Umi ga sukoshi mieru

海が少し見える小さい窓一つもつ
(尾崎放哉 1885-1926)

umi ga sukoshi mieru chiisai mado hitotsu motsu
(Ozaki Hosai 1885-1926)

with a small window from
which you can see
the sea a little


Ozaki's being all irregular again, in this case writing a long haiku with 20 sounds. I'm not sure how best to translate 'hitotsu motsu', but above I've added 'with a' to my original translation. That first translation was influenced by a French translation I found on the net, which doesn't seem to translate 'hitotsu motsu'. This blog isn't about French I know, but 'on' in French is also more satisfying than 'you' in English, while 'one' would be far too formal as the subject. Given the strong feeling that 'I' could also be the subject, it might be better to avoid a subject altogether, if it wasn't for the fact we'd get something unwieldy like 'from/which it's possible to see/the sea a little'.

This poem was also written on Shodoshima, and I imagine Ozaki looking out the window of his hermitage at the sea. Shodoshima is most famous in Japan as the setting for the novel and later film, Twenty-Four Eyes, by native author Sakae Tsuboi. The film won the Golden Globe for best foreign film in 1955. Within Japan the island attracts many tourists, including presumably literary pilgrims, as Wikipedia tells me two other distinguished writers were born there, but I hope those pilgrims also pay tribute to Ozaki Hosai, who died there.

Alternate searches

'chisai mado'