This morning I woke up and realized it’s already been a year since I’d traveled to Japan, when Kimio and I had our show together in Tokyo. The weather is changing, so I opened Blythe’s volume of Autumn/Winter haiku at random; here’s one by Yosa Buson (1716-1783):
三度啼て 聞えずなりぬ 鹿の声
[Sando naite kikoezu narinu shika no koe]
Three times it cried,
Then, nothing.
The voice of the deer.
Buson is one of Japan’s great haiku poets, and happens to have been a wonderful painter too:
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F85ef009a-cd4a-4410-a44c-ae13ddb924b8_2303x2760.jpeg)
A detail of a painting by Yosa Buson that I saw in exhibition at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum in 2018.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0a7dd87f-33ac-4462-af0a-3a08096833f1_2607x3226.jpeg)
Detail of an accompanying Buson painting in the exhibition. The caption read in part: “…Figures in remote rustic settings appear often in East Asian literature and art to represent the virtues of an unfettered life, or to serve as allegories for banished officials living in exile. Here, however, we can assume that the mounted man is a scholar-doctor searching for medicinal herbs. The idea of Daoist “herb gatherers” dates back to ancient China, and the subject was popularized by the legend of the sage-doctors Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao, who, in search of medicinal herbs, scaled Mount Tiantai, a sacred mountain in Zhejiang, China.”
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbbbb5648-bcb9-4461-b00d-8a6338c17d15_4032x3024.jpeg)
The Japanese galleries at the Met contain one of the most relaxing museum rooms I know of. It happened that a group of students from Spain was visiting that day. The table and chairs are by the American furniture maker George Nakashima.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F502ac80e-b12f-480b-ab80-661f0124ae8c_3456x4608.jpeg)
I’ve never heard the voice of a deer, but I have heard the Voice of the Turtle!