“First Book” is a column where we ask first-time authors what inspired them to write their debut book/novel/translation.
Books on Asia: What’s your book’s elevator pitch? Floor Kist: The novel is about a young diplomat who builds a Thinking Machine to bring peace, but instead, it discovers a plot for war.
BOA:Can you explain the genre of your book and what makes it stand out among its genre?
Kist: The genre of the book is hard science fiction. I’ve tried my best to base the technologies in the novel on existing ones. I also conceptualized serious reasons why the setting has a 1930s retro vibe. So, after a Final War that apparently destroyed civilization, survivors hid inside underground vaults. Only, after more than two hundred years, most of the technology ceased working. And the survivors had to revert to older more mechanical technology to keep the vaults working.
There is a lot of science fiction where (excuse the stereotyping) a former marine saves the universe from creepy aliens. And I wanted something very different. The book is about hope and how different people work together to achieve it, despite their differences. They solve their problems with their wits, not their fists.
Politician and AI researcher Floor Kist
BOA:You live in the Netherlands, right? What is your connection to Japan?
Kist: My father met Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko many years ago and Japan an ideal setting for the story I wanted to tell. The mythical origin of the Imperial family dates back more than two thousand years and I wanted to connect this deep past with four hundred years in the future.
There is something special in the look and feel of Japan in the 1930s that I saw in some old movies. I wanted a traditionalistic world with old fashioned politeness with a strong undercurrent of stiffness and resistance to change, issues that Japan is still dealing with these days.
BOA:Why are you the person to write this book?
I’m a local politician in my town (Deputy-Mayor for the Green Party), and every day I am convinced that we need to work together to deal with the big issues we’re facing. I am also an AI researcher and interested in how AI can be used to resolve society’s big issues. The idea of bringing peace and trying to bring people together is basically my daily job. The idea of designing a thinking machine to help solve big issues in society is what I’m writing my doctoral thesis on. For six years I’ve been interested in how AI will help deal with complexity.
Author Floor Kist with Ambassador to the Netherlands Hidehisa Horinouchi
BOA:How has COVID-19 helped (or hindered) the writing process?
Kist: Making time to write can be challenging. There are just so many distractions. So, I really make time in my schedule to write, even if it’s just half an hour. This was an incredible lesson: plan to write. That’s the only way you will finish your novel. I know people have dealt with the COVID-19 lockdowns in different ways. I’ve seen how it affected my kids. But somehow it gave me the time and the calmness to write the novel I had been carrying around for many years.
In this episode of Alex Kerr’s Youtube Channel Secrets of Things, he introduces a Japanese sumikeshi-tsubo (“charcoal quenching jar”). This video takes place at his home “Chiiori” in the Iya Valley of Shikoku.
Judith Clancy and Alex Kerr book-end this remarkable anthology (edited by Rebecca Otowa and Karen Lee Tawarayama), a publication offering incredible insight into the physical, spiritual and artistic elements of Kyoto. In the Foreword, Clancy reminisces on the past fifty years she has spent in Japan’s ancient capital, commenting on how much the city has changed, while Kerr’s essay questions one’s reasons for touring top tourist destinations. He stresses the fragility of Kyoto’s culture and implores visitors to consider whether their presence in Japan’s former capital would be beneficial for the town itself and the people who live there.
In this 172-page book, the reader can expect a contribution by Rebecca Otowa on the aspects of tea and Kyoto as the home of chanoyu (Japanese tea ceremony) and Rona Conti shares her passion for calligraphy. During Conti’s lessons with her teacher Kobayashi-sensei, she faced a plethora of intercultural frustrations but took them all in her stride, as a result succeeding more than most.
Mark Hovane discloses a wealth of knowledge on Japanese Zen gardens in just seven pages in his essay “Rocks, Gravel, and a Bit of Moss.” Hovane gives the reader hints on how to fully appreciate Japanese dry landscapes or karesansui, like Ryoanji Temple. He says that when “Slowing down and considering what is ‘seen’ from the full gamut of sensory, philosophical and spiritual perspectives, a richer experience will emerge.”
