The Loom of Japanese Linked Poetry and Film Editing
Do not seek the traces of the ancients, seek what they sought. (Kūkai, 774 – 835)
Representation A and representation B must be so selected from all the possible features within the theme that is being developed, must be sought for, that their juxtaposition — the juxtaposition of those very elements and not of alternative ones — shall evoke in the perception and feelings of the spectator the most complete image of the theme itself. (Sergei Eisenstein, Synchronization of Senses, in The Film Sense, 1943 — emphasis in original)
In the Shōwa period Yamaguchi Seishi (1910–94), harking back to Bashō and spurred on by the notion of Eisenstein’s montage (reimported to Japan), believed that haiku should focus on the interrelationship between different objects of nature, a relationship that must ‘leap beyond’ the predictable. Yamaguchi introduced the term nibutsu shōgeki, ‘collision of two objects,’ which he borrowed from Eisenstein’s notion of montage and applied to haiku. (Haruo Shirane, Traces of Dreams, 1998)
Eisenstein’s editing constructs correspondences, analogies, and contrasts that ask us to interpret the story events. The interpretation is not simply handed to the viewer; rather, the editing discontinuities push us to work out implicit meanings. (David Bordwell, Film Art: An Introduction, 12th Edition, 2020)
Haruo Shirane is Shinchō Professor of Japanese Literature at Columbia University. In his book on the poetry of Bashō, Traces of Dreams, he draws our attention to a parallel between certain types of juxtaposition used in Japanese poetry, and the framing and editing techniques in the films of Sergei Eisenstein in particular, who Shirane tells us was influenced by the dynamics of Japanese haiku.
The art of haiku and linked poetry as it was in Bashō’s time had grown from an ancient tradition of Japanese (and earlier Chinese) poetry in which short-form poems, many of them produced collaboratively and competitively, were compiled, edited and anthologised into long sequences, giving rise to a need for overall ordering and cohering principles. (Association and Progression: Principles of Integration in Anthologies and Sequences of Japanese Court Poetry, AD 900–1350, by Jon’icho Konishi (transl. Brower and Miner, 1958))
The parallel between film and poetry sequences is based on drawing an analogy between the progress of ideas in a linked verse sequence and a succession of shots in a film, and the connection of verse to verse and shot to shot, making this ideal territory to explore systematically with the Loom of Form and Meaning (https://link.medium.com/bvh3Bkfpx5), which is a simple framework for classifying comparisons.
I’m going to use the categories of the Loom to further explore Shirane’s examples from Japanese poetry and film, and add some additional examples from earlier Japanese poetry, especially the Shinkokinshū anthology (c. 1205, here using the translation of Laurel Rasplica Rodd, 2015), from still earlier Japanese and Chinese poetry which served as a model, and from film editing.
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The cinematic master shot which records the entire action and dialogue of the scene is the reference point for other portions of the scene (the ‘coverage’) which are restaged and shot in closer views or from different angles. It acts as A1 (same form, same meaning) on the Loom, with our interpretation of the master shot being heightened and modified by the coverage edited around it.
In the context of Japanese verse, the analogous reference point for a sequence of poems can be found in whatever supports the cohesion of its progression. That may include the overall narrative arc of a single season of the year, a love affair, a journey between well-known places, or the chronological progression of day-to-day activities or celebrations through part of the year. It may also be based on a common reference to a single earlier text, or to a series of texts in an earlier sequence. Whatever the reference point may be, the sequence can develop just as different shots in film may highlight aspects of the master shot.
At times, the reference point may be as obvious as a stated theme, which were often used for poetry competitions. In the time of the Shinkokinshū, such a thematic poem was expected to capture the essential character (hon’i) of the given topic or experience. So a poem on the theme of Mt. Fuji would be expected to reference rising smoke, as in Shinkoshinjū 975:
nowhere on the road
could I ever distinguish
the smoke that rises
from Fuji for never did
the hazy sky become clear
– Minamoto no Yoritomo
This formulaic fixing within a verse of a required form and a required meaning, with neither permitted to vary, is also an A1 type specification, which will carry from verse to verse as long as the theme must hold.
