Blyth in 1953.

Reginald Horace Blyth (3 December 1898 – 28 October 1964) was an English writer and devotee of Japanese culture. He is most famous for his writings on Zen and on haiku poetry.

Early life

Blyth was born in Essex, England, the son of a railway clerk. He was the only child of Horace and Henrietta Blyth. He attended Cleveland Road Primary School, in Ilford, then the County High School (later Ilford County High School). In 1916, at the height of World War I, he was imprisoned at Wormwood Scrubs, as a conscientious objector, before working on the Home Office Scheme at Princetown Work Centre in the former and future Dartmoor Prison. After the war he attended the University of London, where he read English and from which he graduated in 1923, with honours.

He adopted a vegetarian lifestyle which he maintained throughout his life.[1] Blyth played the flute, made musical instruments, and taught himself several European languages. He was particularly fond of the music of J.S. Bach. In 1924, he received a teaching certificate from London Day Training College. The same year, he married Anna Bercovitch, a university friend. Some accounts say they moved to India, where he taught for a while until he became unhappy with British colonial rule, but most scholars dismiss this episode, claiming it to have been invented or misunderstood by Blyth's mentor Daisetz T. Suzuki.[2]

Korea (1925–1935)

In 1925, the Blyths moved to Korea (then under Japanese rule), where Blyth became assistant professor of English at Keijo University in Seoul. While in Korea, Blyth began to learn Japanese and Chinese, and studied Zen under the master Hanayama Taigi of Myōshin-ji Keijo Betsuin (Seoul). In Korea he started to read D. T. Suzuki's books about Zen. In 1933, he informally adopted a Korean student, paying for his studies in Korea and later at London University. His wife parted from him in 1934 and Blyth took one-year absence from the university in 1935, following her to England. After the divorce, Blyth returned to Korea in early 1936, leaving the adopted son with his ex-wife. The adopted son returned after World War II to Korea. In 1947 he was captured by North Korean soldiers; when he returned to the South, he was shot as a traitor by the South Korean army.[3]

Japan (1936–1964)

Having returned to Seoul in 1936, Blyth remarried in 1937, to a Japanese woman named Kijima Tomiko,[4] with whom he had two daughters. In 1940 they moved to Kanazawa, Japan, which was D. T. Suzuki's home town, and Blyth took a job as an English teacher at the Fourth Higher School (later Kanazawa University).

When Britain declared war on Japan in December 1941 following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Blyth was interned as a British enemy alien. Although he expressed his sympathy for Japan and sought Japanese nationality, this was denied. During his internment, his extensive library was destroyed in an air raid. In the internment camp in Kobe he finished his first book Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics and wrote parts of his books about haiku and senryu. He also met in the camp Robert Aitken, later Roshi of the Diamond Sangha in Honolulu.

After the war, Blyth worked diligently with the authorities, both Japanese and American, to ease the transition to peace. Blyth functioned as liaison to the Japanese Imperial Household, and his close friend, Harold Gould Henderson, was on General Douglas MacArthur's staff. Together, they helped draft the declaration[5] Ningen Sengen, by which Emperor Hirohito declared himself to be a human being, and not divine.

By 1946, Blyth had become Professor of English at Gakushuin University, and became private tutor to the Crown Prince (later emperor) Akihito until the end of his [Blyth's] life.[6] He did much to popularise Zen philosophy and Japanese poetry (particularly haiku) in the West. In 1954, he was awarded a doctorate in literature from Tokyo University, and, in 1959, he received the Zuihōshō (Order of Merit) Fourth Grade.[7]

Blyth died in 1964, probably of a brain tumour and complications from pneumonia, in the Seiroka Hospital in Tokyo. He was buried in the cemetery of the Shokozan Tokei Soji Zenji Temple in Kamakura, next to his old friend, D. T. Suzuki. Blyth's posthumous Buddhist name is Bulaisu Kodo Shoshin Koju.

Blyth's tomb in Kamakura.