“Sparrow Steps” by Amanda Huggins is a delightful short story on page 40. In this piece, romantic vows between a girl and a boy are exchanged at Kinkaku-ji Temple under the cherry blossom trees in autumn. Memories of sakura petals in springtime prompt the girl to suggest they meet there again ten years to the day if they ever drift apart. But will it be reciprocated? Felicity Tillack’s contribution “The River” is a brief reflection on her life as a teacher during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the day she connected with her students at Horikawa River for a memorable boat race.
John Dougill introduces three literary cafés in Kyoto and Jann Williams discusses her spiritual connection with gorinto grave markers. There’s also a charming kappa (water imp) story by Karen Lee Tawarayama set in 2050, to enjoy. The Kamogawa River is a centrepiece for several chapters including “Converging Waters” by Robert Weis, “Sunrise over the Kamogawa” by Ina Sanjana and a poem called “December” by Lauren E. Walker. Daimonji, the bonfire that is lit in the shape of a kanji character on a mountain northeast of Kyoto during the Obon Festival in August, is the subject of a poignant poem by Lisa Wilcut. There’s also an amusing short story featuring the Daimonji by Simon Rowe.
Catherine Pawasarat’s segment elaborates on the Kyoto’s Gion Festival. She touches on its history, explaining how it is deeply rooted in the suffering of the midsummer heat. It all began when the superstitious Emperor Seiwa insisted on a ritual in 869 to rid Kyoto of its angry onryo. The people of Kyoto believed these evil spirits caused all the bacteria, viruses and plagues that killed so many people that July. There’s much more on the Gion Festival as well as Buddhist theories to contemplate in Pawasarat’s offering.
There are many other pieces of fiction and non-fiction, poems and pictures within the pages of this short anthology by a variety of member authors and artists including Mike Freiling, Reggie Pawle, Edward J. Taylor, John Einarsen, Robert Yellin, Ken Rogers, Marianne Kimura, and WiK Writing Competition winners from 2019 and 2020. The beauty and sincerity of each contribution refines the heart, mind and soul.
In this episode of the Books on Asia Podcast, sponsored by Stone Bridge Press, we have guest interviewer Lisa Wilcut speaking with award-winning writer and translator Meredith McKinney. McKinney is translator of many Japanese classics such as Sei Shonagon’s 11th century classic The Pillow Book, and the 14th century Essays in Idleness, published together with Hōjōki. She has also translated Kusamakura and Kokoro (see our review) by Natsume Sōseki, one of Japan’s most celebrated modern writers. Today, she is going to talk about her long career and also about her just released book on the wandering poet Saigyō called Gazing at the Moon (Shambhala, September, 2021)
Kokoro (“Heart”) offers deep insight into the human psyche and investigates internal struggles and the darker sides of admiration, envy and temptation.
First published in 1914, Natsume Soseki’s timeless classic Kokoro has been graced with three translations. My first exposure to this book was through Edwin McClellan’s lovely 1957 version. For my re-introduction to Kokoro, I had the pleasure of reading Meredith McKinney’s 2010 translation.
Kokoro (which means heart) offers deep insight into the human psyche and investigates several internal struggles, especially the darker sides of admiration, envy and temptation. The story is set in the late Meiji (1868-1912) and early Taisho (1912-1926) eras and explores the evolving Japanese mores of the times, focusing on the contradictory impulses of honoring the common good versus individual needs and desires.
The book is broken into three parts. The narrator is an impressionable university student in Tokyo who latches on to an older man he chooses to call Sensei. Part One establishes their relationship. The student is mesmerized by Sensei’s enigmatic manner and admires the man despite proof that he is not a productive member of society. We also learn that Sensei has a sadness and cynicism that haunts him.
In the short middle section, the narrator returns home to nurse his dying father. We witness how the narrator compares these two important men in his life and how they measure up in his esteem by their social standing, education and character.
Section three is a long letter from Sensei to the narrator where he finally confides his painful history, a secret he has shared with no one. He is a jaded man, and over his lifetime he has learned not to trust anyone, including himself. He hopes his confession to be a form of redemption for he intends his story to be a moral lesson to the narrator and perhaps to others.
