How to Compose Haiku

August 2001

WHCschools -Traditional Japanese School

Lesson 4: GUIDELINES: How to Compose Haiku
Susumu Takiguchi, Instructor

It was over four years ago that I wrote a list of “tips” for haiku composition under the title of Guidelines: How to Compose Haiku. (see below) This was later printed in my book, Kyoshi – A Haiku Master₁. It was not a set of rules as I do not believe in rules as such, or at least I had not reached any rules I could advocate without any shadow of doubt. Since then, I have walked farther in my eternal journey of learning the form. Above all, it is the kuyu (haiku friends) whom I am supposed to be teaching, that have taught me most at WHC.

I believe that everything man does needs to be re-examined and reassessed every now and again to see if it still works or not. Here, I apply the methods inspired by those of Socrates and Descartes. They may be termed as “constructive doubt and challenge”. They could, however, be a dangerous route, for behind everything man does, lie men and women (far more the former than the latter) whose vested interest, narrow-mindedness, mad conservatism, rivalry, jealousy and all manner of destructive forces which could wreak havoc on what would otherwise be a normal endeavour. One wants to avoid having to drink hemlock.

Thus it is that in this Lesson 4, I wish to exercise “constructive doubt and challenge” to the Guidelines and, by reviewing them critically, to revise or improve on them as necessary. If it is myself who is doing the doubting and challenging to something of my own creation, it is unlikely that I would be stabbed in the back by myself or be drinking hemlock. I will do so by asking you all, as the exercise of Lesson 4, to submit at least one haiku poem (you may submit as many as you wish) which you will write anew, strictly according to these Guidelines (no other conditions are imposed). If your works satisfy all 12 Guidelines, fine. If not, try to satisfy as many of them as possible. Put those numbers of Guidelines which you think your work has satisfied in brackets. If you cannot produce such work anew, then search from your past poems which you think would satisfy the Guidelines.

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GUIDELINES: How to Compose Haiku

Some useful guidelines can be gleaned from the various teachings and advice given by three centuries of haiku masters and practitioners, from Basho to Kyoshi.

1) Try to write a haiku only about what actually happens to you (i.e. avoid fictitious, or imaginary renderings).

2) Try to write a haiku, only when you have been deeply moved, strongly inspired and poetically touched by the subject matter (i.e. do not “fake” poetic feelings).

3) Try to write a haiku immediately after the haiku feeling has hit you and do not leave it for too long. Alterations and changes are an essential part of haiku-writing process, but do not linger or elaborate. If it does not write easily, leave it and do something else.

4) Try to reject clichés, hackneyed expressions and words, or even deep feelings if they have been used time and time again by countless haiku poets.

5) Try not to use embellishment or “lay it on thick”, even if you have hit on a brilliant idea. Be honest, simple, clear, straightforward and modest.

6) Try not to “explain”. Haiku is not science and should need no explanation if it is good.

7) Try not to “conceptualise”, “intellectualise”, “philosophise”, “moralise” or “theorise”.

8) Try not to “report”. “Express” it.

9) Try not to be “clever”, gimmicky, over-witty, artificial, presumptuous, too precious, mysterious or esoteric. Just be “natural”.

10) Try not to express your raw and subjective feelings, such as being “happy”, “sad”, “lonely”, or “glad” in so many words. Express them by presenting some concrete action, object etc. (e.g. “Even coughing, I do all alone.”, Ozaki Hosai) and let the concrete image speak for itself.

11) Try to keep some detachment, even in the most dire circumstances, and preserve always a sense of humour. Haiku is not in the business to be cold or unkind, but it is not about wallowing in raw sentiments in misery either. Always remember that haiku originated from haikai no renga (or, comic renga), and the sense of humour remains a prerequisite of the haiku spirit.

12) Try not to explain the minutiae, but keep to the essentials and leave the rest to the readers’ imagination. If your haiku feeling is deep, your haiku will be deep, i.e.,  if you are deep, so much more will be your haiku. Good haiku comes from your whole being like a good singing voice from the singer’s whole body, and from his mind, and from his entire life.

1. Kyoshi – A Haiku Master – Father of Modern Japanese Haiku, Susumu Takiguchi, Ami-Net International Press, England, 1997, pp 104-105.

Tanka Selection

August 2001

WHCshortverses - Tanka Selections

WHCshortverses Selections: Tanka
Selected by Werner Reichhold

gone to seed
light-headed dandelions
scattered
by the four winds
as I am today

kirsty karkow
Maine, USA

How well the writer knows to combine a view at nature with personal emotions. The pivot binds both parts together. A shorter one couldn’t make it work. [wr]

 

into the mist
a horizon of tall ships
sails billowing
reminders of romantic times
before the age of steam

kirsty karkow
Maine, USA

the faint scent
of Ivory soap
reminding me of her
creamy skin and beautiful
that sad young nun

Elizabeth St Jacques
Sault Ste. Marie, CA
pub. Poetry in the Light 2001

how lovely
the white lotus
opens to the sun . . .
even in old age
longing  for a daughter

Elizabeth St Jacques
Sault Ste. Marie, CA
pub.Tanka Splendor, 1997

cloudy day
a couple uncouples
from parting embrace
the train whistle ends
to start of tears

Victor P. Gendrano
California, USA

This is also a good combination between parting weather and weather for a parting. [wr]

my grandchildren
bend while I stretch up
to kiss their cheeks
the waning autumn wind
continues on its way

Victor P. Gendrano
California, USA

The fabric of this poem is deeply  touching . One wants to add, …’our programmed genes’ work best without us interfering. [wr]

 

Modern waka 

If I could
Only pinch this fragrance,
The viburnum–
Sending its scent
On this cooling breeze.

Donna Ferrell,
Ohio, USA

There are some doubts if starting each line in upper case does anything good to those very short lines. To me, it seems an improper interruption.

 two strangers
rejoicing in a robin
our eyes briefly meet
as the last clear notes
echo someone’s dream

Ferris Gilli
Florida, USA

where we learned
the language of trees
the scent of you
on a summer wind
wilder than honey

Ferris Gilli
Florida, USA

curved nails
clicking against the glass
red pistachios
and warm beer have more pull
than the ring peddler’s lies

Ferris Gilli
Florida, USA

hot faces, damp hair
exuding puppy fragrance
sudden nostalgia
sharper than five-cent lemonade
a young voice yells, “Wait for me!”

Ferris Gilli
Florida, USA

in this place where
the sun shines through leaves
a  small brown bird
weaving memories of you
into a water song

Ferris Gilli
Florida, USA

In all five* of Ferris Gilli’s poems one finds two or more corresponding parts, poetically put into relationships. How enriched one feels reading such works, no word could be added, not a single word there is that one wants to miss. [wr]

(*As Ferris submitted no other categories; in lieu of other genre offerings,  5 in one genre were permitted rather than 3; also with the tanka of Tokisho Makino. db)

right before my eyes
my mother’s face seems to fade
into shadow
these stars tonight that hold light
then slowly give it away

Marjorie Buettner
Minnesota, USA

Read aloud, this poem shows that the writer is engaged to having her work recited, if not sung. [wr]

cool autumn rain
washes away summer’s warmth
the changing seasons
so much like
my feelings for you

Becky Bunsic (Tukiko)
Arizona, USA

Tanka by Toshiko Makino, Japan
The original Japanese text has been translated into English, with permission, by Eiko Yachimoto, Yokosuka city, Japan. [wr]

kotoba sukunaki tsuma no katae ni amu reesu  dokomademo kousaku naki kyokusen ni

beside a man of few words his wife is crocheting lace each curve never never comes across…

Toshiko Makino
Japan

mayoi ooki ware ga toiyuku hananotera  ajisai no ame ni kasa katamukete

as if to confirm my doubtful mind I visit a flower temple the umbrella tilted in a rain of hydrangea

Toshiko Makino
Japan

Toshiko Makino offers us the essence of Japanese spirits. But then it is the poet, Eiko Yachimoto, who is able to transform the Japanese into English language so we can participate in what’s really behind the author’s poetical intentions. [wr]

kioikishi mono tsugitsugi to kuzureyuki kuuhaku no nikki ikunichika tsuzuku

one after another what kept me standing tall starts to crumble– I see diary pages that remain white

Toshiko Makino
Japan

‘aa uu’ to yasashiki boin midorigo wa haru no hikari no nakani mezamete

“ah, uoo, ah, uoo,” such soft vowels from a newborn baby he is waking up in the light of spring

Toshiko Makino
Japan

zattou wo kurage no youni fuyuusuru ware no yukue ha ware nimo wakaranu

am I a jellyfish floating above and through huge crowds? I do not realize where I’m taken to…

Toshiko Makino
Japan

Non-conclusive;  just that gives the reader a lot of leeway to perceive the poem this or that way, depending on his/her current condition. [wr]

my wine glass
reflects only fireplace flames
and an empty room
the bluesman’s gravelly growl
as he strokes his guitar

Larry Gross
Florida, USA

‘Subliminal time’- the fear of it and the wish to learn to adapt oneself to it- this thought carries me through all 3 tanka. Larry knows how to reach out to the secrets and how to get the reader involved with what he wishes to transform. [wr]

homecoming
my mother’s large computer
and Dad’s Web TV
how small now the rug
where i watched cartoons

Larry Gross
Florida, USA

his rough hands
clean the barn stalls
in sunset’s glint
while I waste more time
on this fleeting verse

Larry Gross
Florida, USA

glistening water
the hazy and straight figures
in the evening breeze-
the gaze is lingering on
another different image

Sonia Christina Coman
Constanza, Romania

Compared to Sonia’s poetic technique, linear composed thoughts may seem easier to comprehend, but they don’t stick to one’s mind in the long run, like these poems do. The reason? The comparisons she uses take us far off into another realm. [wr]

at the nunnery
a prayer told by the nuns
for the New Year-
onto the Virgin’s icon
a vigilant butterfly

Sonia Christina Coman
Constanza, Romania

Editorial – A Useless Thing and a Useless Person

Editorial

A Useless Thing And A Useless Person

“A mere tale of a tub, my words are idle.” —The White Devil, II. i, 92, John Webster (1580?-1634)

Haiku is a useless thing, a haiku poet is a useless person.

This statement may antagonise 99 out of 100 haiku poets. At least it may make them stunned and unhappy. However, it is probably the most important thing about haiku and haijin from the viewpoint of our mindset or attitude towards this little form of poetry we seem to love so much. Forget or ignore it, you will be opening a Pandora’s box of all ills which would corrupt haiku and haijin.

