By Sandra Simpson
Head note: ‘Shiki’ was the pronunciation of the characters most commonly used to form the name of the lesser cuckoo (Cuculus poliocephalus), but the same characters could also be pronounced ‘hototogisu’.
ホトトギス also 時鳥, 杜鵑, 不如帰 1
Even in a little garden, where one could take no more than 10 steps,
the poet might find a new subject every day.
– Shiki, 1897
Has there ever been a poet so attached to his garden as the dying Masaoka Shiki? Despite his immobility and ever-worsening pain, the garden outside his bedroom offered glimpses of the vibrancy of natural life and a kind of freedom. This essay attempts to form a picture of the importance of his small garden to the man who is often called ‘the father of modern haiku’ for his revival and refreshing of this art form. And let us not forget that even though he lived a shortened life, dying in 1902 aged 35, Shiki wrote some 25,000 haiku, as well as many tanka, essays and journal entries, was an editor and had a following of poets that he encouraged and inspired.
Born in 1867 in Matsuyama as Masaoka Tsunenori, Shiki first coughed blood from his lungs in 1889 and this is when he adopted his pen-name, identifying with the lesser cuckoo, which has a blood-red mouth and is reputed to sing so intensely and for so long that it eventually coughs blood and dies.
Shiki became infected with pulmonary tuberculosis at the age of 21, and in about 1895, aged 28, contracted Pott’s disease (tuberculosis of the spine).2 In between these two devastating diagnoses, Shiki had begun to challenge the state of haiku in Japan, publishing Some Remarks on Bashō in 1893, which criticised the way his contemporaries had brought haiku to its knees by trying to emulate Bashō, a poet, by the way, whom Shiki admired, with unoriginal poems and formulaic language.3 He followed this with The Elements of Haiku published in 1898, a year after he became completely bed-ridden.
Until now I had mistaken the ‘Enlightenment’ of Zen.
I was wrong to think it meant being able to die serenely under any conditions.
It means being able to live serenely under any conditions.
– Shiki, from In A Sixfoot Sickbed, entry for June 2, 1902, tr. Janine Beichman4
Shiki’s dedication to his own writing and painting was such that as his mobility deteriorated he had a section cut out of his writing desk to accommodate his left leg which he was unable to straighten, and he had cloth grips attached to the floor mats (tatami) to grab when the pain was especially bad or to pull himself into another position. The only ‘medication’ available to treat his condition was morphine, its use and dosage strictly regulated.
Four or five years ago, when I first became an invalid, my wishes were already very small. I used to say I wouldn’t mind being unable to walk far, if only I could walk in my garden. After a few years, when I could no longer walk, it still seemed that simply being able to stand up would be a joy. In this 1901 essay, Shiki goes on to detail his ever-diminishing ambitions for his physical self as time has passed and his illness worsened.
Yesterday and today my plaint has been, “Who cares about sitting up? What joy to simply be free of pain, able to lie down in comfort for a single hour!” A miniscule request indeed! My wishes are now so reduced they can shrink no more. The next and final stage will be the zero wish …5
itatsuki no iyuru hi shirani saniwabe ni akikusabana no tane o makashimu
I do not know the day
my pain will end yet
in the little garden
I had them plant
seeds of autumn flowers
– Shiki, tr. Janine Beichman6
Shiki moved to Tokyo from Matusyama in 1883, bringing his mother and sister to the capital in 1892 as he was now earning enough (just) to support them all, and together they moved to the neighbourhood of Ueno in 1894, his final home. This site (Shikian) is today designated as an historic site and is open to the public. The original building was destroyed by an American bombing raid at dawn on April 14, 1945 and the present house built 5 years later, mainly through the efforts of Shiki’s friend, Samukawa Sokotsu (1875-1954). The small house was the venue for numerous meetings of haiku and tanka poets, and from 1897 there was an annual gathering to mark the anniversary of Buson’s death, a poet he placed higher than Bashō in the haiku pantheon.