Kokoro is remarkable in its ability create a sense of crescendo with very little action. The stakes build slowly, and as readers we can feel the steady movement toward an inevitable conclusion. On the other hand, the narrator’s youthful optimism blinds him to the negative outcomes the readers take for granted.
Soseki provides a wonderful canvas for a translator by offering a straightforward plot and simple structure, but they are deceptive. The challenge for the translator is to showcase the existential questions addressed in the book. McKinney does this well by providing us with a modern translation that does not obscure the feel of the era.
She has broken up the book into very brief chapters and short paragraphs. Where Edwin McClellan’s translation is one long story broken up into many scenes, McKinney has chosen to use these scene breaks as chapter breaks, making the already accessible narrative even more readable and digestible. These chapter breaks allow the reader to pause and consider the moral questions posed throughout the book.
McKinney’s language is more colloquial than McClellan’s which serves the narrative well, since so much is revealed through dialogue. For example, she eschews the formal third-person expression “one.” In addition, she chooses simpler punctuation. Periods replace colons and semi-colons. Overall, a very pleasant read.
If you have never read Kokoro, this translation is a wonderful first experience. If you are not new to the book, you will find that McKinney has made revisiting this story a delight.
The Art of Emptiness gives the reader insight into one of the most famous lineages of Japanese pottery. Interviewer Watada Susumu starts off with a seeming digression: Kakiemon—the fourteenth generation heir to the famous Japanese pottery tradition—gives a detailed and insightful description of how to smoke a pipe. The charismatic Sakaida Kakiemon XIV, who gave up his birth name “Masashi” after his father (the thirteenth Kakiemon) passed away in 1982, is fascinated by the “flow and rhythm” of pipe-smoking. He reveals tricks for cleaning the bowl and how to flip the tobacco to get an even burn. He bemoans the withering production and supply of shredded pipe tobacco. To Kakiemon, smoking is not just a considered pastime: “Smoking is part of the job.” What seems an irrelevant digression is actually a portrait of a master craftsman, and of the attention to detail that Kakiemon brings to everything he does with his hands.
The Art of Emptiness is a collection of interviews with Kakiemon XIV over a three year period. Originally published in 2004, this English translation by Gavin Frew was released in 2019, six years after the death of Kakiemon XIV (his son Hiroshi has since succeeded him as the fifteenth Kakiemon). In the conversational tone of the book Kakiemon XIV comes across as a humble, jovial fellow, laughing his way through a recounting of his upbringing in the kiln under the supervision of his laid back father, and his demanding grandfather. The book is a window into the formation of someone predestined to be a master craftsman and take the mantle of a four-hundred-year legacy.
The middle third of the book covers the end-to-end production process of porcelain works. Although filled with detail, the book keeps a brisk pace. It is particularly interesting to learn what has changed over the past four hundred years.
Each successive heir to the Kakiemon lineage must contend with tensions between tradition and transmission, of being a craftsperson versus an artist, while having a deep-felt responsibility to properly run the business of the kiln and keep workers employed. Changes to the land over the centuries also affect production. Over and over Kakiemon XIV laments how the raw materials used in pottery have changed. The ash of the winter hazel tree is a key component of the ceramic glaze but due to declining numbers of the tree, the Kakiemon family is forced to uproot its tea fields to plant winter hazel thereby protecting future generations of potters. A Kakiemon must always think about the future while looking at the past.
The final section, “Appreciation”, covers a series of case studies. Accompanied by full colour photos of pieces, Kakiemon XIV demonstrates the key characteristics of his tradition. Aka-e is the distinctive enamel colouring used in the paintings. Nigoshide, a term from the Arita dialect meaning “water that rice has been washed in,” is the milky-white surface that Kakiemon works are known for. Finally, there is yohaku, the blank space representing “emptiness”, a philosophical theme that permeates the book.