Ideally, this editorial should be written and read in Japanese, as a lot of cultural and historical nuance and implications would be lost in translation for some key words such as ‘useless’, ‘amateur’, ‘dilettantism’ or ‘pastime’. Not only that, but these English words are themselves impregnated with already established meanings and connotations, which are different from their Japanese counterparts and will hinder accurate understanding. In other words, readers could be reading something different from what is intended—a case of reading cross-purposes. For instance, in the English logic, that which is ‘useless’ would be discarded outright as something which would not be worth considering; ‘useless’ would, therefore, be a condemnation. ‘Amateur’ is a dirty word. Both these words in Japanese connote a special frame of mind of writers or artists which transcends the mundane and materialistic world where ‘professionals’ flourish. This intellectual ascendancy has been influenced by the literati tradition in medieval China. So, readers are advised at least to bear this point in mind when reading what follows.

Karo-tosen is an old Chinese saying which has been adopted in Japan, though seldom, if ever, used nowadays. Karo means a fireplace in summer and tosen means a fan in winter. What is the use of a fireplace in hot summer? What is the use of a fan in bitter winter? The saying should now be self-explanatory. Yes, it is to describe something useless or uselessness of things. And we haiku poets had better be, and are, karo-tosen.

Towards the end of April (lunar calendar) of the year 6 Genroku (1693), one of Basho’s disciple, Morikawa Kyoriku (1656-1715), was preparing for his return journey to Hikone Domain (in today’s Shiga Prefecture) where he served as a high-ranking retinue. Kyoriku had been staying in Edo since August of the previous year. He was in company with his Lord, who was serving sankin-kotai obligations in the seat of the Tokugawa government. Sankin-kotai was a duty imposed on feudal lords requiring them to live part-time in Edo and part-time back in their provincial domains, while their wives and children were required to permanently live in Edo. This arrangement was a key policy of Tokugawa to keep his retinues under tight control. In the early August of 1692, Kyoriku met Basho for the first time, formally becoming his disciple. For the following nine months, the two kept in close contact, becoming important for each other, not least because Kyoriku taught Basho art. So close they were that Basho took the trouble of writing a long farewell letter to him on his departure from Edo, which happens to have become one of the most important documents to study Basho’s thoughts. Called Kyoriku Ribetsu no Kotoba, the letter provides us with an insight into the deepest feelings of Basho. One key sentence goes: yo ga fuga wa karo tosen no gotoshi, or ‘My haikai is like karo tosen’, namely ‘useless’.

What are we to do if Basho says that his poetry is useless? His was not an idle remark of self-mockery or of amusing Kyoriku in a light-hearted way. It was mentioned after a long and hard navel-gazing reflection on his life. There have been numerous academic studies on this point. Quite apart from them, it certainly provides us with enormous food for thought. Let us look at some of its ramifications.

Two things, inter alia, corrupt haiku and haiku poets—money and politics. When something becomes useful for one, it will become useful for others too. Utility begets exchange value which then begets monetary value. You may well think haiku would never make money. It does in Japan. Not serious money, obviously, but enough to corrupt. Fortunately, haiku is not making money in the rest of the world. If anything, it’s the reverse, i.e. poets are losing money as far as haiku activities are concerned. Thus, outside Japan, haiku is still useless commercially and therefore does not sell. May this situation last long!

Politics is twofold: internal and external. Externally, haiku can be mixed up with political interests in a broad sense as, again, can be seen in Japan. You can win votes if you are a famous haijin! And once again, this does not seem to be happening outside Japan. Internally (i.e. inside the haiku community), there is this notorious negative haiku politics which, regrettably, exists inside and outside Japan, and in abundance, at that. This is because haiku has become useful for some individuals and associations to exploit for non-haiku purposes, including the ingredients of politics such as power, influence, rivalry, control and domination. Haiku must become politically useless again.

Another cause for the possible corruption of haiku and haijin is one’s lust for fame. This desire is also strong in humans along, with desire for money and power. The desire to achieve fame may at times be beneficial if it is in moderation or under control for such poets as are in need of such desire to spur them into writing haiku. However, if the desire becomes excessive and starts dominating the haiku poets’ life, it can cause untold damage to the poetic health and the resulting works of poets under the spell of this undesirable desire. Judging from the unbelievable display of this lust for fame everyday, haiku has regrettably become too useful for the poets in this regard. The worst aspect may be when poets do not realise what sorts of ill effects the lust for fame can inflict on haiku and how. When one hears, in the ‘victory speech’ of those who win prizes of a haiku competition, the expression of ‘I am humbled…’ , one would recoil at the hypocrisy of it all. Haiku should be rendered useless once again in terms of bringing fame to the poets.

Haiku has also become almost too useful in fooling oneself into believing that s/he is special. We all become incredibly happy when someone makes us feel that we are special. Those who are insecure and with low self-esteem would become especially euphoric. Those who are arrogant would feel they are even more superior than they already think they are. So why wouldn’t haiku do the same trick? Haiku seems to be liable to make poets cliquey and falsely elitist. They tend and love to form small closed societies of special people, shutting out the uninitiated or outsiders, especially the so-called ‘mainstream’ poets. This is most unhealthy and deprives haiku poets and non-haiku poets alike of the opportunities of cross-fertilisation and the joy of mutual-company. If haiku is made useless in making poets feel special, then such a precious feeling will disappear overnight and haiku poets would become more modest and open, i.e. normal people. Uselessness of haiku is especially to be desired here.
Our relation with haiku is little different from our relationships with other human beings. Most misunderstandings, unhappiness, rows or conflicts between humans occur at least partly because of the failure of one to accept the other as he/she is (one of the most difficult things for us to achieve), or more importantly, both to accept each other as he/she is (because most of the time both parties are failing but nevertheless accuse each other of the failure) and the relationship as it is. The reality is that each of us expect too much from, paint rosy and impossible pictures of, impose our will of what the other should do and say, judging impossible goals and standards we set. Then, when our expectations are unfulfilled, we punish the failure of all these other people, and sometimes, ourselves, too. Ironically, this same occurs in the most tender of all human sentiments, love. We create impossible images of others we love, and if they turn out to be different, we blame them for the illusions we, ourselves, foolishly created.

Unfortunately, and in exactly the same way, for the great majority of people, it seems, haiku cannot be but indescribably special, exquisitely beautiful, seductively mysterious, unfathomably profound, inaccessibly esoteric, unrealistically difficult and, yes, almightily USEFUL. Thus, haiku is made their idol, like an object of mad love. The unbridled idolatry begins like lovesickness. This cannot be the right way. Haiku should, once again, be made useless. Otherwise, these people will live in a fool’s paradise, and they are destined to find the fallen idol and love lost, or else condemned to an eternal state of falsehood.

Though haiku is and should be part of one’s way of life, it is best to keep it one’s pastime. To put it another way, it would be best if one would remain an amateur in haiku. Dilettantism has long been an important factor of Japanese intellectual and cultural life. It is partly derived from the special world of literati in ancient and medieval China. Of course there were professional haikai masters. Basho was one, until he gave it up in disgust. In our time, there are two ways one can be professional in haiku: a professional haiku master, and a university teacher of haiku. Even in Japan, both professional haiku masters and haiku academics are few and far between. And haiku academics are not necessarily haiku practitioners. If they are, they are not necessarily good ones. Outside Japan, almost definitely there is not a single professional haiku master in the strict sense of the word. The number of haiku academics must be less than the number of fingers of of our hand.

These professionals are outside of our concern, however. For them, exceptionally, haiku is not only useful but vital. Our concern is related to those who think and behave as if they are professionals, plus their sympathisers. With this pretension can come a host of anti-haiku and anti-art behaviours and remarks which are all around us. It would be better for them to behave like amateurs, which is what they are, in their own interest as well as others. Remaining amateurs does not mean that we cannot be knowledgeable or a good influence for others. Apart from preventing negative behaviours and remarks, something about being amateurs provides us, in a much more positive sense, with special qualities which help create good haiku—a sense of freedom, humility, honesty or whatever. Uselessness is the essence of dilettantism.

Thus it was that uselessness, ironically, was the most precious possession and the source of inspiration for those genuine poets such as Basho (especially after he abandoned his career as professional haikai master), Santoka, Hosai, Soseki, Dakotsu, Bosha and Hisajo, to name but a few. This may be a difficult concept to understand for those Westerners who are accustomed to materialism, logic and purpose in everything. Uselessness of haiku is to deny materialism, to find something amusing in an illogical world and to indulge in the activity without a purpose. It is not so-called spiritualism, which is another trap people easily fall into. If you take the spiritual route, you fall into the Zen trap. If you take the materialistic route, you fall into the trap of falsely making haiku useful. How can you fall into such traps so easily? How will you be able to avoid them? Simply drop spiritualism and usefulness from haiku.

There are many other things for which people try to make haiku useful. Some of them are ostensibly for good causes such as using haiku for educational purposes or for healing. Even then, haiku should not be presented as something like a useful medicine but pursued for its own sake, i.e. useless art of poetry. If as a result haiku ends up in having some educational effect or healing power, let be.

However, perhaps the worst aspect of treating haiku as a useful thing is the extraordinary and excessive seriousness with which people take it. It may be because of the Western logic that anything which is not serious is not worth doing, and, therefore, haiku must be a serious business as we wish to do it seriously. I never cease to be amazed at all those outlandish behaviours which are displayed in the name of haiku. One such behaviour is someone getting so angry, aggressive or upset as to attack others as if going to war. The other is someone so obsessed with haiku as to regard it as the most important thing in life. Intrinsically, haiku is a useless thing and a haiku poet is a useless person. At least it should be.

About the cover :

ABOUT THE COVER ARTIST
Annie Bissett: ART WITH HAIKU SPIRIT

With this edition, the World Haiku Review begins introducing feature illustrations for its cover and contents page by select artists whose works not only reflect excellence, but which are imbued with “haiku spirit”. For this feature’s premier, WHC’s World Haiku Review is pleased to present the illustrative work of American artist, Annie Bissett.

The illustrations selected for the cover and contents pages of WHR 5-1 were created by Annie Bissett as projects with the illustrator’s blogsite, “Illustration Friday,” and are personal pieces Annie Bissett has done her pleasure. She says that she considers these pieces as visual haiku. She is pleased that our editors  have made the same connection, and that they have selected two of them for World Haiku Review.

Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, and raised in upstate New York, illustrator Annie Bissett returned to Massachusetts in 1979 and began her career in Boston. With a major in English and a minor in math, her ability to visually synthesize data and information led her to focus her

career in the area of “information graphics.” She first worked in textbook publishing and then learned computer graphics at PCWeek magazine where she became Assistant Art Director before setting off to begin a successful freelance career. Her illustration clients are diverse and have included The Washington Post, National Geographic Society, The Wall Street Journal, Fidelity Investments, and Johns Hopkins University among others.

Several years ago, after nearly 15 years of working digitally, Annie began to explore different mediums, looking for a warmer and more organic expression for her own personal artwork. She experimented with collage and spent more time simply drawing with a pencil. Some digital work based on her pencil drawings can be viewed at her website, AnnieBissett.com. In her personal work, Annie seeks to capture the essence of a particular moment in a spare but graphically strong image, much like a visual poem or haiku.

Annie has also been nurturing an ardent interest in Japan. She has studied Japanese language for 4 years at Smith College and recently, because she received so many comments that her latest illustration work looks like woodblock prints, she took an intensive with New Hampshire printmaker Matt Brown in Japanese-style woodblock printing. To literally look over her shoulder as she learns to master this difficult but beautiful medium, visit her woodblock website, Woodblock Dreams.

Three verses by Annie Bissett, composed on her trip to Tohoku last year:

ON A TRAIN

Sendai shinkansen.
Women are laughing aloud
as businessmen sleep.

NARUKO ONSEN

At this country inn
the baths are always open.
Warm arms welcome us.

THE MISO MAKER SPEAKS

Love is like miso,
a fermentation process.
Time makes a marriage.

 

Editorial : How to Tackle War Haiku

 Editorial Corner – March 2003 Editorial

How to tackle war haiku

War divides. It forces people to corners where they do not necessarily wish to be cornered. Thus, sides are taken and differences get exacerbated. Views become exaggerated and belligerent. Friends turn into foes. Opinions become voiced in black and white terms. All the complications of life’s grey area, namely the most or all of life, get over-simplified and dogmatised. Prejudices, suspicion, hatred and emotion have dominion over all the things which help us become or remain civilised. In this process, are we becoming more human or less human?

shun-shu ni aku wo sarasu wa ikusa kana

war brings
the worst of both worlds –
spring melancholy

ST

However, all this, depressingly, is not even anywhere near the worst aspects of war.

So, what would happen if haiku poets wandered into this war zone and share the war haiku they write with others? The experience in the Internet world has shown that they would do exactly what is described above. All the real world’s divisions, hostilities, propaganda, prejudices and ferocious attacks and counter-attacks get mirrored in the conduct and poems of the haiku poets in this virtual world. With almost military precision, flames flare up and fighting, albeit verbal, erupts. The real war, essentially, is repeated in the cyber haiku theatre.

the war
in Mesopotamia, fought also
in haiku

ST

This is deplorable and sad at least on two accounts. Firstly, it speaks poorly of haiku. If war haiku cannot be written without it being degenerated into propaganda or political point scoring, it would harm the scope and potential of haiku as a legitimate form to deal with such a serious subject as war. Secondly, it speaks poorly of human beings. If they cannot distinguish the actual war and political stance towards it on the one hand — and war haiku as a form of poetic and artistic expression on the other — they would degrade themselves into political machines, i.e. non-poets or non-artists. Of course, there should not be war. However, war has not disappeared from the human history yet.

There is actually a third way where haiku poets intentionally use haiku to promote their political purposes truly in a serious and sincere way and regard it as a legitimate and justifiable part of haiku writing. This is outside the scope both of this Editorial and the World Haiku Club. Such an attempt, if done really seriously and sincerely, must be respected but the distinction between genuine intentions and cheap political demonstration may be difficult to perceive.

So far, in the Internet war zones, we have had displays of low and coarse feelings of little or no literary merit, including naked anti-American sentiment, hysterical reactions to it, strained raw nerves, tendentious preaching, pipedream for peace, one-sided fixed ideas, entrenched prejudices, mob copycat slogans, shallow political naïveté and all manner of predictable statement of the obvious. Occasional posting of good war haiku have been smothered in the fog of verbal war.

Some might say that if haiku poems and their authors express anger, hatred, patriotism, nationalism, prejudices, suspicion, jingoism, arrogance, actual exchange of war of words or even fanaticism or madness, it would simply be reflecting the realities of life. There may be an element of truth here and something which may be worth pursuing. However, these realities need not be re-acted twice. In other words, one war is enough, if ever.

Where, then, does all this leave us? War is a negative drama where just about everything about human nature plays its part, from timeless heroism to the blackest of evils, from the sharpest brainwork to the most wicked guile, from seemingly justifiable moral stance to the most questionable ethical pretence and from the latest technological excellence to the most barbaric tools of war. Peace, on the other hand, is the opposite side of the coin: the positive drama played by the same actors, save a number of important exceptions such as supposedly-lawful violence (sometimes questionable as the current war may be and other times laws are simply ignored). In other words, peace is not the absence of everything in a war. On the contrary, what constitutes war is also in existence in peace, such as the human foibles and weaknesses mentioned above. War and peace are different reflections of the same thing, i.e. human nature. That is why it is important not to dismiss war unquestioningly from the themes of haiku.

Quite the contrary. If war haiku can be shared (no problem when writing them for oneself) without replicating the actual war in a literary form, it must be done. At least, that is the policy of the World Haiku Club. To do so is to look into the realities of human condition in order to attempt at depicting them in a literary form. Ultimately, haiku is about “fuga no makoto” (poetic sincerity, honesty and truth). Therefore, we, as haijin, would be missing a huge chunk of truth if war is excluded from haiku’s content. This is no doubt a departure from the traditional school of Japanese haiku which is represented by the Hototogisu School which has been developed from the old haikai in which war was not necessarily excluded. Even Masaoka Shiki dealt with war:

naki hito no mukuro wo kakuse haru no kusa

hide the corpse
of the dead soldier
spring grasses

(English version by ST)

There is a famous episode whence Takahama Kyoshi, the founder of the Hototogisu School, was asked by a reporter after the last war about the reasons why he never wrote haiku on war (the implied point being why he did not oppose to the war through haiku), and replied that he was a mere haijin and that haijin’s job was not war. If one is a member of this School, then one should probably stick to its teachings. It would, however, mean limiting the scope of haiku, and exclude even such (a non-controversial but) excellent example of good war haiku:

a new war -
I search grandpa’s eyes
still hiding old wars.

Carole MacRury

There have been quite a few good war haiku springing up from WHC’s efforts and it is hoped that these will inspire other people to write and share war haiku in the spirit of WHC’s experiment. As was already said, war covers everything human. Therefore, one would not be short of what to write: the futility, violence, madness, sorrow, tragedy, heroism, valour, love, excitement, bereavement, destruction, cruelty or patriotism. The following are some of the examples:
a bush war
one man on the run
a million suffer

john tiong chunghoo

winter burial~
a mother mourns the son
who’ll never go to war

Johnye Strickland

as spring begins
young soldiers join the old…
in another place

DW Bender

Dead ‘American’ soldiers,
piled side by side – Baptist,
Muslim, Indian and Jew

deborah russell

from cradle of
civilization to burial ground –
metal rain

Robert Wilson

trampled wheat
a butterfly flits above
the tank turret

Tomislav Maretic

And still carrying
on the back his cargo
the killed horse

Luko Paljetak

 

Editorial – The More They Remain the Same…

Editorial Corner – November 2002 Editorial

the more they remain the same…

“Days and months are eternal travellers, as are the years that come and go…”

This famous beginning of Oku-no-Hosomichi means more than it says. As well as the continuity and constancy of time, it is talking about its reverse, namely, the impermanence of living things and ephemeral nature of our life, which has long been the essence of Japanese literature, and Japanese Weltanschauung (view of life) in general. The contradictory interaction between this permanence and impermanence also forms the basis of Matsuo Basho’s creative force.

Part of the significance of the kind of journey some of us WHC members and friends undertook in our Oku-no-Hosomichi Basho Journey programme last September, was to experience, in person, the dynamic interplay between permanence and impermanence at work. Almost everywhere we set foot, the permanence was visible, audible and tangible, be it the flow of the Mogami River, or the moss in Ungan-ji; the ripe golden sea of rice plants ready for harvest; the inscription of the Tsubo-no-Ishibumi, or the heat of the hot spring at Yudono-yama. The silence of Ryushaku-ji could almost painfully be heard. The temple bell at Haguro-san, even when struck by an overseas visitor, had the same permanent feel of reverberation. The sound of crickets, the smell of misty rain, the touch of cold rocks; the taste of hot sake, the subdued colour of a cryptomeria forest, the chanting of Buddhists or the tune of folk songs; the giggling of northern girls, the way bush clover or pine trees are placed and their relation to rocks and lakes…

On the other hand, we saw the bustling life of the Japanese in the 21st century. The most ancient of the ancient temples were visited by school children armed with all manner of electronic gadgets. The old inn-keeper at Yama-dera looked up the flight time for me on the Internet. A young lady with classic features while looking smart by London or Paris standards, proved one of the best singers at a Karaoke bar, deplored excess globalisation and showed sympathy with the view of the end of history.

In an even more complicated way, we saw what has been permanent turn into impermanence, in such as what must have been a magnificent complex of buildings at Taga-jo, northern-most fortress it once was, but now just ruins; or the willow tree at Yugyo-yanagi in Ashino, which has been planted and re-planted; or Kisagata islands and sea, which are now all land, as the water was drained when the sea bed-rose after the earthquake in 1804. What is impermanent also can turn into a permanent feature. All these ancient buildings once were brand new, without exception. The beauty of sabi, seen in many ancient monuments, would not have been present when still retaining the original garish colours.

This puzzle that things change and yet, they do not change, and that changing becomes unchanging, and unchanging becomes changing, is our basic perception of the universe. If and when this puzzle is solved, it probably would mean the ultimate triumph of science over religion and of man over God. Or at least man’s knowledge and wisdom will have reached those of a god who may well have been proved to be no more than one of man’s inventions. However, that almost certainly would also mark the end of poetry, and probably of all other arts as well. The puzzle must remain the puzzle along the lines of panta rhei (everything is in a state of flux) of Heraclitus, or yuku kawa no nagare no gotoshi (everything is like the flow of a running river) of Kamo no Chomei, or l’évolution créatrice of Henri Bergson.

