Scarecrow (kakashi)

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Scarecrow (kakashi)

***** Location: Japan, India, worldwide
***** Season: Autumn, others see below
***** Category: Humanity

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Explanation



CLICK for more photos !

scarecrow, kakashi 案山子 かかし
..... kagashi　鹿驚 (かがし)
odoshi, おどし/ odose、おどせ/ odorokashi　おどろかし/ toboshi　とぼし/ some　そめ/ kamashime　鎌しめ/ yakishime　焼しめ

bird scarers, tori odoshi 鳥威し
..... odoshi zuchi 威しづち

rattles, bird clappers, naruko　鳴子
..... hiki ita　ひきいた　引板
..... naru zao 鳴る竿
rattels on strings, narukonawa 鳴子縄


With all the crows and sparrows around, we need these useful "little people" in our fields. They come in many forms nowadays, usually made from sticks, straw and old cloths. A scary face is often painted on a white sack.

Some villages have scarecrow festival and competitions,
kakashi matsuri かかし祭.
Click HERE for some photos !

In the Edo period, this word was pronounced "kagashi", meaning something that smells hineously, because the farmers used to hang up rotten fish or hides from animals. In my area, somethimes they hang up dead crows or even small wild boars to let them rot .. and smell.

Nowadays bird clappers or other devices with noise are also used. My neighbour tried 24 hour radio, but we complained about the noise. Now he has a 24 hour tape during 3 months before the apples are harvested. There is the death cry of a crow every five minutes wailing through our valley .... yaaaaaak yakyaaahkkkk ...

Gabi Greve


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Yama no Kami　山の神 has only one eye
Amanomahitotsu no kami　天目一箇神（あめのまひとつのかみ）
Amatsumara 天津麻羅


This deity with one eye and one leg
comes to the fields to protect them before the harvest, now in the form of a kakashi, with one leg and one eye.
Even the modern yellow plastic balloons with one black ring, which hang in the fields, are a modern version of this deity with one eye.




. Yama no Kami 山の神 Deity of the Mountains .



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Worldwide use

India

I don't think in India we have thought about it as a kigo word as such - because year round we do have our scarecrows on the fields.

But rice and wheat being our chief stable food - and the fact that our harvest months are mainly in December / January - when we have Sanskranti or Pongal [ Harvest Festival - Thanking the Gods especially the Sun-god - Aditya] then definitely it stands to reason that even our scarecrow is an Autumn kigo word - for the paddy fields are in full growth then!

Kala Ramesh


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country walk ~
scarecrows in hiding
in the cornfield

Sunil Uniyal


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Vogelscheuche


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Things found on the way




. Naruko 鳴子 clappers with Daruma


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In many parts of Japan, wild boars are becoming a great nuisance, since the hunters are too few and old (or dead), but the boars thrive in the abandoned fields of remote villages.

Our neighbour puts out stuffed animals in winter . . .








. Wild Boar (inoshishi) kigo


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HAIKU

- Yosa Buson

秋風のうごかしていく案山子かな
akikaze no ugokashite yuku kagashi kana

The autumn wind
on its way
sets a scarecrow moving
Tr. Merwin/Lento

An autumn wind
passes by, and swaying with it
a scarecrow.
Tr. Ueda


水落て細脛高きかがし
mizu ochite hosohagi takaki kagashi kana

The water is drained,
and tall on its slender leg
a scarecrow.


kiso-dono no ta ni izen taru kagashi kana

In Lord Kiso's
rice-field, still stands
a scarecrow.


Buson uses three different Chinese characters to express the word KAKASHI (kagashi).
Tr. by Makoto Ueda

Read more about these translations here:
Compiled by Larry Bole, 2008


MORE - about the scarecrow by
. WKD : Yosa Buson 与謝蕪村 in Edo .

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秋までに　休すんでおくれ　案山子かな

until next autumn,
please rest in peace -
dear scarecrow

© Gabi Greve, Ohaga, March 2006



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first day of fall
the scarecrow greets
another sunrise

Chen-ou Liu, Canada

December 2010
http://chenouliu.blogspot.com/


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Issa has many haiku about the scarecrows.
Tr. David Lanoue

鎌倉や今はかがしの屋敷守
kamakura ya ima wa kagashi no yashiki mori

Kamakura--
these days scarecrows
are the gatekeepers

This is Issa's earliest haiku that we have on the subject of scarecrows. The "gatekeepers" (yashiki mori) might also be translated, "keepers of the mansions." Kamakura is one of Japan's ancient capitals, on Sagami Bay southwest of Tokyo.


ぬっぽりと月見顔なるかがし哉
nuppori to tsukimi kao naru kagashi kana

that gentle
moon-gazing face...
a scarecrow



案山子にもうしろ向かれし栖哉
kagashi ni mo ushiro mukareshi sumika kana

even the scarecrow
turns his back to it...
my home


. WKD : Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶 in Edo .


