Poetic Musings: Battle Haiku by Masaoka Shiki

the pear blossoming 

after the battle

this ruined house

The Haiku Handbook, 1985

Masaoka Shiki

Commentary: This wartime haiku effectively employs what William J. Higginson terms the “zoom-lens effect” (The Haiku Handbook, p. 116). Its visual focus shifts from a tight close-up on the “pear blossoming” (L1) to a wider frame that reveals the aftermath of conflict in “after the battle / this ruined house” (Ls 2&3). This movement from intimate natural detail to human devastation deepens its emotional resonance without explicit commentary.

The juxtaposition of “pear blossoming” with “after the battle / this ruined house” suggests the continuation of life in an ordinary, almost indifferent manner. The blossoms do not function as symbols of hope so much as evidence of nature proceeding unperturbed, heightening the quiet brutality of the human ruin beside them.

Finally, the demonstrative “this” in L3 anchors the haiku in an immediate, lived moment rather than an abstract or symbolic landscape. The narrator is not surveying distant ruins but standing directly before one, implicating the reader in the scene and reinforcing the poem’s stark intimacy.

Shiki's haiku reminds me of the following haiku about a burnt house:

On my return from Tsukushi at the close of March, I found that my hut had been destroyed by fire. Looking at the ruins, I composed this verse.

violets here and there

in the ruins

of my burnt house

Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness and Open Your Heart

Shokyu-ni

For detailed comments, see "Poetic Musings: Burnt House Haiku by Shokyu-ni"