The last thing Basho wanted was to master god(s) or tempt God. He also knew the danger of staying still. That is why he went on journeys many times, both physically and in his imagination. That is why he compared life to a journey. When his lord, Todo Yoshitada, died young, it was a grievous shock to the system for Basho, who was even younger. The upset subsequently drove him on, from one place to another, and from one occupation to another until he gave up everything to become virtually a mendicant poet, both literally and figuratively. The important thing is that he also became an itinerant poet in real terms as well as in his literary life.

According to Western logic, time either exists or it doesn’t. According to the Eastern non-logic, time exists and it does not exist. Haiku lies in-between the existing time and non-existent time. The same can be said with the subjective and the objective, the particular and the universal, ego and ego-less state, and man and nature. Without understanding this paradox, perception based on ego or understanding based on linear logic cannot go far or amount to much. Haiku poems churned out without such understanding are shallow, self-conceited, one-sided and lacking in grace.

Such journeys as our Oku-no-Hosomichi provide us with golden opportunities to learn so much. If “following in Basho’s footsteps” means only following Basho, it would not get one very far. One would probably end up in being less than a holiday-maker. As Basho said in another context, we must seek what Basho sought during such a journey. And the journey must not end when the physical one ends but must be continued mentally as life itself is a journey. Haiku is a way of life, and must therefore be a part of that journey.

Editorial : the World in a Grain of Sand

Editorial – July 2002, Volume 2, Issue 2

The World in a Grain of Sand

In my Editorial for the March issue, I began with my critical views on the world haiku community, and ended on a very optimistic and hopeful note about its future. I wish to continue building on that optimism and hope.

World Haiku Festival 2002 will take place late September this year in a place of rustic beauty, Yuwa Town of Akita Prefecture, located in the north west of Japan. Among the Festival’s main characteristics, there are two particular ones which symbolise the aim of it and can contribute to underpinning such optimism and hope as are referred to above.

One is the fact that the Festival is in celebration of the 130th anniversary of the birth of Ishii Rogetsu (1873-1928), who was born in Yuwa Town, spent most of his life and died there. Rogetsu is not too well-known, even inside Japan, and virtually unknown outside it. The significance of the Festival, therefore, lies partly in the very fact that it is dealing with such a relatively obscure haiku figure. Why? That is the question.

The World Haiku Club not only encourages new talent but also endorses those poets who may not be as well-known as they deserve to be. The obscurity of Rogetsu is mainly due to the fact that he cut short his activities in Tokyo, and returned to live the rest of his life in his hometown, many hundreds of miles away from Tokyo and its influence. His reputation was virtually “buried” there, until, that is, it is now resurrected by WHF2002. Shiki had a high opinion of Rogetsu and there is no doubt that the latter would have attained a high place in the history of Japanese haiku had he stayed in Tokyo and gone on mingling with the likes of Kyoshi or Hekigodo. His poems are just as good as those written by these two masters and other renowned poets, if not better.

What, then, does this all mean to haiku poets around the world? It means that reputation is not always a necessary or sufficient condition of quality haiku. “All that glitters” is not a golden haiku poet. It also means that to lead a worth-while haiku life, one does not necessarily have to hobnob with luminaries of the centre stage. Moreover, as genius will out, so will a good haiku poet wherever he or she may reside. At the same time, just as Rogetsu will from now on steadily be known in the world, one’s work in one particular part of the world could be appreciated one day by someone else in a totally different part of the world, even if it may take over a hundred years for it to be so appreciated. This is the beauty and blessing of us having the world haiku scene, which was unthinkable in Rogetsu’s days and not even until relatively recently.

The second characteristic of WHF2002, which symbolises the aim of the Festival and underpins the optimism and hope for the future of world haiku, is that Rogetsu is the epitome of the importance of a region, or local soil, from which haiku poems emanate. Capitals and large cities have played a dominating role in many countries in almost all human endeavours including literature, and Japan is no exception. After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Tokyo has played an especially dominating role and the haiku hierarchy looks like a huge pyramid with Tokyo at the top. Such extreme centralisation is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it tends to lead to an efficient, dynamic and thriving haiku activities. However, it also leads to all kinds of ills (negative haiku politics, domination by bosses and elders stifling the young and meek, harmful rivalry, corruption or decadence) on the other. The dominance of the centre also often means negligence of regions and provinces.

Rogetsu can be hailed as a champion of individual quality and regional excellence, i.e. individualism and regional diversity. A quiet haijin in a small village of a remote country from the central stage of haiku should be equally respected as someone showered with awards and accolades in Chicago or Tokyo. We should also be aware that there are haiku poets out there who do not belong to any haiku associations, but who write creative and original haiku poems nevertheless, or often because of it. Rogetsu was strong and daring enough to express opposing views to those of Shiki. This may well have been partly because he kept a strategic distance from Shiki by living so remotely from Tokyo.

Thus, Rogetsu will be the central theme of the three-day Festival for world haiku and Yuwa Town; his hometown, will be the focal point as a regional centre of haiku composition. Rogetsu and Yuwa Town will be connected to the world through WHF2002, on the network of the World Haiku Club and through WHC to other similar initiatives which have been linked with WHC by friendship and co-operation. The linkage is both vertical and horizontal: vertical of time dimension, starting from the rippling effects of the WHC’s call for co-ordination and friendship on Haiku North America 1999, international haiku conferences in Japan, the Global Haiku Festival in the spring of 2000,  linkage with the Matsuyama Declaration movement, then the World Haiku Festival 2000 in August of the same year, HNA Boston 2001, the World Haiku Festival 2002 and onto Haiku North America – New York next year. Horizontal linkage is WHC’s simultaneous exchange and intercourse between and among organisations and individuals with similar aims and aspirations.

This is a stupendous development for world haiku to move itself forward. As I emphasised in the March Editorial, we find ourselves “on one of the richest and most fertile grounds of haiku creation in terms of its form, style, contents, scope, variety, depth and width of coverage.” We are not talking about standardisation or homogenisation of haiku, as some comment wrongly. It is in the diversity in terms of different individuals, different regions and different cultures, that the new optimism and hope mentioned at the outset will prosper. This is the message, which WHF2002 with its Rogetsu and Yuwa Town dimensions, will try to convey to the rest of the world in September. Thus, the world of haiku and the haiku world are on the fertile soil of unprecedented size and diversity. In spite of the harm and confusion inflicted upon by ill-willed haiku villains, the majority of the haiku fraternity is likely to forge ahead and outdo such negative forces by a big margin. At the same time, helped by the emergence of a long-waited dialogue with non-haiku poets, the haijin could advance that much closer in making haiku a more well-established genre in the world literature.

 

Editorial : Escapist Literature vs Real Literature

Editorial “Tohi-bungaku”(escapist literature) versus “Shin-bungaku”(real literature)

Haiku poetry has essentially been a type of what I call “tohi-bungaku” in Japan*. While not going so far as emigrating into Utopia or fairy land, haiku poets have cultivated a special world, slightly detached from the stark realities of life.

*“tohi-bungaku” could be translated as escapist literature, but not used in a pejorative sense. “shin-bungaku” is real literature, and here the word “real” is used in association with realism. 

This special world has been one of light-hearted taste or hobby, flight into appreciation of nature through familiar flora and fauna, with humorous twists about the harshness of human existence, mature resignation and an almost comical response to the wonders around us. It is an adult’s world, not for children nor impertinent and self-conceited youth, or old men for that matter, if they are not matured in wisdom or spiritually “kareta=withered”.

This aspect is one of haiku’s main differences from waka or the orthodox renga (not “haikai-no-renga”), from which it had spun off. This and other intrinsic characteristics of haiku have nurtured what is referred to as “haiku-no-kokoro”. It is the haiku spirit which has not yet been fully understood by those unfamiliar with haiku, or who are not native to Japan.

Haiku had long been thought of by Japanese children and youngsters (not without reason) as something which only geriatrics would indulge in as they have retired from real life and have nothing else to do. Haiku simply suited an elder’s detached way of life. When young people “meddled” with haiku, they invariably made waves and disturbed the peace of this escapist paradise. Truly, the haiku “explosion” in Japan is a relatively recent phenomenon.

It is this aspect of escape literature that has brought to haiku a huge blessing: its unique characteristics and popularity, as well as an unexpected curse: its limitations as a form of poetry and shaky position as a genre of literature. Until the Meiji era arrived 133 year ago, haiku, or more precisely “haikai”, had been more or less left in peace as everybody followed what we now call the traditionalist haiku way (it was “the only way”). Of course, within this traditionalist way, there had always been different movements and schools, of which Basho‘s was the most prominent example. However, the biggest challenge for traditional haiku after the Meiji Restoration was whether or not, and how, it should make sense of the modern world. It seemed necessary now, for haiku to recognise and include subjects dealing with the sterner realities of life, a demand placed on any serious branch of modern literature.

Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) and successive reformers of haiku after him changed this situation. The pace and scope of this change significantly increased after World War II. Today, the so-called “internationalisation” of haiku is bringing about the third wave of great change to haiku. We are at the forefront of this new change. And we may well be one of its conscious or inadvertent creators. The most important element of this change is the question of testing the inherent escapist nature of haiku within the context of the contemporary world and future.

The sort of conflict between traditionalist and progressive which has occurred in the Japanese haiku community is now being repeated on the world scene. The most obvious thing which should happen is for the world to learn from the Japanese experience: glean wisdom from her successes and mistakes alike. Sadly, this does not seem to be happening anywhere near adequately. The largest hindrance is, of course, the language barrier, and the second largest is the cultural barrier.

In this internet age, the time is ripe for the Japanese to overcome any psychological barriers, teach what they know and discuss haiku issues with non-Japanese haiku poets. In the West, haiku poets have much yet to learn from haiku in Japan and would do well not to become complacent with the form in its current state of evolution, nor dismiss any further need toward its progress. No other times have called for more immediate interaction between Japanese and non-Japanese haiku poets than now. The World Haiku Club wishes to do its bit to provide facilities and initiatives for such viable interaction and to work with the like-minded people in furtherance of this vital link in the world haiku movement.