Buson Memorial Day at Shiki’s home, December 1899. Shiki is leaning on an armrest, centre front. Photo: Shiki House Museum
Taking advantage of a lull in my illness, I went for a walk in the garden,
leaning on my stick. The garden is no bigger than the palm of my hand,
but the sun was brightly shining and birds were flying in the sky.
I felt indescribably happy.
– Shiki, April 24, 1896, from Shōra gyokueki, a collection of zuihitsu (random essays),
tr. Donald Keene7
Shiki described the garden around the house as 67 square metres so like, the 5-room house, rather small. Yet, even when bed-bound he produced many haiku using the view from his bedroom as inspiration. Susumu Takiguchi wrote after a 2002 visit: The garden has been reconstructed to how it must have been in Shiki’s time by examining his haiku, tanka and all other writings. I thought it a wonderful tribute to Shiki, who loved the garden so much, but could not attend to it himself. 8
In 1895, Shiki cajoled his newspaper editor to send him to China to cover the Sino-Japanese War, although he arrived in April after the signing of a peace treaty. Shiki stayed on in China for a time, living in appalling conditions, but meeting Mori Ōgai, an army surgeon and later one of modern Japan’s greatest novelists. On his return to Japan in May Shiki was hospitalised in Kobe in a very serious condition and in August went to Matsuyama and stayed with his friend the novelist Natsume Sōskei to further recuperate, eventually getting home to Tokyo in October.9
The garden now has a more appealing shade than last year.
And one or two crooked clumps of white chrysanthemums bloom
in their wild fashion … These ordinary flowers, and this little,
cramped garden – how could I dream of their moving me so much!
– Shiki, from My Little Garden, tr. Masako Hirai10
the low fence
a plain umbrella passes
spring rain
– Shiki, 1896
tr. Shiki-Kinen Museum English Volunteers
my chair is moved –
in the shade of young leaves
I see the sky
– Shiki, 1898
tr. Shiki-Kinen Museum English Volunteers
Whenever Shiki wanted to see the garden, the paper shoji (sliding doors) had to be opened, an impractical plan during Tokyo’s snowy and cold winter. One of his followers, Takahama Kyoshi (editor of Hototogisu literary magazine with which Shiki was closely involved), suggested glazing the doors and in early December 1899 this was done. As well as allowing Shiki to see the garden whenever he wanted, the glass also let in the winter sun. Shiki was overjoyed. He could, for the first time – without moving an inch – see his garden, the bird cage, pine trees, and the hill of Ueno beyond. He could now also sun-bathe, even in winter.
Overwhelmed by autumn with its splendid and colourful cockscombs
and amaranths, the bush clover has already begun to scatter, a poignant sight.
The old lady next door who gave us roses, bush clover, silver grass
and Chinese bellflowers and helped in the creation of my little paradise
later moved elsewhere. This year, I heard, she passed on,
showing the way to the autumn wind.
– Shiki, A Record of the Little Garden, tr. Janine Beichman11
Shiki translator Masako Hirai had permission to enter his bedroom where she lay on the floor beside the bed, imitating Shiki’s pose from a well-known photograph, so she could see what the poet might easily have seen – the bamboo trellis cutting the sky into rectangles, the tops of plants – as well as gaining an insight into how painful and difficult it was to lie in the way he did and use a writing brush. 12
The pain under the pelvic bones, which I’ve felt since yesterday, is getting more and more furious …
When the gauze which covers my open wound is changed … I cry in agonies of pain.
I was told that the skin over the rotten part of my body had stuck to the gauze …
It is windy and rainy today. One moonflower and two melons
have fallen from their stems.