Works

Blyth produced a series of work on Zen, haiku and senryū, and on other forms of Japanese and Asian literature.

He wrote six books on haiku (1949–52, 1963–64) and two books on senryū (1949, 1960), four books on humour in Asian and English literature (1957, 1959(a), 1959(b), 1961), as well as seven books on Zen (1942, 1952, 1960–64; posthumous 1966, 1970). Further publications include studies of English literature (1942, 1957, 1959(b)) and a three-fifths shortened version of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers by his favourite author Henry David Thoreau, along with an introduction and explanatory notes.

The most significant of his publications was his four-volume Haiku series (1949–52), his Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics and his five-volume Zen series.

Nearly all of his books were published in Japan, by Hokuseido Press, Tokyo.

Work: Zen

The actual 5-volume Zen and Zen Classics series is a modification by the publishers, caused by the unexpected death of Blyth, of the originally planned 8-volume project, which included a translation of the Hekiganroku (Piyenchi), a History of Korean Zen and of Japanese Zen (Dogen, Hakuin etc.) and a renewed edition of his 'Buddhist Sermons on Christian Texts' as volume 8; (as a result of the modification the already published volume 7 was reprinted as volume 5).[1]

According to D.T. Suzuki, the Zen series should have been "the most complete work on Zen to be presented so far to the English-reading public".[8]

The first volume presents a general introduction from the Upanishads to Huineng. Volume two and three presents a history of Zen from the Seigen Branch to Nangaku Branch, and volume five contains 25 essays on Zen. In volume four, Blyth translates the Mumonkan (Wumenkuan). Blyth's Mumonkan was the third complete translation into English, but the first one which was accompanied by extensive interpretive commentaries on each case.

Blyth's early publication Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics, published 1942 when he was interned in Japan during World War II, and his Zen and Zen Classics series exerted a significant influence on the Western writers and Zen community, although nearly all of his books were published solely in Japan.[citation needed]

Work: Haiku and Senryu

In an autobiographical note, Blyth writes: "By a fortunate chance I then came across haiku, or to speak more exactly Haiku no Michi, the Way of Haiku, which is the purely poetical (non-emotional, non-intellectual, non-moral, non-aesthetic) life in relation to nature. Next, the biggest bit of luck of all, Zen, through the books of Suzuki Daisetz ... Last but not least there appeared senryu, which might well be dignified by the term Senryu no Michi, the Way of Senryu, for it is an understanding of all things by laughing and smiling at them, and this means forgiving all things, ourselves and God included".[9] Blyth wrote six books on haiku and two books on senryū, the satirical genre sister of haiku: "In haiku things speak for themselves with the voice of a man, in senryu things do not speak; we speak and speak for ourselves".[10] Blythe wrote that in senryū the world is 'not seen as God made it' but 'as man sees it';[11] 'to haiku, sex hardly exists; to senryu, it is all pervading ... a great many deal with the subject of the Yoshiwara...'[12]

After early imagist interest in haiku the genre drew less attention in English, until after World War II, with the appearance of a number of influential volumes about Japanese haiku.

In 1949, with the publication in Japan of the first volume of Haiku, Blyth's four-volume work, haiku was introduced to the post-war Western world. His Haiku series (1949–52) was dealing mostly with pre-modern haiku, though included Masaoka Shiki; later followed his two-volume History of Haiku (1963–64). Today he is best known as a major interpreter of haiku and senryū to English speakers.

Many contemporary Western writers of haiku were introduced to the genre through his Zen-based haiku explanations. These include the San Francisco and Beat Generation writers, Gary Snyder,[13] Philip Whalen,[14] Jack Kerouac[15] and Allen Ginsberg,[16] as well as J. D. Salinger ("...particularly haiku, but senryu, too...can be read with special satisfaction when R. H. Blyth was on them. Blyth is sometimes perilous, naturally, since he's a highhanded old poem himself, but he's also sublime"),[17] Octavio Paz,[18] and E. E. Cummings.[19] Many members of the international "haiku community" also got their first views of haiku from Blyth's books, including American author James W. Hackett (born 1929), Eric Amann, William J. Higginson, Anita Virgil, Jane Reichhold, and Lee Gurga. The French philosopher and semiotician Roland Barthes read 1967 Blyth's four-volume set, using it for lectures and seminars on haiku 1979.[20]

