Basho's ume ga ka ni ...

#Basho #haiku #ume

One of Basho's final haiku is the opening poem in a short renga done with his student Shida Yaba


Ume ga ka ni 

Noto hi no deru 

Yamaji kana 

I translate this as The fragrance of plum blossom Suddenly the sun rising On a Mountain path

Word for word in Japanese its plum fragrance at on place time marker suddenly sun of the rising (on) a mountain path.

Seems almost too simple

Ume can grow at quite high altitudes and think about the sequence of images

the fragrance of plums not the sight of pale flowers then suddenly the sun rising on a mountain path

the path winding up slope  through or past plum trees in the pre dawn gloaming barely visible invisible maybe and then the sunlight reaches the path ...

This haiku will be one of the themes for works shared on Patreon and DeviantArt  and other social media this month

Haiga coming soon!

... oh some thing else special about this month it can be written and read entirely with kana.

The Chinese Plum or Japanese Apricot er Plum

Translating plant names from Chinese into English can be tricky.

Possibly whoever chose PLUM to translate MEI either hadn't seen the fruit or was familiar with one of the varieties of plum that have golden orange flesh and a slight golden tinge rather than being deep red or purple.

MEI is PRUNUS MUME

Notice the color of the fruit. Its not very sweet and is used for making plum and other sauces that require a touch of sourness to counterbalance sweetness.

I have no idea if there is an equivalent Chinese fruit to our purplish plums. Perhaps the LI plum is sweet.

There's a wide variety of Prunus trees grown in China.

I suspect what caused the confusion is the color of the flowers which range from white to pink.

ENJOY