Many simple and obvious facts about haiku have been made unnecessarily complicated or obfuscated by faction leaders and zealous theorists, all for their own purposes. One such simple truth is that there is only so much that traditional haiku can do. It must not be expected to do anything more beyond its scope. In other words, there are severe limitations in the traditional haiku as a viable and significant branch of literature or art in terms of such fundamental functions as subject matter, universality, form and vocabulary. Modernisation of haiku, or its reform, is essentially and necessarily an attempt at overcoming these limitations. Two areas stand out as particularly lacking in traditional haiku: full use of imagination and the treatment of harsh realities of life.

Among other things, the World Haiku Club is trying to address these two issues. Basing ourselves firmly in traditional haiku, we have embarked on a trial to ascertain if we can build an extension from that firm base, or better still, to enable the tradition to branch outward from itself. Though the greater part of our activities are conducted solidly within the bounds of traditional haiku, some innovations and experiments are positively encouraged to address the issue of imagination. And now, we have expanded our scope by activating a new list: WHCvanguard. Here, essentially anything and everything which is not dealt with in the more traditional WHChaikuforum is treated: war, violence, atrocities, social issues, human condition, sex, eroticism, death, disease, tragedy, disasters, calamities, human emotions, the metaphysical, philosophical and religious etc. For the moment, WHCvanguard is addressing these issues only among its own members. The aim is to overcome, in our own ways, limitations of the traditional haiku and to see if a new and legitimate range of haiku can be created, to deal with themes outside the realm of traditional haiku and in styles not necessarily pertinent to it.

Thus it is that in this Issue, we introduce WHCvanguard as a Special Feature with some of the list activities displayed. WHCvanguard will form the main plank of our haiku movement together with WHChaikuforum, WHCbeginners, WHCacademia and WHCschools.

Other Special Features include a commemoration of the first anniversary of the World Haiku Festival 2000 London-Oxford Conference to which this Issue is dedicated. There are various new Features from this Issue such as Tasting Vintage Haiku (Lee Gurga), Haiku Treasure Trove (Patrick Blanche), Kara-Kuchi Ronso (or Spicy Haiku Polemics) and This Is Your Haiku Life (Suzuki Masajo). I hope you will find all these useful and fun.

 

ABOUT THE COVER

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 2

World Haiku Review

“Pumpkin and Eggplant”
Water Color on Shikishi -
A mosha (copy) of a Gyokusei drawing
by Susumu Takiguchi
Oxford, UK

In the Aftermath of Shiki’s Fireworks

July 2002

WHC Shiki Celebrations: Essay Shiki’s Fireworks by – Susumu Takiguchi

WHC MASAOKA SHIKI CENTENARY CELEBRATIONS

In the Aftermath of Shiki’s Fireworks
John E. Carley, Ed. (UK)

 Darkness. And the nature thereof: wonderment… or regret? When the last firework has faded, how do you feel?

If you are British, and of a certain generation, your mouth will be too tacked up to manage a reply. And even after the last piece of treacle toffee has achieved its jaw creaking consummation, there’s still the baked potato to look forward to: raked out of the embers of the bonfire, tasting gloriously of sulphur and bed springs. But what was the aftermath for Shiki? And how to convey the same?

The fifth strand of the Masaoka Shiki On-line Joint Translation Project was opened on the sixth of January 2002 by Susumu Takiguchi in the now customary way: a post to the Haikuforum Workshop containing the text in romaji; a literal rendering; a personal version; a recognised translation, and a brief introduction.

Like the fireworks themselves, this strand generated a glorious array of response poems, free adaptations, humorous capping verses and personal anecdotes -– far too many to weave into a single account, but testimony, were it needed, of the power of poetry to blossom in the mind. It is with regret therefore that this account must omit such generous interpretations, and limit itself instead to the more narrow definitions of ‘translation’. Firstly then the text from Susumu:

hito kaeru hanabi no ato no kura-sa kana

Masaoka Shiki, 1895, Meiji 28

hito – people
kaeru – return, go home (rentai-kei, or a kind of participial adjective)
hanabi – fireworks
no – possessive, or genitive (case) particle
ato – after
no – possessive, or genitive (case) particle
kura-sa – darkness
kana – particle, exclamatory: kireji

spectators
on their way home

after the fireworks -
what darkness!

version by Susumu Takiguchi

The fireworks over,
The people all gone, –
How dark it is!               

tr. by R. H. Blyth, pp. 1025-1026, Haiku, vol. 4

The full text of Susumu’s introduction, “Shiki’s Fireworks”, appears in this edition, but in quoting Blyth’s accompanying notes,

what Shiki is telling us is something about the absence of two things and the presence of one as a unity of deep experience. [R. H. Blyth]

Susumu raises a fundamental objection:

…there is no past tense or present perfect in the verb “kaeru” used. It is in the present tense. Therefore, one cannot say that the people have, or are “all gone”. They may still have been all be there, or some may have gone but others, or the majority of them, may have still been there [S.T.]

If Blyth’s direct comparison of two states of ‘absence’ is questionable the same might be said of the admirably compact and dynamic version posted by WHC member Chris Baltzley who, like both Blyth and Takiguchi, uses an exclamation mark to add weight and immediacy:

how dark!
people and fireworks
both gone

Chris Baltzley

Less apparent, but perhaps as significant, is the question of image order. In her version, Chris inverts the position of the ‘darkness’, moving it from last to first. Robert Wilson and Sheila Windsor, by contrast, closely followed Blyth:

fireworks over
people return to
the darkness

Robert Wilson

fireworks all spent
the people return home
in darkness

Sheila Windsor

Similarly, Alenka Zorman, who, unlike Robert and Sheila, also opted for Blyth’s tense usage regarding the presence/absence of the crowd noting that:

Shiki wanted to express the darkness after the fireworks and even more after the people [were] all gone

the fireworks over
and the people all gone
what darkness!

Alenka Zorman

In the question of both image order and tense usage others followed Susumu’s lead
people leave
after the fireworks
such darkness

Ito

people going home
after the fireworks–
so dark!

Karma Tenzing Wangchuk
Noting the close similarities between these two drafts Ito posts:

i opted for the word ‘leave’ […] perhaps Shiki perceives his own loneliness […] making him acutely aware of how dark the sky is just after the fireworks end.

Whereas Tenzing makes the timely observation:

both yours and the one i did seem fairly ‘true’ to the literal translation

Carol Raisfeld likewise:

people go home
at fireworks end -
sudden darkness!

Carol Raisfeld

And likewise Kevin Ryan who also adds that final emphatic!

returning home -
after fireworks
such darkness!

Kevin Ryan

This is not the place to obsess about punctuation marks, pause indicators and kireji, but the more grammatically compulsive amongst the readership will, like the author, will be well aware that this version by Kevin Ryan marks the seventh instance thus far of the use of an exclamation mark in response to the Japanese ‘kana’. In short, certainly everyone understood the crucial nature of the emphasis or inflection imparted by the elusive particle. Responses varied: from darkness at heel – Terry Isshi, to darkness behind – Karina Klesko. Mary Jane Turner offered three alternatives: magnifying darkness; a blacker darkness and darkness doubles.

Thinking along similar line Mary Lee McClure proposed the heavy dark whilst Johnye Strickland elegantly stood tautology on its head with:

going home
after the fireworks –
the darkness of the dark
and:
going home –
after the fireworks,
the darkness of the dark

Johnye Strickland

The shift of the line-end cutting device in version two here, mirroring that of Kevin Ryan, is a deliberate experiment with both meaning and layout. As we examine the effect it is also perhaps worth noting the number of versions that, like that of Blyth, adopt both dash and exclamation mark in the context of ‘kana’. Kireji-spotters might be forgiven for asking the inevitable question: is this a double cut?

Meanwhile, completely reversing Shiki’s image order and omitting any punctuation device Soji had a finely balanced draft to offer:

a deeper darkness
after the fireworks
the crowd dwindles

Soji

Nancy Stewart Smith also had a sense of the crowd being diminished, and an alternative way of attenuating the delivery of ‘darkness’:

after the fireworks
the crowd trickles homeward
profounder darkness

Nancy Stewart Smith

At heel; behind; dwindle; trickle. All had put in an appearance, and with good reason. Japanese poetry is replete with the skilled use of homonyms and cognates… were there shades of meaning here that should be factored in? Debra Woolard Bender for one had been researching, and posted a comprehensive set of alternatives, amongst which were to be found:

ato – (adj-no,n-adv,n) after; behind; later; rear; remainder; successor; (P)
ato – (n) trace; tracks; mark; scar; sign; remains; ruins; (P)*

*Jeffrey’s Japanese<->English Dictionary

Working on a synthesis where the festively clad spectators dispersing homeward in all directions, lanterns aglow, might also convey the sense of the course of fireworks through the night sky, Debra offered the outline of a freer adaptation:

after fireworks
trails of people return
to darkness

Debra Woolard Bender

Unusually for the World Haiku Club, which is nothing if not a broad church, all the versions to date had followed the predominant three line form of the English language haiku. First to the rescue came Paul Conneally with a one line arrangement:

fireworks over   the people leave   darkness

Paul Conneally

And then Eiko Yachimoto with a lyrical fifteen syllable zip:

fire-blossom-viewing…shared
as people walk home…darkness prevails

Eiko Yachimoto

On the introduction of the word ‘shared’ Eiko comments:

Shiki was from Matsuyama, known for its people’s soft and gentle dialect. When Shiki says ‘hito’ I sense something warm…almost meaning  ‘my fellow human friends’ […] The English word ‘share’ (of which we do not have a clear equivalent  in the Japanese language) is a great word for that purpose.

And on the more literal ‘fire-blossom-viewing’:

Hanabi-taikai (fireworks exhibition) in Japan is not meant to celebrate something.  It is like a cherry blossom viewing and people go out for the sake of fireworks blooming in the sky. […] In traditional renku, you could write a verse about hanabi at the fixed position reserved for hana [blossom]! 

Carmen Sterba too sensed this relationship and, after a brief exchange with Kathi, settled on a draft using hypallage – the transferred epithet –- as a way of inflecting the notion of ‘darkness’:

crowds return home -
after the fireworks
darkness blooms

Carmen Sterba

Also respecting the literal image order of Shiki’s original, Sheila Windsor posted a final draft linking the darkness to the fireworks… but in a rather more bleak and ironic way:

people go home!
after the fireworks
darkness falls

Sheila Windsor

It would be a dereliction of duty not to observe that both these versions, like others before from Johnye Strickland and Kevin Ryan, apply an emphasis to the line-break between the elements ‘homebound’ and ‘aftermath’. By contrast others had chosen the point between the elements ‘aftermath’ and ‘darkness’.

