The Assignment

Animate a haiku without using typographic elements.

Selecting the Haiku

(a great resource)

The poet I decided to draw inspiration from is Kobayashi Issa.

Condensed from the wikipedia entry:

Issa was born and registered as Kobayashi Nobuyuki (小林 信之), with a childhood name of Kobayashi Yatarô (小林弥太郎), the first son of a farmer family of Kashiwabara in present-day Nagano Prefecture. Issa endured the loss of his mother, who died when he was three. He was cared for by his grandmother, who doted on him, but his life changed again when his father remarried. When his grandmother died he was 14. He was sent to Edo one year later and would later wandered through Japan. In 1801 he fought over his inheritance with his stepmother after his father death. Then after getting married, his first-born child died shortly after his birth. A daughter died less than two-and-a-half years later. A third child died in 1820, and then his wife fell ill and died in 1823. Through it all, Issa produced a huge body of work.

This haiku of Issa’s was featured in that article:

露の世は露の世ながらさりながら

The world of dew –
A world of dew it is indeed,
And yet, and yet . . .

The theme of dewdrops & the buddhist significance:

At my previous job as a translator, I had to deal with alot of modern Zen poetry into which nature factored quite heavily. The imagery of the dewdrop, in particular, along with the wheel, is one that appears time and time again in all forms of Zen (chan in Chinese) Buddhist literature. There are several layers to the metaphor of the dewdrop, including the idea of life’s impermanence and the idea of death (addressed in western art through the idea of memento mori). Also, looking into at a single dewdrop, we can see the world reflected in miniaturized form. And while it looks like the whole world is contained within that tiny dewdrop, in actuality, it is just a play on light and refraction – a clever illusion. Likewise, what we perceive of as reality is also (supposedly) a facsimile of a larger reality. According to the wikipedia entry, Issa wrote the selected haiku after the death of his second child. Given that context, the poem takes on a whole other dimension: a feeling of longing, of deep and profound loss, and confusion.

Questions of Style

On the surface, the poem deals with nature, evoking a sense of an early morning serenity and purity. I picture beads of dew, sitting precariously on the dark green leaves of a tree in the forest. I sense a contrast between the dark earthiness of the forest and the clear brightness of the water droplet. On top of that, there is the added human emotion of loss, separation and maybe darkness. So I initially felt that I might want to stay close to the darker shades of green folliage.

But then I felt that maybe this was too dark of a route. I wanted especially to incorporate a brighter, contrasting color to better highlight the dew and express more emotion.

Musical Selection

As the form of haiku is traditionally Japanese and the subject matter culturally very Japanese in feel, I decided to look to Japanese musicians. I’ve narrowed it down to two tracks by the post rock group Mono who have described their own music as solidly sitting in the realm of mood and feeling.  The point of the music is to channel an emotional energy, hence a lack of vocals and an amazingly lush layering of instruments and effects.

Listen to: “yearning” & ”everlasting light”

Visual Inspiration / Precedents

Naturally, others have also tried to visualize/animate haiku poetry. Here are two totally different approaches that are both successful in different ways. The first has a painterly, visually evokative style that is finely animated. And while the second relies heavily on typography, I am drawn to it for its thoughtful sound design.

Story Idea & Sketches

My idea revolves around the idea of the circular nature of life and relies on the imagery of a dewdrop that gets lost when it starts to rain, disappearing in the chaos but reappearing in the end.

Styleframes