– Shiki, from A Poet’s Record of Lying, Viewing and Wondering in Bed, 190113
Shiki started his journal, A Poet’s Record of Lying, Viewing and Wondering in Bed, in September 1901, a year before his death, the book including diary entries, haiku and paintings. The diary was subsequently lost for about 70 years until in 2001, just before the centenary of his death, it was discovered behind a locker in the storehouse next to the Shiki House in Tokyo. His family gifted the book to the Kyoshi Memorial Museum, near Osaka, which holds documents relating to Kyoshi, Shiki’s close friend and successor, and other modern haiku poets. English-language students at Kobe College in Japan, under the leadership of Prof. Hirai, translated some of it, published as the 2003 book, Now, to Be!
keitō no jūshigo hon mo arinu beshi
cockscombs…
must be 14,
or 15
– Shiki, 1900
tr. Janine Beichman
This haiku is often shown with the ‘headnote’ teizen or Before the Garden. The critic Yamamoto Kenkichi was struck by the contrast between Shiki, the invalid whose body was wasting away, and the vigour and force of the cockscombs (Celosia argentea) which are a fiery mass of colour …. their life moves him, entering him and invigorating him until he is moved to exclaim quietly, with an artless childlike enthusiasm, over their numbers.14
It may be almost impossible to imagine the distress and pain that Shiki experienced as his condition deteriorated – there is one description he gives of removing pus from between his teeth – and, as is all-too-easy to imagine, he wasn’t always a ‘good’ patient, castigating his sister, particularly and in writing, for her stolid and incurious nature.
wakamatsu no medachi no midori nagaki hi wo yukata makete netsu idenikeri
the green of the young
pine seedlings…
as the long day
succumbs to night
my fever rises
– Shiki, tr. Janine Beichman15
kōbai no chirinu sabishiki makura moto
crimson plum blossoms
scattered over the loneliness
of the bed…
– Shiki, tr. Janine Beichman
Shiki made 18 watercolours of vegetables and fruits from June 27 to August 6, 1902, the year he died. It is recorded that he lay on his back, and, once his dose of morphine was working, awkwardly drew pictures while being supported by his sister. His final painting, made about a month before his death, was of a morning glory. The artwork was bought after the poet’s death by the daughters of his neighbour and is today in the National Diet Library in Tokyo.16
gotegote to kusabana ueshi koniwa kana
a jumble of
flowers planted—
see, the little garden!
– Shiki, 1900
tr. Janine Beichman
Shiki’s final essay was written just 4 days before his death – however, because of his pain The Morning of September 14 was dictated to Kyoshi. In the essay Shiki describes his own physical and mental state and the gourd flowers, autumn grasses and other sights of his garden.
shūkaidō ni mukeru yamai no nedoko kana
turned
toward the begonias
my sickbed
– Shiki, 1901
tr. Shiki-Kinen Museum English volunteers
Susumu Takiguchi again: And there it was, just outside of Shiki’s room, facing south! I saw a pergola and about a dozen dangling sponge gourds of various colours, with those unmistakable yellow flowers displaying themselves… The three death poems by Shiki, all about sponge gourds, were etched in my memory. Shiki loved different flowers and plants, but from where he must have been lying, I guessed, all he could see were these sponge gourds and flowers.17
Shiki’s final three haiku, all written on one sheet of paper on the morning of September 18 – the original is at the National Diet Library in Tokyo – featured these sponge gourds (known in Japan as hechima). Sap collected from a plant before it flowered was used to treat coughs and reduce phlegm, and was said to be particularly potent if collected on the full moon in mid-August.18 To do this, the vines are cut about 30cm above the ground and the liquid drained, with about a litre coming out in one day and night. When the plants outside Shiki’s window were allowed to flower, it was a sign his condition was now hopeless, his life almost over.
ototoi no hechima no mizu mo torazariki
they didn’t gather
gourd water
day before yesterday either
– Shiki, 1902
tr. Janine Beichman
He scrawled the poems on a sheet of the paper he normally used for his paintings. His sister Ritsu had ground the ink and held the paper taut on a drawing board. Shiki said nothing as he wrote, choked by phlegm. No one else spoke a word; the only sounds were the occasional coughs of the sick man … When he had finished the third poem, Shiki let the brush drop, apparently exhausted … Ritsu leaned the drawing board against a wall so others in the room could read the poems.19
According to Susumu Takiguchi, who has written an article giving a blow-by-blow account of Shiki’s final hours,20 the poems were written with long pauses between lines and, as can be seen on the library’s website, in a somewhat haphazard fashion on the paper. The haiku above was the final poem of the three. The poems were published accompanied by the note: Written by Shiki’s bone-thin hand at 11am on September 18. He died soon after midnight in a small room facing on to a small garden. Sponge gourds were so closely associated with Shiki that until at least 1937, the anniversary of his death day was known as Hechima Day.21
Shiki’s final essay, The Morning of September 14, one of his ‘sketch from life’ pieces, was published the day after his death in Hototogisu literary magazine which he himself had co-founded in 1897 and which, from 1898, was edited in Tokyo by Kyoshi. (Hototogisu is another name for the cuckoo that is also called Shiki.)