By the time of the linked verse in Bashō’s time, successive verses were required to develop in new and surprising directions which may lead far from the theme explicitly stated in the opening verse. In fact, if there can be said to be any narrative thread at all in Japanese linked verse, it is, as Herbert Jonsson suggests in Reading Japanese Haikai Poetry (2016), citing studies in Japanese by Torahiko Terada (2012) and Horikiri Minoru (1988), the dreamlike and incoherent narrative to be found in Buñuel’s An Andalusian Dog (1929) and the surrealistic films of Seijun Suzuki.
In the sense of the master shot as whatever binds together a sequence of shots, in linked verse this can also be the idiom of the haikai linked verse sequence, which is the sum of the shared values and tastes of the participating poets, as selected and edited by the haikai master (sōshō), or the style of the single author of an extended sequence in solo format (dokugin). The links in the sequence must develop, but the poetic idiom binds.
A jump cut between shots which differ only slightly in angle or composition is an A2 type edit in film (similar form, same meaning). The example most commonly given, because it uses jump shots in such abundance, is Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960). Slightly different shots of Patricia from the rear of a moving car give the appearance that some frames have been dropped, giving the effect of time passing, while the overall scene remains the same.
Varying the point of view is one technique of achieving the contrast necessary in linked verse. The same matter can be presented from different points of view, for example viewing from a third-person and first-person perspective, as here where a woman seen carrying a basket of shad, traditionally associated with pregnancy, prays to become pregnant. It’s the presentation of the same scene from slightly different points of view which comprises the A2 technique here, not the association of shad with pregnancy, or the related wordplay in the original Japanese, which are different kinds of links discussed later.
carrying on the head
a basket of shadmy prayers to
an early dawn star
to be pregnant
– Kakei
A3 links (different form, same meaning) find different ways to express the same idea. In Japanese linked verse, the technique of refamiliarisation (along with recontextualisation – see C1 below) is one of a pair processes which Shirane holds out as central to the poetic project of Bashō and his followers. Bashō’s Chinese-influenced poetry translated the terms and ideas of the earlier classics into a contemporary and local vernacular: ‘the local view from Fukagawa becomes that from Tu Fu’s hermitage, Mount Fuji turns into China’s Western Peak, the boats on Sumida River merge with the boats heading “a thousand leagues to the Eastern Sea,” and Bashō’s hut fuses with that of Tu Fu.’ The earlier text is not parodied or debased, but reexpressed in more accessible terms for his contemporary readers.
The cinematic example Shirane offers of a transference link is ‘a shot of a couple kissing followed by a shot of an avocado being peeled: the second shot is “coloured” by the first, given a definite sexual resonance.’ Note, however, that although the first shot is needed to interpret the second, the second shot does not modify the interpretation of the first (as the Kuleshov effect does, see C1 below), it just continues with images which are presented as synonyms for a sexual act, saying the same thing ‘in other words.’
Using this same technique in a similar context, two security guards watching The Truman Show on TV, in the movie of the same name, complain that you ‘never see anything’ when Truman has sex, since the camera will always move away to an image of curtains moving in the breeze. It’s not a metaphor or figurative allusion which heightens or intensifies the meaning, it’s just a substitution, a euphemism, and as such it’s an A3 technique on the loom. That said, we naturally assume that the curtains are in Truman’s room, and are not just any set of curtains, so the substitution has a slightly metonymical tone of contiguity, unlike the generic peeled avocado.
Another cinematic example given by Shirane, which he classifies as a reverberation link, is a shot of an explosion rocking a brick building and a shot of a sleepy-faced lion suddenly roaring. As related visual images of peace and quiet being broken by a sudden noise, they stand as an example of A3 linking. Any suggestion that the explosion caused the lion to roar, and that it was part of the same episode, would make it another kind of link based on cause and effect (see below). As it is, it’s an example of Eisenstein’s montage by association — the reinforcement of the meaning of one image by another image that is not part of the same episode.
The same scene shown in different levels of detail are B1 type links (same form, similar meaning). In this type of edit, a certain existing aspect of the master shot is presented as especially significant, as Shirane explains with a poetic example using the language of film: ‘In a typical content link [in poetry] an extreme long shot of the hills and mist may be followed by an extreme close-up of the dew on the grass.’ The part / whole relationship is metonymic in both cases.
An example of the ‘zooming in’ technique in poetry can be found in the metonymic (part for whole) seasonal words (kigo) which indicate a particular time of year, ranging from the classical Chinese trope of cherry blossom for spring, already a cliché in the 17th century, to novelties discovered and added to the canon of seasonal images by poets like Bashō, such as the radish harvest for winter, and bamboo planting for summer.
