The Zhuāngzĭ, haikai, and the poetry of Bashō 1

Daoist influence on Japanese poetry can be traced to the oldest anthology, the Manyōshū 万葉集 (Anthology of Ten Thousand Leaves, c. 759), but its profound impact is best seen in the Edo 江戸 period (1600–1868), during which three major haikai 俳諧 (comic linked verse) schools—the Teimon 貞門, the Danrin 談林, and the Shōmon 蕉門—in composition and theme actively drew upon Daoist texts, particularly the fourth-century BCE Daoist scripture known as the Zhuāngzĭ 莊子. The intertextual relations between their haikai and the Zhuāngzĭ were so prominent that, contrary to the general dearth of scholarship on Daoist influence in Japanese literature, a number of Japanese scholars have published studies on haikai poets’ use of the Zhuāngzĭ since the 1930s. ² When discussing haikai's encounter with the Zhuāngzĭ, earlier studies note two main contributing factors. One is the influence of the commentaries on the Genji monogatari 源氏物語 (The Tale of Genji, c. 1000) in medieval Japan, which used the gūgen 寓言 ³ of the Zhuāngzĭ as a canonical model to justify the fictional nature of literary writing, setting a helpful precedent for the haikai poets to legitimize their bold fabrications. ⁴ The other is the Sòng 宋 dynasty (960–1279) scholar-official Lín Xīyì 林希逸 (c. 1193–1271)'s annotation of the Zhuāngzĭ that was widely read during Edo period Japan; Lín's text highlighted the novel and unrestrained writing style of the Daoist classic, and hence attracted great interest from the haikai writers. ⁵ Later scholarship on this subject focuses mostly on the representative poet Matsuo Bashō 松尾芭蕉 (1664–94) and his Shōmon school, tracing their extensive use of Daoist ideas at the summit of haikai poetry. Building upon existing Japanese scholarship, this chapter further explores the factors in the development of haikai that led to the haikai poets’ sustained interest in the Zhuāngzĭ and how the ancient Daoist text became a source for poetry and helped to both turn the vernacular, even vulgar, haikai expressions into poetry and reinvent its compositional practice and dialogic context. Through a close examination of Bashō's work this chapter demonstrates that the haikai poets’ use of the Daoist ideas was not mere borrowing but cross-cultural fertilization at a remarkable level.