It would be fair to say that the way in which the particle kana might be judged to inflect the concept ‘darkness’, in particular, and the overall mood of the poem in general, had provoked as much debate as the rest of the poem put together.

This fifth strand of the Masaoka Shiki On-line Joint Translation Project had started with translations from Susumu Takiguchi and R. H. Blyth – both of whom used combinations of end-line emphasis, exclamation marks and verbal constructions to equate to Shiki’s kireji. It seems fitting therefore to end on a version that uses none, relying instead on the stark use of line-break and syntax.

This poem is an foundling – posted by an occasional WHC contributor, it was discovered in an obscure corner of a distant strand (of an ancillary mail group) by a conscientious WHC member who forwarded it to the present author for safekeeping. May it trace a course across your mind.
returning home
after the fireworks
darkness

Zinovy Vayman

Read also : Shiki’s Fireworks

Eight Poets and a Spectator

December 2003

Eight Poets and a Spectator,

comments on Midsummer Madness

The Renku Experience an’ya, Oregon, USA

Upon being invited to participate in this renku group, I must admit that I hesitated because my only other attempt at renku was as a ‘pointed radish’ in WHC’s tournament. In the end, I decided to give renku another try, admittedly and still not knowing even the first thing about it.

My emotions from week one to completion of our kasen were up, down, and all around, believe me. Although somehow I felt secure knowing that eiko (our fearless sabaki) was leading me gently by the hand down a primrose path, and all I really needed to do, was enjoy the stroll.

I learned that this particular artform is probably the most ‘conceptual’ poetry I’ve ever run across. I also realize that it is totally based on teamwork, and if one has too fragile an ego, or too high an opinion of their own abilities, they will never even make it through one renku. It is an omni-powerful way of finding your place in the universe of writing; it is the ultimate example of interpretive dance via poetry.

Since I was the newest writer of renku on the team, I asked probably more questions than I should have, but eiko (and all the others as well) were patient, supportive, and generous in their answers. Finally about mid-way through, the lights came on for me, and I was able to be a productive part of the group, (at least I was made to feel that way).

eiko is an absolute master at making everyone participating feel special about themselves and their work; she graciously accepts criticism, and even chastised herself at times, always maintaining an air of dignity. She listened intently, and replied to anything anyone said, taking the time to thoroughly explain whatever dilemmas came up, or why she chose to do what she did, or what direction she was headed with the kasen.

All in all, writing renku is something I heartily recommend to anyone, although be prepared to feel ‘bean-size’ for quite a long while, albeit allowing yourself the time and space to grow, in order to reach great personal heights you’ve never been to before.

 

The Word Circus John Edmund Carley, Lincolnshire, UK

I suppose the truth is that all poets are miserable ingrates. On a bad day. But to take a man’s money, build your house on his land and then use him as the butt of your jokes… Perpetrator: Basho, Matsuo. Victim: Sugiyama, Sanpu. Evidence: Sea Bream, Salted.

Then there’s the one about The Poets, the Nun and the Mosquito Net… but they’re rather busy at the moment so it’s best not to interrupt.

Elsewhere we have physics, first translated as butsuri (the alternative pronunciation for kotowari. (mono no kotowari) hence, by contrast, an insight into the elusive mono no aware.

Perhaps you wonder what I’m talking about? Well, in her own words:

“Sabakis do this kind of thing.”

Sabakis send 250+ emails covering everything from the pace of the preface, to the integrity of a love verse, from the plight of pyjamas to that gentle maturity, that ‘lightness’ called karumi. And they never miss a trick. And they always encourage. And they never get rattled.

Easy. Nothing to learn there then! Basically, what it boils down to is: don’t say ‘beer can’ if you’ve already said ‘hub cap’… and have a flower in it now and again.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps what it boils down to is that we have a fantastic literary genre just waiting to be understood, adopted, enjoyed. Not some odd, foreign, exoticism that we’ll have to transpose, simplify, adapt, rationalise and otherwise drag kicking and screaming from primitive obscurity into the low-voltage, wipe-clean, utility of post modern Manchester [less fortunate individuals: please insert the city of your choice].

As the lady says:

“This isn’t a Word Circus.”

This is literature. World literature. This is your heritage. Claim it.

 

Greasy Fingers Paul Conneally, Loughborough, UK

-thoughts after completing the kasen renku Midsummer Darkness-

The making of art is generally seen to be something done by individuals, a medium of self-expression, and so collaborative works are not the norm. Coming to renku with this background can be difficult, but the joy of giving oneself up to the process — to the work, is worth all those initial difficulties. After this, we have the problem of wondering if what we have produced as a team will be viewed by others as art or just a game — a pastime engaged in by friends — and, of course, it is both.

I have perhaps led 30 ‘renga’ or collaborative poetry sessions in the last eight months, but would not claim most of these as renku — true renku, for me, being works that attempt to explore and connect with the long tradition of Japanese renku — along with the rules and structures of seasonality, its themes — and, having a recognised leader or sabaki to guide the participants.

Most of the renga sessions that I have run have, rather, concentrated on the ‘process’ rather than the finished product — poetry as a team-building exercise. But renku is about teamwork and more: we want to build a structure in verse that stands as a piece of art in itself, and which takes the reader on a journey. For each reader, this journey will be different as he explores the space between the stanzas, and as she make what she can of the ‘link and shift’ inherent to renku. This experience is the same for the individual writers as their ideas are explored, put to one side, amended, rejected and sometimes chosen by the sabaki (or master-poet) as the session progresses.

In this renku, we were lucky to have as our sabaki, Eiko Yachimoto, a kind, thoughtful, knowledgeable and intelligent — not just academically, but emotionally too.

Once the piece is complete for renku writers, the challenge is to then let it go and not worry if some reader or another — or even all find something completely different than meant as the focus of their own stanzas, and not to fret how theirs sit between the two other stanzas. The renku has a life of its own. Our renku will get folks searching for meaning at various points. That is good, for the piece as a whole does work as a carefully constructed collage. Each gap between verses has been shaped by our sabaki — to put her mark, through us, on the whole.

The changes in pace and the more challenging linking of the middle sections followed by our movement to the last verse, or ageku, will, to some readers, be very challenging — even confusing. But what a lovely confusion and compliment to our readers in not serving everything — especially meaning — up on a plate. The best tasting food is often more tasty when eaten with the fingers, each mouthful savoured — the time between each mouthful just making the next even better. So readers, please dirty your hands with our renku. The greasier the better!

 

One e-mail out of hundreds during the session (excerpt) John R. Snyder, USA

Dear Renjyu,

Eiko asked me to explain my choice for the number 12 verse, so here goes. Being completely ignorant of the proper way to choose, I had to fall back on my own resources — a very long fall indeed.

First, I read over the renku-to-date a few times to get my bearings, then I read through the offerings, making note of the verses that immediately “grabbed me” in some way.

At this point, I sorted the verses into “yes,” “maybe,” “maybe not,” and “no” categories. Of the five verses I had immediately liked on first reading, only one remained in the “yes” category. I tried to narrow the “yes” category down to one verse, looking especially at the flow and pace of the whole renku, and looking ahead
to see how each verse might lead us to the upcoming moon verse.

After I had finally chosen one verse, I read back over the other verses one more time to see if I could easily “fix” any problems I had seen with them and thereby change my own mind.

As I’ve seen so many strong offerings come in for the various positions, I’ve often felt relieved that I wasn’t going to have to choose between them. I certainly felt the pressure on verse 6. Any number of the offerings could have led us in fruitful directions, and I grieve a bit that we will never get to see how all those other
renku might have turned out!

Here are my comments on the individual offerings:
a thumb-size priest
with his chopstick as an oar /eiko

This is a verse that did not immediately appeal to me, but over the course of my deliberations, I came to love it. I love the humor, the freshness, the way it both links to and shifts from verse 5, and the rich possibilities it offers for the future. I’m not certain what Eiko had in mind, but I imagined a small figurine, maybe a netsuke-like figure. Eiko, you’ll notice that I changed “his” to “a” and “as” to “for” to make it more natural to my ear, but you will be the final judge.
alone again
the distant rainbow dims /js

This beautifully crafted verse immediately went straight to my heart, and I set it aside very reluctantly. I am drawn to the contrast between it and the romantic intoxication of verse 5. Basically, it came down to what I perceived as an issue for the first folio, namely, the possibility that it might become a little too grandiose
or dramatic. In four of the five verses to date, both tone and diction very elevated and the images quite dramatic. I felt a need to balance that with something lighter in verse 6.
listen to the rhythm
of the falling rain… /ey

Another one I immediately liked. I love how it elaborates on verse 5, both deepening and lightening it at the same time. I think it would have made a fine verse 6, however, for reasons I can’t logically justify, I just did not want to hear more about rain at this point in the folio.
the man with a net chases
painted ladies traveling in pairs /an’ya

Dolt that I am, it took me a couple of readings to realize that the “painted ladies” are butterflies (Vanessa cardui, to be exact), so you can imagine my confusion! Once I cleared that up, I really liked this verse for its creativity and humor. I liked the link to the story of Noah and the ark. Ultimately, I had trouble imagining the
butterflies traveling in pairs, although, for all I know this species often does.
in south america
the plane lands on a dirt airstrip /anya

the old fishmonger’s
boarded up with two-by-two /paul

The following two were both favorites on first reading:
“Message in a Bottle”
on the juke box /jec
saying goodbye
under the Bridge of Sighs /js

I was strongly attracted to the drollness and cultural reverberations of the first and the strong imagery and feeling of the second. However, misguided or not, I wanted to avoid another “proper noun” verse following so hard on the heels of verses 3 & 4.
midlife crisis
Eros’ bow unbent /js

Another strong verse that offers lots of interesting hooks for verse 7 (Johnye, you were really on a roll!), but I wanted to avoid reference to a god or goddess so soon after John’s “Diana” verse.

third Tuesday
the nurse draws blood /anya

I really sweated over this one. It’s such an arresting image and such a nicely flowing verse, but I finally had to admit that it was just over my head.

Blessings,
John R. Snyder

 

Moving Along with “Midnight Darkness” Carmen Sterba, JP

Eiko Yachimoto calls herself our sabaki, but sabaki means one who conducts the poets through the renku. She was much more than that.