とぶ蝶を憐み給へ立かがし
tobu choo o awaremi-tamae tatsu kagashi

don't just stand there,
scarecrow, show kindness
to the passing butterfly

This humorous hokku was written while Issa was on a trip to Edo and areas around it in the second half of the 8th month (early October) of 1814. Most of the crops have been harvested, and a scarecrow stands alone in a cut dry field or rice paddy. Butterflies and other insects, however, are still busy, flying here and there all day.
The hokku uses a warm, friendly, vigorous voice and teases the scarecrow for simply standing in the field after his job of protecting the crop has finished for this year. My friend, he implies, using -tamae, in Issa's time a moderately polite but friendly imperative popular among commoners, please show compassion for the butterfly, who's still very busy. Don't scare it away -- let it rest on you. Of course Issa is talking to humans as well.
Tr. and comment : Chris Drake



fui to tatsu ore o kagashi no kawari kana

suddenly I'm
standing, mind gone --
their new scarecrow

This hokku is from the eighth month (August, the beginning of lunar autumn) in 1818, when Issa was in his hometown and various towns nearby. In the hokku Issa seems to have suddenly found himself in a standing position, but he unable to understand why he stood up. Evidently he planned to do something, but by the time he has stood up the reason is gone and his mind temporarily empty or perhaps setting off in a new direction. Issa says someone -- he doesn't say who -- will surely be able use him as a new scarecrow to replace an old one discarded in the fall. In another hokku Issa associates this kind of absent-mindedness with a flash of lightning, so perhaps his forgetting is due to his trying to keep up with the constant flow of images and moments of connection that flash through his mind, some of which take form as haikai.

Issa may be half-seriously suggesting that many of his neighbors regard him as a strange, impractical person who would be more useful to the community if he were a scarecrow. In the hokku following this one in Issa's journal a scarecrow politely tells Issa that it stands pointing in the direction of Mount Obasute (also Ubasute), literally the Mountain Where An Old Aunt Was Abandoned, which is located in Issa's home province, and in another hokku Issa writes of a worn-out scarecrow actually being left on Mount Obasute.

In the most famous legend, portrayed in the No play Obasute, a man, hearing false rumors about his old aunt, carries her to the top of the mountain and leaves her there, where she dies and becomes a stone. Basho wrote a famous hokku about the old woman on the mountain from her point of view, and Issa may believe the legend. In any case, he evokes it in order to claim that he, straw-headed, impractical, and addicted to constantly thinking about new haikai, will soon be in the same situation as the old woman, since he's clearly becoming a scarecrow to be used and then discarded by some farmer after a season in the field.

The first (1814) version of the hokku translated above contains a similar image:

uka to kite ware o kagashi no kawari kana

my mind
floating -- they'll use me
as a new scarecrow

The image may be an attempt by Issa to write about the great flow of haikai images going through his mind, a flow that became even stronger after he moved back to his hometown.

Tr. and comment : Chris Drake


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cyclonic rains-
a battered scarecrow
turns to a new direction

Kala Ramesh, 2007


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netko, gle tamo
sluša zričke u polju! -
staro strašilo

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the fellow in the field
listening to the crickets -
an old scarecrow

- Shared by Tomislav Maretic -
Joys of Japan, September 2012


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Related words


***** guardian of the fields 田守 (たもり) tamori
oda mamoru 小田守る（おだまもる）protecting the fields
inaban 稲番（いなばん）guardian for the rice fields
ta no io 田の庵（たのいお）hut for the guardian
. . . tabangoya 田番小屋（たばんごや）
kigo for all autumn


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. tane kagashi 種案山子 (たねかがし)
scarecrow in the bed for seedlings 　

kigo for spring

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kagashiage, kakashi age 案山子揚 (かがしあげ)
taking the scarecrows down
some no toshitori そめの年取り（そめのとしとり）
some is the local name in the Azumi region.

observance kigo for early winter


Usually done on the tooka 十日 tenth day of the tenth lunar month.
A custom of Nagano prefecture.
The scarecrow is taken from the field and placed in the garden of the home, harvest offerings to the god of the fields (ta no kami) are then made.

. Ta no Kami 田の神 Tanokami, God of the Fields .

. tookanya 十日夜 (とおかんや) night of the tenth 　　





little sparrows
come and show their faces -
taking down scarecrows

Rikuyo san 陸陽さん
haiku.blog.livedoor.com/ichiran.php?kg=751&pg=20

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***** India Saijiki

***** Farmers work in Autumn

. SAIJIKI
OBSERVANCES, FESTIVALS, RITUALS


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