Amazingly, a notebook containing five previously unpublished haiku and two previously unknown self-portraits by Shiki was discovered in 2017. The 32-page notebook – which was known to have existed but its whereabouts were unknown – dates to 1901 and contains haiku and drawings inked by Shiki and 13 visitors to his residence on New Year’s Day.
tsuku-tsuku-boshi asunaki youni nakinikeri
tsuku-tsuku-boshi sing as if there is no tomorrow
– Shiki, tr. Rie Yamanouchi22
Tsuku-tsuku-boshi are a type of cicada named for the way they sing. Adults sing from the end of July to the end of September.
Shiki, his mother and sister are buried together at the Dairyu Temple in Tabata.
Further reading:
Shiki’s Haikai Taiyō: Essentials of Haikai (1895), THF. Accessed July 14, 2026.
Many of Shiki’s poems may be found here. Accessed July 14, 2026.
Masaoka Shiki and the Origins of Shasei by Charles Trumbull. Accessed July 14, 2026.
Footnotes:
1. Birds of Japan website. Accessed July 14, 2026.
2. Masaoka Shiki’s Last Days and His Creations: Notes on a Poet Who Suffered from Tuberculosis and Spinal Caries by Ren Ino (Journal of Philosophy and Ethics in Health Care and Medicine, No. 13, December 2019). Accessed July 14, 2026.
3. Masaoka Shiki: A Poet Who Brought Innovation to Haiku by Sakurai Shin (2022). Accessed July 15, 2026.
4. Masaoka Shiki by Janine Beichman (Twayne Publishers, 1982). Accessed July 13, 2026.
5. Ibid.
6. Selected Poems of Masaoka Shiki, translated by Janine Beichman (1986). Accessed July 19, 2026.
7. The Winter Sun Shines In: A Life of Masaoka Shiki by Donald Keene (Columbia University Press, 2013). Accessed July 13, 2026.
8. Visiting Shiki’s House by Susumu Takiguchi (World Haiku Review, 2002). Accessed July 13, 2026.
9. If someone asks … Masaoka Shiki’s Life and Haiku, tr. Shiki-Kinen Museum English Volunteers (Matsuyama Municipal Shiki-Kinen Museum, 2001).
10. Now, to Be! Ed. Masako Hirai (U-Time Publishing, 2003).
11. Masaoka Shiki by Janine Beichman
12. Now, to Be!
13. Ibid.
14. Masaoka Shiki by Janine Beichman.
15. Selected Poems of Masaoka Shiki, translated by Janine Beichman
16. Masters who have Connection with Taito City website. Accessed July 15, 2026.
17. Visiting Shiki’s House by Susumu Takiguchi.
18. If someone asks … Masaoka Shiki’s Life and Haiku.
19. The Winter Sun Shines In: A Life of Masaoka Shiki by Donald Keene.
20. The Moment When Shiki Breathed His Last by Susumu Takiguichi (World Haiku Review, 2001).
21. Loofah: The Sponge Gourd by W. M. Porterfield, Jr. (Economic Botany 9.3, 1955). Accessed July 17, 2026.
22. Now, to Be!
Editor’s note: This piece piece has been developed further from a presentation the author made at Haiku North America in San Francisco in 2025 entitled ‘Master Gardeners’.
Sandra Simpson is the editor of Haiku NewZ and a nominating editor for the annual Red Moon Anthologies (US). An award-winning haiku poet, she lives and works in Tauranga, New Zealand.