Today, I was reading in Haruo Shirane’s Traces of Dreams, and in Chapter Five, “Linking and Communal Poetry” he states that:
The haikai master, who combined the functions of poet, scholar, teacher, literary judge, conductor, and team coach, moved the sequence along at an appropriate pace, helped participants when they were stumped, provided a bridge to the poetic tradition, maintained the mood or atmosphere of the gathering, and ensured the proper degree of variety and change.

This is a great description of what Eiko did for us, and it wasn’t for one day, but for 2 months.

In the kasen, “Withering Gusts” by Basho and his disciples, which appears in “Traces of Dreams”, there is an explanation on the tendencies of the different poets. One had a love of Chinese topics, another had a fondness for the aristocratic world of romances.

Just for fun, looking at this kasen, I would like to comment on some themes that come up more than once among the participating poets of “Midnight Darkness” in the order that they appeared first in this kasen.

Gary Warner chose the theme of family as he starts out this kasen with his hokku about the goslings and their parents, and later with the “family’s Crayola portrait” in blue. He keeps us grounded in the reality that is around us in a humorous way.

Eiko shows us her sense of humor and her skill at linking. Her links are international and cultural: Chinese taichi, a Japanese folktale, and old fashioned cider-making on a farm. I found her link from Kirsty’s “ark” to a thumb-sized person rowing a boat with a chopstick as a great leap of fantasy.

Like Eiko, Paul Conneally’s humor shines, and he also chooses international themes: a British fishmonger, Cio-Cio’s aria from Madame Butterfly, and Japanese pilgrims going from temple to temple. Paul shared URL’s about the references to culture that he came up with that were interesting and educative.

John Snyder has the ability to breathe life into the past of other people’s lives: a deceased artist’s estate sale, nomads in the Ice Age, and a farm family at dawn. If I choose one verse as the most striking, it would be John’s

scattering nomads
he wounded mamoth turns

…which seems to be the turning point in the action of the kasen.

Kirsty Karkow writes about daily life in mysterious ways. Her jam jars are “cooling by moonlight”; her pillows have “the curve of a long night”. Even a visit to a mountain does not focus on the mountain but on movement of someone’s saffron robe. This is mysterious!

John E. Carley’s verses are emotive. His mountain is “breathless”, his Diana, the huntress is unaware of her danger (the myth and the princess as one). His verses are good for reading:

a snowflake melting
on a salted seabream

…and in the ageku at the end of our kasen:

way after teatime
the sun still in the sky

Johnye Strickland’s theme is similar to Gary’s, yet she focuses on certain
members of a family like “the Slugger’s wife” and the “twin dolphins”. I
appreciate Johnye’s leap from the myth of the huntress Diana to the real
life of a baseball widow.

The verses that an’ya wrote are emotive as she engages herself personally with a horsefly (Issa-like). Her young lovers make smouldering “eye contact”. As with her haiku, there is always a clarity of word choice in the combination of natural beauty and human nature.

As for myself, I realized that in each of my verses there is movement: surveillance cameras, children running, a computer in the act of freezing, and “blossoms delivered by the storm.”

 

Time is a major subject Johnye Strickland, USA

Two years ago I discovered renku. After two quick short forms, I was hooked. It has been my good fortune to be associated with Eiko in several renku groups, either as advisor (with me as her principal student) or as active participant. It is always both exciting and challenging to try to come up with verses that hopefully would fit in (and get past Eiko’s rigorous scrutiny).

But there is one area that my experience which probably exceeds that of most of the participants I have worked with — that of reader. Not of haiku or renku, but of world literature in general, and of poetry in particular, since I have spent 50 years of my life in this role (39 as a professor of literature).

So, I can now find links that probably would never even occur to the authors, though I might be hard pressed to decide which category they belong to (I still have a lot to learn about this, especially as a writer). I believe each reader brings to a piece of literature a wealth of personal experience — with life, with reading, and with cultural, historical, and psychological/sociological understanding of people, animals, and events.

And until such time as renku becomes entrenched in a canon, and scholars
insist on finding the specific source for each image, idea and linguistic nuance, I think readers should do as Paul suggests, and get their hands greasy finding meanings for themselves.

This renku has broadened my appreciation for what I think Eiko refers to as ‘the renku aesthetic,’ since we have been permitted to watch her collect our degachi verses and put them in her sleeve, to later pull them out in places we never expected to find them. And to my continuing amazement, they seemed to fit well, and to take the kasen in totally different directions than I would have envisioned.

I do think, however, there are a few places in this kasen where the links might be made a bit clearer by more editing. I agree with Gary that the ‘korl woman’ might be a bit of a challenge for the reader who wants to know the real source of the image (the following paragraph quoted by ey from JS’s e-mail at the time of composition):

It seems I have read somewhere (in one of the airline magazines on either a Delta or an American flight, as I recall) that some areas of the world attract lightning repeatedly, possibly because of a magnetic attraction between iron deposits in the soil. [a reference to the lightning in the preceding verse by John C].

I do agree with John that Eiko’s suggestion of using the ‘korl woman’ verse as an introduction to the love verses is a brilliant way of linking — one I never thought of, but it works perfectly with the context of the story in which the statue appears (Life in the Iron Mills, by Rebecca Harding Davis, pub. 1861, at the beginning of the US Civil War, which was fought for the purpose of liberating the slaves, but did nothing for the wage-slaves in the form of immigrant laborers, whose lives were miserable in the mining/milling industries before the rise of the Labor Unions. The character is passionate about his need to create art, and the only material he has at hand is the refuse or slag discarded in the milling process. After cooling, it is a grayish white, in a town that is gray from the coal smoke, mingled with the fog/smog in the air and the barren, grayish muddy soil polluted by the smog. The man is destroyed by insensitive mill owners/overseers, but the korl woman is still, around 25 years later, in the attic room where Rebecca Harding Davis is staying during her visit to the town, and when inspired to tell the tale.

Now I can’t match wits with Dick on naming the types of links, but I can point out what I see as links in the 3 verses he specifically mentions as lacking.

#27 and #28 are linked by sadness, an emotion clearly expressed in the opera (‘Madame Butterfly’), and implied in the memento of a young child kept by a mother or grandmother who wanted to remember him as he was before he grew up and went away.

The most important link, in my opinion, between #28 and #29 is a subtle one–

‘Time and tide wait for no man,’ a well known literary quotation.

Time is a major subject of #28, with the preservation of the young child’s essence in the bag of hair; and of course tide is featured in #29. And in #29, we find the twin dolphins, the changing tide and the mythic moon which draws them as well as the tide.

On rereading this, I see another link — by contrast: if the emotion of #28 is sadness, then we can posit the mood for #29 to be happiness, as shown by the playful dolphins, who always look happy because they have built-in smiles. And yet another — the discovery by someone of the bag of hair, presumably many years later, would be a special moment — as would be the cavorting of the dolphins under the golden moon (moments worthy of haiku, or in this case, renku).

 

I’m not so worried as I was Gary Warner, USA

The thing that seemed to be missing in our renku was the shared social history that makes the sharing of context possible. To be honest, I was scared that we might have a renku that practically guarantees that no reader anywhere in the world will be able to read the entire poem without either failing to understand some of the stanzas, or relying heavily on external reference materials. As I’ve worked through the verses though, I’m not so worried as I was when I began.

At one point in our process, I almost wondered if the participants were making a contest of seeing who could make the most obscure link! But then I had to bring myself back to the fact that each of us is from a different history and a different social context from each of the others. Some of the most visible conflicts came into language differences, which I believe the team overcame with remarkable openness and willingness to point out error, and to accept correction.

‘Universal’ may not be the right word, but in the following I examined the nature of links based on universality.

(only those links that fit into x pages are shown below — ey )

---

v.1 – Although this is set in Birmingham Alabama, the experience of seeing geese reach the height of their parents seems fairly universal.

v.2 – Although tai’chi has a distinct heritage, it is recognized by nearly any person in the modern world.

v.4 – I am still unsure if anyone would “get this” without our on-list conversation about the “bridges” and the “antenna”. . .I think I would be drawn to “spider webs” myself.

v.8 – “korl woman” was a very hard reference for me. I went hunting, and found “Life in the Iron-Mills, or The Korl Woman” by Rebecca Harding Davis, but “korl” was an unknown word to me, and I had never heard of or encountered the book.

v.10 – This was one of those jumbled verses for me. The original of this verse was:
winning the pennant
a standing ovation
for the Knoxville slugger

this got changed to:
winning the pennant
hugs for The Slugger’s wife

. . .and then, because “pennant” was declared to be an autumn season word,
winning a new life
hugs for The Slugger’s wife

. . .which totally lost all meaning for me. Who is winning a life? Why is the wife getting hugged? And by whom?

v.12 – The reference to the story of “Tiny Finger” was missed on most of us, probably, but most cultures also have “Tom Thumb” type characters — tiny people living among normal-sized people, so I don’t think this is a problem. (Tiny Finger, a Japanese Tom Thumb character, asks his mother for a wooden bowl and a chopstick to be used as a boat and oar to take himself to Kyoto to become a soldier. He presents himself to the Lord of the Palace in Kyoto, asking to become a great soldier. He is given a sewing needle as a sword, and is placed in the role of personal bodyguard to the princess of the palace. After he saves the princess’ life, he is granted a wish; he wishes to become full-sized, which he does, so that he can marry the princess.)

The verse can easily be understood on surface level without a knowledge of the reference, but especially following a love verse, knowing the end of the story adds another layer.

v.15 – The lack of knowledge of Mt. Kailas does not hinder this verse. Those who know it will gain an added level. Those who do not will simply assume that it is a place monks might pilgrimage to or live.

v.16 – Universal, with such an interesting link to the previous verse! The DEAD “horse-fly” flies away to its after-life/next life . . .

v.17 – “estate sale”: something that follows the death of an older person in which all their belongings are sold. A great link to follow the horse-fly!

v.18 – “lucy’s land” . . . i still think this the most challenging of all our verses. Perhaps if the second line actually referred to something that occurs IN THE SONG, the reference would at least be detectable. I’m not knowledgeable of the Beatles, but I looked up the lyrics and nothing “sprouts” in the song . . . drainpipes or post boxes or anything else.

The song still gets a great deal of radio time, and is instantly recognizable when it is heard. The most recognizable phrase would probably be “kaleidoscope eyes” but we can’t do that because of a run-on sequence of “eyes” and “tears” later in our renku already.

My wife would probably say I just need to know more about the Beatles!

