About Taneda Santōka

Taneda Santōka　1882–1940
Free-verse haiku poet. The collection Sōmokutō.

Who was Santōka?

Taneda Santōka (1882–1940) wrote free-verse haiku — poems that follow neither the 5-7-5 count nor the seasonal word. Born Taneda Shōichi in Yamaguchi, he was ordained in his mid-forties and spent the rest of his life walking, with a bamboo hat and a begging bowl, writing as he went.

His pen name is read san-tō-ka: a mountain wearing fire on its head.

The road he walked

In 1925 he was ordained in Kumamoto and became keeper of the Mitori Kannon-dō. He soon left the hall and took to the road as a mendicant. “On and on, in and in, and still the blue-green mountains” stands at the beginning of that road.

In 1932 he built Gochū-an, a hermitage in Ogōri, Yamaguchi — the first dwelling of his own. Snow and moon, and the sound of rice coming to the boil: here the poems of daily life appear alongside the poems of the road.

In 1936 he travelled east, visiting Bashō’s footsteps and the graves of dead friends. In 1938 he left Gochū-an for Fūrai-kyo in Yuda Onsen, and the following year went from Shinano through the northeast and across to Shikoku.

His last home was Issō-an in Matsuyama. He died there on 11 October 1940, at fifty-seven.

What free-verse haiku means

Santōka’s poems have no fixed syllable count and no season word. He wrote for Ogiwara Seisensui’s journal Sōun, working outside the received form.

“A straight road, and lonely” is twelve syllables in Japanese. It stands as a poem because nothing has been added after the thing was said. The shortness is not abbreviation; it is a judgement that the poem may end there.

About Sōmokutō

Sōmokutō (“Grass and Tree Stupa”) is the collection Santōka selected himself in 1940, the year he died. Seven hundred and one poems, arranged in eleven chapters with a final gleanings section.

This site lets you read all 701, in the order of the collection, one poem at a time.

The source text

The Japanese texts follow the edition of Sōmokutō held by Aozora Bunko. Santōka’s work is out of copyright and in the public domain.

Readings, dates and chapter divisions follow the source. The English translations and the notes were written for this site.

Poems to begin with

If you are reading Santōka for the first time, start here. Each poem opens onto a page with its reading and notes.

Read all 701 poems