The pottery techniques of Kakiemon have been designated an “Important Intangible Cultural Property” by the Japanese government. The story of the first “Kakiemon the Potter” has even been captured in Japanese elementary school textbooks. The Art of Emptiness brings the legacy of Kakiemon to English readers in an accessible manner, directly from a lineage successor once designated a “Living Treasure.”
Books on Asia is live in Japan to kick off the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games! In these unusual times, we offer you an unusual take on a book review, written by Michael Dylan Welch. No more delays, let’s go for the Gold!
“Hello, everyone, and welcome to Haiku Playmakers and today’s episode of the Go-Shichi-Go Bleacher Report. I’m Michael Dylan Welch, also known as Captain Haiku, and with us today we have our usual panel of haiku experts—or as we like to call them, kigonauts. That means Matsuo Bashō, Fukuda Chiyo-ni, Yosa Buson, Kobayashi Issa, and Masaoka Shiki—and hey, no one’s off playing hooky this week. Today’s featured book is Kit Pancoast Nagamura’s Grit, Grace, and Gold: Haiku Celebrating the Sports of Summer, published in 2020 by Kodansha USA.
Shiki, please tell us more about this book—is it worth our time?”
“Thank you, Captain. Yes, this book is a real home run, and you know me—I love baseball poems. But readers will find all sorts of sports to enjoy—thirty-two different summer sports, arranged alphabetically, each with a fine selection of haiku about that sport, ending with a section on spectating.”
“We’re all good at spectating, eh?”
“For sure. And the book also features topical photos by the author, along with Japanese calligraphy by Yoshie Miyaji to identify each sport. All the poems are by Nagamura, but she also invited guest poets to add a haiku for each sport, and each of those sections ends with a poem by that guest poet.”
“That’s a very generous step to take in a book of one’s own poems.”
“Indeed it is, Captain.”
“But what does the ‘gold’ refer to in the book’s title?”
“Good question. Maybe gold medals? But the book’s finale poem lets us know. The collection seems an obvious tie-in to the 2020 Summer Olympics scheduled for Tokyo but, surely for trademark reasons, no mention of the Olympic games appears anywhere in the book.”
“And of course, the postponement of the Olympics until 2021 has dampened the book’s thunder.”
“Perhaps, Captain, but because so many sports have seasonal associations, surely we can celebrate the book in any summer. And the book will still have relevance long after the Tokyo Olympics has had its closing ceremony.”
“You got that, Shiki. Now, Buson, please tell us more about the book’s structure.”
“Happy to do so, sir. Right out of the starting gate we have a foreword by Marie Mariya, followed by an introduction by Nagamura. These pieces appear in both English and Japanese, as do all the poems. Superfans will appreciate the acknowledgments at the end, along with brief biographies of each of the thirty-two guest competitors.”
“Where are they from?”
“All over—a truly global representation. Japan and the United States provide the most participants, but flags also fly from Italy, the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, Russia, Croatia, Australia, Nigeria, Canada, and India. But the great bulk of the poems are by Nagamura-san.”
“Tell us more about the foreword, would you?”
“Sure. We learn that Mariya is Nagamura’s dear friend, and that a typical saijiki or season-word almanac contains sports-related kigo or season words used for haiku writing. Mariya tells haiku fans that ‘This book will surely give you a new view of the haiku world—dynamic, youthful, and full of power.’”
“And the intro?”
“The introduction is a bit more substantive, explaining why the author does not follow the 5-7-5 syllable count, and how Japanese haiku count mora, which are not the same as syllables. Nagamura says, ‘Based purely on a 17-syllable counting method, a poet writing in English could easily slip in enough words for two haiku in Japanese.’ She explains the value of season words in haiku and helps us understand that sports references are often seasonal and how sports can easily connect to haiku.”
“And she leaves readers with inspiration, is that right?”
“Absolutely, sir. She tells us that ‘Writing good haiku involves the same attention to grace, balance, strength, bravery, restraint and observation that propels athletes to their peak’ and that ‘The training of both forms of expression is long, and the performance of both is, relatively speaking, brief.’ Makes you want to try haiku, eh, even if you can’t take up weightlifting! ‘Done well,’ she says, ‘the results of both haiku and competitive sports lift our hearts and suffuse us with an appreciation for the complexity, challenges, and beauty of existence.’”
