外堀の割るる音あり冬の月 sotobori no waruru oto ari fuyu no tsuki cracking sounds in the outer moat -- winter moon Tr. Chris Drake This hokku is from the winter of 1792. Edo castle was renovated and expanded considerably after it was chosen as the site of the shogunate in the early 17th century. It already had a complex network of inner moats running through the core areas of the castle grounds, but to ensure safety the shogunate decided to add an outer moat as well and forced daimyo domain lords around the country to contribute the money, building materials, and workers the shogunate needed to construct the outer moat, which was 15 km (9.3 miles) long. The spacious area between the inner moats around the castle proper and the outer moat was used mainly for the mansions of various daimyo lords, who were required to stay in Edo in attendance on the shogun every other year. The moat itself, like the rest of the castle, was walled with massive pieces of carefully cut granite brought from great distances. The outer moat walls were so strong that some of them remain in fairly good condition even today after surviving US air raids in WW II and postwar city planning. In Issas time commoners were allowed to go only as far as the outer side of the outer moat, part of which ran along the edge of a large park, so this is presumably where Issa is standing and looking at the clear, bright winter moon above. Its bright, hard light throws sharp shadows everywhere, and when the ice in the moat makes cracking sounds, moonlight, too, may synesthetically seem to be breaking up into solid pieces. In the silence the sounds of cracking ice must seem rather loud and penetrating to those near the moat. Is the moons reflection dully visible on the ice on the moat, as if it had something to do with the cracking? Is Issa suggesting the shogunate itself, like the ice, is cracking apart (something that didnt finally happen until 1867)? Theres nothing definite in the hokku to support these interpretations, but theres also nothing to rule them out. The photo at this link shows a portion of the outer moat that still remains in Hibiya Park near downtown Tokyo. In Issas time the water level was of course much higher. Chris Drake edoflourishing.blogspot.jp/2013/11/sotobori.html
Posted on: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 21:14:44 +0000
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