Interesting little snippet if, like me, you are a fan of go and baseball:

Haiku poet Masaoka Shiki has just been inducted into the Nihon Ki-in Hall of Fame (for writing some famous haikus about go). He was also inducted into the (Japanese) Baseball Hall of Fame in 2002 (for playing baseball when he was a youngster in the Meiji era). Both HoFs are in central Tokyo if you fancy a visit.

There's a potentially similar case. Shoriki Matsutaro was the first inductee in the baseball HoF, having been responsible for the introduction of professional baseball to Japan (Tokyo Giants in 1934, which later became Yomiuri Giants, and now the home of the HoF). He's not in the Nihon K-in HoF yet but this is still a tiny hall (21 members) and there are many proper go players of both past and present queuing up for a place. But as his go fame rests on sponsorship of the ten-game matches involving Go Seigen and of the Meijin, through his paper, the Yomiuri Shinbun, I expect it's only a matter of time before we see go and baseball joined again in hally matrimony.

Interesting about Shiki. Can we see any of his Go haiku or senryu? I notice that the Nihon Ki-in Hall of Fame (https://senseis.xmp.net/?NihonKiInHallOfFame) on Sensei's is a bit behind. The entries for 2016 and 2017 have not been listed. I couldn't find any page on the Nihon Ki-in website that lists all the inductees.

I have found that Wikipedia is more up to date than Sensei's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihon_Ki- ... _Fame#2016

I don't think Shiki wrote any go senryu (or tanka, which was one of his main genres). His go references are in his haiku and Chinese poems.

Actually I found his induction very unsatisfying, especially considering he was the only inductee out of 8 nominations. There are plenty of worthier people. It's clear Shiki was chosen only because it's the 150th anniversary of his birth, and Shiki is a big enough name to create a bandwagon I presume the Nihon Ki-in is hoping to hitch a lift on (Shiki revived the haiku form - indeed he invented the term, as it was previously called hokku). But he didn't write that many go poems, none really stands out, and he wasn't all that keen of a go player himself - he played mainly to keep his favourite disciple company.

I did think of adding some of his haiku when I first posted, but haiku is so badly understood in the west that it felt pointless. American haiku in particular may well be a valid art form but it bears as much relation to the Japanese form as a fart to perfume. One of the worst misconceptions is that a haiku consists of 17 syllables. Piffle. A Japanese haiku consists of a context in which the 5-7-5 form is merely the amber bead crystallising out of that wider matrix. The context in a Japanese haiku may be a headnote, its place in a book (e.g. Basho's travelogues) or an author's essays (zuihitsu), its place in a sequence of other haiku, or in allusions to other haiku or senryu, etc.

There are also necessarily an internal structure and a musicality in Japanese haiku which are lacking in English.

Here are a couple of Shiki's poems relevant to the season. I'll point up some of the problems to do with appreciation.

古家や　狸石打つ　落葉の夜

(An ancient dwelling: a raccoon smacking down stones, Night of falling leaves) Obviously one allusion here is to Basho's famous poem about the frog jumping into the pond (which begins Furuike ya - Shiki's poem starts Furuie ya and, I would argue, the pairing of animals, frog and racoon, and also the implied ishi no oto 'smacking sound of stones' is meant to match Bac=sho's mizu no oto 'splash of water'). But the reference to a tanuki racoon, though as a belly drummer it will be instantly familiar to go players, is still unusual enough in poetic terms to spark allusions to other haiku/senryu that mention tanukis in go. There is even the context of the rest of Shiki's oeuvre to consider. He was famous partly because he rejected nature in haiku in favour of realism, yet this poem delves into superstition, with a touch of nature. Why?

真中に　碁盤据ゑたる　毛布かな

(Go board needs placing Flat and right in the middle: Oh, wretched blanket!) This is a very clever poem. There's a major trap here for western go players who think a goban is a goban. But even a Japanese person would be apt to miss the point of this poem without the context. The back story is that Shiki was very ill - as was well known at the time as he was a long-time sufferer from the consumption that was soon to kill him. He would have been too weak to lift a bulky kaya board, and in fact goban here refers to a paper go board. This is hinted at in the apt choice of sueru as the verb (i.e.. fixing it in place), but we know this anyway because Shiki's notes tell us. Until the 1950s go sets comprising a paper board and clay stones were common, being the equivalent of today's plastic sets. Shiki describes how he got out a beginner's book and started playing over the moves on this board only for the wind to blow in a draught and mess with the board. I find the mannaka ni (placing the board "dead centre" on the blanket") opening quite brilliant. The precision conveys, I think, the mindset of a person intent on studying properly. We can infer from other writings by Shiki that the book in question was in fact a joseki book by his contemporary Honinbo Shuei. The attempt at precision also contrasts with the wind messing up the board, and of course with the unruliness of the blanket itself, stretched over the invalid's legs. But it also has what the Japanese call "tight music" evident in most of the best haiku. The m, k, and a sounds of the bread part of the sandwich (mannaka ni and moufu kana) bind the poem and give it a musicality, but also allow the moufu word, with its different vowels, to stand out. Which is appropriate in that moufu is the season word for winter, and also in that the blanket plays a significant role in this scene, not least in hinting at the presence of the wind and the chill in the air. The choice of placing the cutting word kana right at the end is a neat touch, too, making the poem one long utterance like an invalid struggling to breathe. There is the sound of silence: the paper board, the clay stones, the sound-deadening blanket. There are other aspects to this fascinating poem, such as allusions to senryu about cheap clay stones, but none of this emerges properly without knowing the back story - or thinking a goban is a goban.