 

The renga as public performance Dick Pettit, DK: a judicious spectator

- one often draws on enduring memories for a verse-

I am writing this before being asked to produce. It is very kind of you to have me in as a spectator for the last folio and now commentator, and warming to be welcomed. But I feel like a passing stranger who has been invited in to someone’s Christmas party. People couldn’t be nicer, but I still feel the winter blast I’ve brought in with me. What I have to say about Midsummer Darkness may be censorious, but it comes from principle, as well as from my crotchety self. If to struggle through my self-educated views on renga would be daunting, please skip the next six paragraphs.

I became enthusiastic about renga about ten years ago, though the seed was sown long before by Noboyuki Yuasa’s translation of the first eight verses of “Minase San-gin” in The Narrow Road. In spite of Hiroaki Sato’s analysis in One Hundred Frogs, and my own realisation that it is not just a succession of picturesque scenes, I still think beautiful the first word to use for it.

There are only a dozen or so ‘medieval’ & ‘baroque’ renga available in translation for the English-speaker to form ideas from. I’ve taken mine mainly from what I see in Summer Moon. I’ve written copiously, but mainly solo, as companions and groups were hard to come by, and I’ve only recently joined a renga group with anyone able to act as sabaki.

As a beginner, it seemed the first thing to master was linking. In both the 15th & 17th centuries, there were changes of fashion in linking: fashion, indeed, because many basics must stay the same. I still hold to the most obvious type: links should be heart-links, based on the whole of the preceding verse. “One-word”, “phrase” or “part-verse” links may be forced by the last verse, or come out of variation or lightness, but a succession of them makes the renga bitty or arbitrary. Within each of the two types, there are roughly three sorts of link: “continuation” (story, picture); “parallel/contrast”; and “scent”. Although Basho is credited as the originator of these last, the quotes in One Hundred Frogs show there were such links in the medieval renga. All three types may be close or distant. The three sets of variables, “close/distant”, “heart/word” and “continuation/parallel/scent”, create the ‘speed’ of the renga: that is the ease or difficulty the reader/listener has in realising how he got from one thing to another, and what it is he sees, now he’s here. A very special ‘fast’ link is the kind which changes the picture or meaning of its previous verse (e.g vv 25/6 in MD).

This scheme may have complications and additions. Also, the linking is the medium rather than the message, which lies in the succession of scenes. These can be positive or negative, expansive or contracting, simple, complex or ambiguous, tight or carefree, and so on. Also there are reactions and messages between the participants. The translated renga range from those that have a definite theme and character, for example “Withering Gusts” (Basho, tr. Haruo Shirani) and “Broken under Reeds” (Shinkei, tr. Esmeralda Ramirez Christensen), to the gay and picaresque. There also seems at times to be the pursuit of something which is lost and found; and many no doubt had contemporary messages. A point which the ‘zip’ style of verses makes clearer is that the renga may in part unroll, not only verse by verse, but also phrase by phrase.

This is the renga as public performance. It is also a game in which each player exercises creativity, shows parts of themselves to the others and gives and takes in all sorts of ways. I am sure everyone has felt the exhilaration of the intense involvement which develops in the WHCrenku type renga with a sabaki. So it has great value for the participants, regardless of whether it’s widely appreciated or not.

Up till recently, I’ve not tried to write full seasonal kasen, or even known of the conventions for various verses, though I have kept the moon and blossoms as markers and points of repose or change. This is common among UK/US writers. The chief advocate for Japanese traditional renga has been William Higginson, but I wasn’t convinced: more a constraint than a liberation. Now, I feel confident enough to try this out, and see what can be done.

All that said, now for “Midsummer Darkness”. My first impression, when the last folio of the kasen was unfolding, was of too many people doing their own thing: eight is a lot to stay in rapport. But repeated readings dissolved this impression: there is a warmth of communication between the verses as well as a disciplined style. The things, which according to my scheme of things are wrong, seemed no longer to matter, and the renga flowed pleasantly on its strengths.

I enjoy writing commentary on renga: I hope it is useful, of course, but it enables me to test out my ideas, and often to modify them. For example, the first seven verses are all parallels, normally too many at once, but here making an exploratory introduction. Verses 7 through 12 of the 1st folio verso are dramatic, but any disturbance is brought down to size by the thumb-sized warrior. Verses 13-18 lose coherence – maybe this is “midsummer darkness”. The disjointedness continues in 19 through 21 of the 2nd folio recto, until the snowflake melting on a salted sea bream (poignant and precise) starts a run of strong verses of varied feeling. Although the two verses at 27/28 are unconnected, the images are strong. But the third unconnected (moon) verse is one too many. However, from 30 to the end there is a mixture of pleased sensation, feeling, precision and humour passing easily from one to another, which is the overall impression the renga makes.

A recurrent thought is that renga can be both a leisure game, pursued with poetic, psycho-therapeutic or even religious intentions; and a performance, like a play or a piece of music. It may seem that players can’t do both at the same time. Yet that is what they do with each verse: a situation, feeling, character, tone of voice, is assumed, but at the same time strongly felt or visualised. I expect others have noticed that one often draws on enduring memories for a verse, especially when stuck. This, though, may then be altered to fit the movement of the renga at that point. So there is an audience, if only imaginary, and among them the ‘judicious spectator’, which I hope I’ve been.

Thanks for the entertainment.

---

On missing links: (written in response to Johnye’s essay)

To start at the end: ‘Peace and Harmony’. In some sense, yes, but it’s not the
immediate aim. ‘Fie on this quiet life, I want work!’ It’s not good for me; I don’t do it well, but without it., I’m lost. Thanks be to the Creator.

Preamble on Classification of Links. I was forced to this, in self-defence. On the one hand were the vivid and flowing renga of Basho & Co, still not exhausted now, and on the other the renga in several magazines, mostly shapeless, disconnected, self-indulgent, & lacking haiku objectivity — everyone doing their own thing.

So how to point this out without being personally offensive? Answer: a classification which all could agree was basically right (if lacking in refinement), and could be pointed back to as rules which were being wrongly or justifiably broken. This also is why I think heart-links are the first link to try for. Maybe this last needs thinking out a bit more.

‘Midsummer Darkness’: I can now see the links at 9/10/11 (Diana/ Slugger’s wife/ love spills) ; 16/17 (flown away/ estate sale); and 26/27/28/29 (book shelves/ tears ,Cio-Cio area/ blond hair/ tide, golden moon.

A joke explained loses some of its savour, so no apology except for ‘Cho-Cho / blond hair’. Yes, the sorrow is clearly there; but, in mitigation, at that time I thought Cho-Cho* [this was how the name was spelled then - ey] was a character in a Chinese opera only Paul knew of — the very one whose CD I’d decided not to invest in — and so was unsympathetic to his tears.

As it happened, a day or so after writing the crit, The Slugger was mentioned on CNN.

To conclude, ‘Midsummer Darkness’, as a whole, has balance, style, peace, harmony and vivid activity, with striking, ingenious and moving verses. Pity about those links vanished in front of me.

Keep Chiming,

Dick Pettit

 

Shiki’s Fireworks

July 2002

WHC Shiki Celebrations: Essay – Susumu Takiguchi

WHC MASAOKA SHIKI CENTENARY CELEBRATIONS

Shiki’s Fireworks, a note from Susumu Takiguchi

This text is extracted from the introduction to the fifth strand of the Masaoka Shiki On-line Joint Translation Project. An article detailing the development of the strand appears elsewhere in this publication under the title In the Aftermath of Shiki’s Fireworks (Ed.).

hito kaeru hanabi no ato no kura-sa kana         

……..Masaoka Shiki, 1895, Meiji 28

hito=people
kaeru=return, go home (rentai-kei, or a kind of participial adjective)
hanabi=fireworks
no=possessive, or genitive (case) particle
ato=after
no=possessive, or genitive (case) particle
kura-sa=darkness
kana=particle, exclamatory, kireji
spectators
on their way home

after the fireworks -
what darkness!

……..version by ST

The fireworks over,
The people all gone, –
How dark it is!

……..tr. by R. H. Blyth, pp. 1025-1026, Haiku, vol. 4

Blyth comments:

This is no mere psychological observation. The darkness was felt by the poet in a physical way. We may explain the matter as a physiological reaction, but what Shiki is telling us is something about the absence of two things and the presence of one as a unity of deep experience.

It seems that there is a slight mistake here (if such a great man as Blyth could make a mistake, which I think he could). Ostensibly, there is no past tense or present perfect in the verb kaeru used. It is in the present tense. Therefore, one cannot say that the people have, or are “all gone”. They may still have been all be there, or some may have gone but others, or the majority of them, may have still been there. Having said that, the real interpretation is not necessarily merely based on grammar. Even if the tense is present like the haiku under review, Shiki could still be ‘meaning’ the past, i.e. people have already gone home. Only in this case, I don’t think so.

The important point seems to me to be that Shiki was depicting the time when the people were in the process of going home. In my experience as a child, as many as a thousand people came to see the fireworks along the coast and it took them half an hour to an hour to disappear completely. In Trafalgar Square, London, thousands would come on New Year’s Eve. Such a crowd take a long time to disperse and disappear. Of course, Shiki could be talking about a few, a dozen or 20, 30 people.

My gut feeling is that he was talking about  eyes having been accustomed to the brightness of fireworks, especially the finale, then being unable to adjust to the sudden darkness quickly; also psychologically being unable to switch from one scene of elation and wonder to the other of darkness and nothingness. This feeling tends to last for some time, which is also my experience. I had never thought otherwise until I started to write this introduction. Contrary to Blyth, I would say that this haiku is about physical reaction to the darkness first and psychological reaction second. I agree with him about the deepness of the poem but, then, perhaps few would disagree to it anyway.

Blyth quotes Shoha’s haiku about fireworks and speculates that it may have inspired Shiki:

hanabi-bune yujin satte aki no mizu

……..Shoha

In a boat seeing the fireworks;
When the spectators had gone. –
The water of autumn.

Rather than this, Blyth’s quoting another haiku by Shiki is more appropriate:

Sabishisa ya hanabi no ato no hoshi no tobu

……..Shiki

Loneliness;
After the fireworks,
A falling star.

Instead of quoting Blyth’s explanation of this haiku, I would just cite our own member’s recent haiku:

the odyssey
of 2001 draws nigh
Jupiter’s bright glow

or,

odyssey 2001
draws to a close
Jupiter’s bright glow

……..soji, Fredericksburg, VA, USA

06/01/02 ST

Read also : In the Aftermath of Shiki’s Fireworks