be of vital importance in developing the ability to convey
meaning through visual images. But it is the total focused expression that
matters most, and too much overt skill can hinder, rather than assist, this form
of communication.
What does this mean for the poet who wants to
try haiga? Certainly, there need be no hindrance from a lack of formal artistic
training, and therefore every poet can feel confident that he or she has every
right to add images to words. The difficult and yet reassuring task, as we all
discover, is how this becomes a never-to-be-completed journey toward the goal of
mastery, where all skills are hidden in the “just rightness” of the work.
Poet-artists of Japan have begun with several
advantages. Both words and images are traditionally created with the same means
of brush, ink, and paper and, in addition, many characters have pictographic
origins or associations. For example, the graphs for “person,” “moon,” “river,”
“house,” and many others suggest their visual forms, unlike our own alphabet
that is visually abstracted from the meanings of the words it creates.
The result is that Japanese poets have had a
certain amount of both technical expertise with the brush and interconnection
with images when they moved from haiku to haiga. In the West, we may
have gained some
skill with pen and pencil from learning to write, but we don’t have this degree
of fluency (as so many of us have discovered when we begin to draw and paint).
Nevertheless, we have other advantages, including the wide range of possible
artistic styles ranging from realism to pure abstraction. We can also explore
the potentials of photography and computer images, although there is always the
danger of losing the simplicity and focus of the best haiga.
Returning to the issue of skill versus
amateurism, some Japanese poet-artists have deliberately played with these
seeming opposites. Perhaps they knew the words of the Zen poet Ryokan, who said
he disliked paintings by painters and poems by poets. After all, the word
“amateur” comes from the word for love, and it is this spirit of amateurism,
which does not mean lack of mastery, that informs the best haiga.
“Two Deer” by Nakajima Kaho, a poet-artist
who lived a century ago, is an example of deliberate amateurism that hides
skill. The haiku in the upper right reads:
shigure kuru
samusa ni furuu
shika no koe
early winter rain --
invigorated by the cold
the voice of the deer
Kaho adds an
image of two deer on the left, but we may wonder whether they are the real
animals or children’s toys, with their simplified bodies and stick-like legs.
Yet there is a deft use of artistic effects in this work, such as the adept
overlapping of the two deer, the semi-abstract
patterns on the male deer’s body, the gentle color, and especially the use of
space in the total composition. This crucial use of emptiness between the two
deer and the poem that they face is enhanced by the movement of the calligraphy
down to the left that is echoed by the forms of the deer, creating a space-cell
that has its own active form. In addition, the crunched-up calligraphy echoes
the overlapping forms of the deer, and although the poem is given less space
than the image, its powerful brushwork makes it an equal partner in the total
visual effect.
This
haiga, simple as it may seem at first look, is an example of the kinds of skills
that can be useful when creating an image to enhance a haiku. While Kaho’s deer
at first seem merely to illustrate the poem, the interaction of words, painting,
and calligraphy deepens the total effect, so the result becomes more than the
sum of its parts. A detailed depiction of the deer might have drawn too much
attention to the painting, to the detriment of the poem, while a clumsy drawing
would have harmed the total effect.
Kaho’s
artistic mastery therefore includes his relaxed, evocative brushwork, his
intriguing asymmetrical composition, and his choice to omit everything
nonessential. The cold and the rain are left to our imaginations, as is the
question of just what is invigorated, the early winter rain, the voice of the
deer—or perhaps it is ourselves. There is room here for us, as viewers, to
breathe, to be both charmed by the image and activated by its relation to (and partial separation from)
the poem. These are the kinds of understated artistic skills that parallel those
needed to compose fine haiku. We might conclude with our own response:
early winter rain
invigorated by the image
the voice of the poet
This essay first appeared in Reeds: Contemporary Haiga 2004. Edina, Minnesota 2004: Lone Egret Press, 2004.
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