Some noted Blyth's distaste for haiku on more modern themes, some his strong bias regarding a direct connection between haiku and Zen,[21] a connection largely ignored by modern Japanese poets. Bashō, in fact, felt that his devotion to haiku prevented him from realising enlightenment;[22] and classic Japanese haiku poets like Chiyo-ni, Buson, and Issa were Pure Land (Jodo) rather than Zen Buddhists.[23] Some also noted that Blyth did not view haiku by Japanese women favourably, that he downplayed their contribution to the genre, especially during the Bashō era. In the chapter 'Women Haiku Writers' Blyth writes: "Haiku for women, like Zen for women, - this subject makes us once more think about what haiku are, and a woman is…Women are said to be intuitive, and as they cannot think, we may hope this is so, but intuition…is not enough… [it] is doubtfull... whether women can write haiku".[24]

Although Blyth did not foresee the appearance of original haiku in languages other than Japanese when he began writing on the topic, and although he founded no school of verse, his works stimulated the writing of haiku in English. At the end of the second volume of his History of Haiku, he remarked 1964 that "The latest development in the history of haiku is one which nobody foresaw... the writing of haiku outside Japan, not in the Japanese language."[25]

Bibliography

Selection:

Writings/Textbooks for Students:

Further reading (Works about Blyth or cited in 'References')

Further listening

References

  1. ^ a b Blyth, Zen Classics Vol.1, 2, 4 (dust jackets)
  2. ^ Pinnington 1994, p254; Kirkup 1994, p5; Suzuki, dust jacket Blyth, Zen Classics Vol. 4
  3. ^ Pinnington 1994, p254; Kirkup 1994, p6
  4. ^ UEDA Munakata Kuniyoshi, A Short Introduction to R.H. Blyth p5; in: The Bulletin of the International Society for Harmonization of Cultures & Civilizations No.20, 2014, Nihon University [1]
  5. ^ Dower 1999, p310
  6. ^ Blyth, Zen Classics Vol.3, p70
  7. ^ Pinnington 1994; Kirkup 1994
  8. ^ Blyth, Zen Classics Vol.4 (dust jacket)
  9. ^ Blyth 1960, preface
  10. ^ Blyth 1960, p269
  11. ^ Blyth, Senryu 1949, p41; Blyth 1960, p465
  12. ^ Blyth, Senryu 1949, p37f
  13. ^ Snyder 2005; Suiter 2002, p21, p47
  14. ^ "Whalen 1923-2002".
  15. ^ Kerouac 1958; (w. Gary Snyder as Japhy Ryder)
  16. ^ "Collected Haiku".
  17. ^ Salinger (c.1955 and 1959;c.1963) 1991, p118, and p67; for 'poem himself'. quoting Milton, see Blyth 1942, p264; for Blyth's definition of 'sentimentality' see Blyth (1949-52) Vol.2, p229 and Updike 1961
  18. ^ Paz 1988 (c.1968), notes, p.648; Paz 1954
  19. ^ Welch 1995
  20. ^ Barthes 2010, Sessions January 6, 1979 to February 24, 1979 (in the Index Nominum see Robert (sic!) H. Blyth); Samoyault 2016, Chap. 12. For bibliographical confusions, Barthes 2010, p415n24
  21. ^ see also Suzuki 1959, Chap. VII, and Barthes 1970
  22. ^ Makoto Ueda 1967; see also Blyth (1949-52) Vol.4, pp95
  23. ^ see Blyth (1949-52) Vol.3, p231f., 433, 435f., Vol.2, 363
  24. ^ Blyth (1963-64) Vol.1, p.207, p223
  25. ^ Blyth (1963-64) Vol.2, p349

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