Another rhetorical device that became prominent in Japanese poetry in the early Kokinshū era is the kakekotoba, where the same word is used with similar (B1) and different (C1) meanings. An example where the pivot word keeps a similar meaning is Shinkokinshū 99, in which yama (mountain) simultaneously features in the phrases tohoyama (distant mountains) and yamadori (mountain birds).
B2 type links (similar form, similar meaning) in film can be set up in different ways. Shirane’s cinematic examples focus on the similarity of the content in what he calls a status (kurai) link: ‘a shot of a garbage pail and that of a beggar in the park, or a shot of a lady in a fur coat followed by one of a Rolls-Royce.’ Similarly, his poetic examples draw out direct commonalities between objects.
In an example he gives from a collaboratively-written linked sequence called In the Town, collected in the Monkey’s Straw Coat (1691) anthology, ‘the figure of the old man, who has lost his teeth and can only suck on fishbones, echoes the implied social circumstances, provincial and impoverished, of the people of Noto, where the local inhabitants have difficulty surviving harsh winters.’
suffering the winters
of Nanao in Noto
– Bonshō
growing old
sucking the bones
of a fish
– Bashō
Shirane gives another example from the Monkey’s Straw Coat anthology in which the linked verses both articulate a shared mood: ‘the quiet solitude and sadness of those – a priest and a monkey trainer – who stand outside the warm embrace of society.’ In the context of poetry, Bashō calls this a scent (nioi) link.
a priest growing old
as he returns to a temple?
– Bonshō
monkey trainer
spending his life with a monkey
autumn moon
– Bashō
Traditional continuity editing is ‘an approach to editing, supported by specific strategies of cinematography and mise-en-scene, that was based on narrative continuity.’ (Bordwell) Some of its techniques, such as reverse angles, eyeline matches and point-of-view cutting, and over-the-shoulder framings, present similar shots linked by the developing narrative. These are also type B2 links, whose similarity in form and meaning is based on the unifying narrative. In Japanese poetics, they are like the ‘content link’ (kokoro) which is joined to the previous verse by ‘cause and effect, narrative development, scenic extension, temporal progression, or any logical connection based on “content.”’ (Shirane)
B3 type links (different form, similar meaning) in poetry and film arise through the use of metaphorical montage. Shirane explains: ‘Eisenstein juxtaposes a shot of workers being gunned down with one of oxen being slaughtered or a shot of the Russian prime minister with that of a peacock. The following hokku, which Bashō composed in May 1688, appears in Backpack Notes.
On the road exhausted,
time to find a lodging –
hanging wisteria
The exhaustion of a traveler at the end of the day is reflected in the wisteria, with its long drooping flowers.’
These B3-type uses differ from A3-type substitutions in that they use different images and ideas to supplement and strengthen aspects of the meaning, not just to stand in place of them as synonyms.
In Beyond the Shot, Eisenstein gives the following examples of montage lists, where each line of the haiku shows a different aspect of the scene being sketched. In these cases, the lines are not saying the same as the others, but together ‘the simplest juxtaposition of two or three details of a material series produces a perfectly finished representation.’ (Sergei Eisenstein, Beyond the Shot, 1929)
Ancient monastery.
Cold moon.
Wolf howling.
– Kikko
Quiet field.
Butterfly flying.
Sleeping.
– Go-sin
C1 type (same form, different meaning) edits and links occur when our interpretation of an unchanging idea or form is surprisingly modified by its recontextualisation, or when it is put to an unexpected use. The pioneering Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov demonstrated experimentally that exactly the same image of a famous actor was interpreted differently depending on adjacent images in the edit. Eisenstein used the effect copiously, as did Hitchcock.
Shirane doesn’t address this Kuleshov effect in his comparison of film and linked verse, which is odd because he considers recontextualisation (along with refamiliarisation, see A3 above) to be a pervasive and central element of the haikai imagination, and gives numerous examples including this linked sequence from Beneath the Cherry Trees in the Gourd (1690) haikai anthology, where ‘the aristocratic, seemingly tragic, somber world of the first two verses is unexpectedly transformed into the lighthearted, commoner world… recontextualising existing texts or established worlds so as to create new meanings and perspectives.’
