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The house of Shiki, Kototoi street
Winter
When Masaoka Shiki was in the fifth grade he composed a Chinese poem about a crying cuckoo. It is traditionally said that a Japanese cuckoo, hototogisu (Shiki), will sing until it coughs out blood because of its sad voice. When he was 22, Masaoka Shiki started coughed out blood due to his tuberculosis. By that time he adopted the pen-name “Shiki” from the Japanese hototogisu—the Japanese name for lesser cuckoos. Since those days, he was inspired by his uncle, haiku teacher Ohara Kiju. He began to devote himself into haiku. Shiki composed over 25,500 haiku in his short life.
Notes
In those days Chinese poetry and prose were considered as important learning and culture, so even young children used to compose them. The interesting thing about this young Shiki’s Chinese poem is that he composed on a sad voice of cuckoo which would cough up blood. Later he was to cough out blood and he picked out his pen name, Shiki a hototogisu. Shiki wrote about 900 Chinese poems in his life.