‘I want to see Kumano,’
she wept
– Bashō
bow in hand
the barrier guard at Ki
unyielding
– Chinseki
the bald head probably
from too much drinking
– Kyokosui
In fact, the standard way of closely reading such sequences is in successive, overlapping pairs of verses, so that the shifting sense of meaning of the same verse can be fully appreciated.
We have mentioned kakekotoba in the context of pivot words which retain a similar meaning (B1), but they can also link phrases through homophonic wordplay using different meanings (C1), for example in Shinkokinshū 121, in which tanomu means both ‘to depend/shelter on’ and the ‘surface of the fields.’ (Laurel Rasplica Rodd)
there may be other
times yet the geese who sheltered
on the fields choose to part
now when blossoms are falling
in lovely Yoshino village
– Minamoto no Tomochika
Graphic matching in cinematography is a C2 link (similar form, different meaning), where ideas and images are mainly linked through a superficial resemblance. Celebrated examples are the bone tossed into the air at the beginning of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey which is matched with a satellite of similar shape in the following frames, and the outline of Ripley’s sleeping face in James Cameron’s Aliens (1986) matched with an outline of earth, with the resemblance heightened by a similar use of chiaroscuro. While the initial resemblance is graphical, it prompts us to use our imagination to discover other connections. If and when we find them, we may reclassify the link accordingly, for example as B3 if an analogy is being drawn.
In An Unexpected Juncture (1928), Eisenstein gives the following example of graphic matching in poetry, adding: ‘The magpies stretched out in flight appear to Yakamosi like a bridge cast into the ether.’
They leave for the East,
A bridge of magpies in flight…
– Yakamosi
Ideas and images juxtaposed in C3 type links (different form, different meaning) which avoid established associations are nevertheless required to cohere if the film or verse sequence is to guard against unravelling entirely. A certain kind of ‘turn’ in poetry juxtaposes apparently unrelated thoughts, such as the prized ‘distant’ link in the poetics of Bashō and his circle, where the only connection which may exist between the terms is in the moment of reading the poem itself.
in the ash bin
the trickling has ended
katydid
– Bonshō (transl. Maeda Cana, from Monkey’s Raincoat)
It may be found elsewhere and much earlier in models admired by Bashō and his circle, for example in the parallelism of dissimilar images in Wang Wei:
Great desert: one column of smoke stands straight;
Long river: the setting sun hangs round.
It’s not the abruptness of the parataxis that makes these phrases examples of C3 juxtaposition, but the difference in form and meaning within the terms, which nevertheless resonate with each other though unconnected. That said, there is a syntactic similarity which encourages the reader to look further.
In the movie JLG/JLG – Self-Portrait in December (1994), Jean-Luc Godard opines that ‘a picture doesn’t have an impact because it’s brutal or fantastic, but because associated ideas are far apart.’ But he also cautions: ‘The closer the distant realities come to each other, the stronger the picture will be. Two realities with no rapport would be fruitless though. No image will be produced. Two opposite realities can’t be brought together. They repel each other.’
Analysing a haiku of Nakamura Kusatao, Shirane finds ‘the startling gap between the two images causes the reader to explore the symbolic and psychological connotations.’ Similarly, in a sequence of Japanese linked verse using ‘the “distant link,” the two units seem to be unrelated at first glance, but are connected on a deeper level of intuition, usually through shared connotation or mood.’ (The Art of Linking (unpublished thesis), Kai Xie, 2012). To read them together closely is to seek their truth, as Bordwell on film and Shirane on haikai both agree.
Eisenstein gives the following among his different examples of montage, which initially presents itself as a C3 type distant link, but resolves itself into a B3 type link as we perceive the link between the two parts of the tanka.
Mountain pheasant
moving quietly, trailing
his tail behind.
Oh, I shall pass
endless nights alone.
– Hitomaso
For Richard Pilgrim (Intervals (‘Ma’) in Space and Time, 1986), such gaps are an example of a more general religio-aesthetic paradigm or ‘way of seeing’ to be found in many other (especially Japanese) arts, where the difference or interval between two images, ideas, things or events is not ‘a mere emptiness or opening; through and in it shines a light, and the function of this ma [interval] becomes precisely to let that light shine through.’
In such a way, we do not merely seek the traces of the ancients, we seek what they sought.