“Would you have liked to have seen more sports covered, Buson?”
“Hmmm. Not sure that more sports could have been covered, and you’d have to ask—would enough haiku of international competitive quality have been possible for any obscure sports that could have been added? It’s also not clear how these guest athletes qualified to compete, but the author does say in the intro that she ‘invited a fabulous group of award-winning international haiku poets from around the globe to join me in exploring the flexibility of haiku when combined with the inspiration of sports.’”
“So, all the poems are newly written for the book, then?”
“That seems to be the case, yes, except for one of the guest baseball poems, which is given a prior publication citation. Each sport has four to eight poems, including one guest poet for each section except spectating. This isn’t an anthology of whatever poems the editor could find about particular sports, even of her own work, so nearly the entire book showcases new work.”
“Does that make the poems uneven at times?”
“Haiku is such a personal art, perhaps only each reader can decide that for themselves. I do wonder, though, what experience some of the guest poets have with the sports they write about. However, some do have connections (occasionally explained in the bios at the back) or they clearly researched their subjects to enter their poetic moments with empathy, as does the author with all her poems. We see many enjoyable poems, and they might well encourage us to try out a sport we’ve not done ourselves.”
“And yet some of the sports we might never try.”
“True, like high-diving, boxing, or fencing, at least for me, but maybe others are into that, and not just to watch. Surely many of us have engaged in sports such as baseball, badminton, swimming, cycling, and table tennis, and while we might not compete on an international level, our knowledge of these sports helps us to enjoy the poems themselves.”
“Yes, the poems. Why don’t we discuss a few. Chiyo-ni, please share a few selections.”
“Happy to do so, Captain. The book begins with aquatics. Here’s one of its five poems, where I’m attracted to the moment’s tension and attention, and the surprise of the last line.”
starting block
her toes curl around
the silence
“Here’s another here-and-now poem, by American guest poet Carole MacRury, from the canoe and kayak section.”
class V rapids
a kayaker learns to live
in the moment
“And from the rowing section, this sharp-moment poem.”
egret flight
a perfect pause
between strokes
“Thank you, Chiyo-ni. Are we ready for some more? Bashō, any highlight-reel poems from you?”
“Certainly. How about this one from the rugby section.”
lost ball
behind storm clouds
a summer moon
“We know only from context that this is a rugby poem, so that doesn’t serve as the season word—the summer moon does. And here’s a skateboarding poem.”
hunting the streets
for rails and curbs
summer moon
“One more selection, a volleyball poem by Terry Ann Carter, a guest poet from Canada.”
sway
of the volleyball net
June breeze
“Thanks for your keen eye, Bashō. Now back to you, Shiki. Spot any typos or any other concerns?”
“Just a few—very minor. David McMurray is Canadian but lives in Japan, yet is listed as a United States resident, and I’ve always counted Tokyo as having four mora (sound units), not five—which comes up in the intro when syllable counting is mentioned. I’m also not sure why the ‘multisports’ section isn’t just called ‘running,’ since all its poems relate to running and marathons.”
“Any other thoughts?”
“Yup. Elsewhere, some of the poems employ jargon unique to that sport, such as a ‘drag flick’ and ‘Indian dribble’ in field hockey, an ‘eggplant’ in skateboarding, or ‘par terre’ in wrestling, but fortunately most of them come with footnotes to provide explanations.”
“Not all of them?”
“No, a few don’t, such as ‘judo-gi’ and ‘ippon’ in the martial arts section, ‘Elvis leg’ in the sport climbing poems, or ‘libero’ in the volleyball section. In some cases, such as ‘penhold’ in table tennis or ‘knurling’ in weightlifting, not everyone will know the terms, yet I am glad that Nagamura did not hesitate to use such vivid words.”
“Thank you—something to think about. Issa, we haven’t heard from you yet—and you’re usually the most talkative! Might you have some selections from the spectator section at the end?”
“Most certainly. Kit Pancoast Nagamura has not been just a spectator with haiku, having been active with the Haiku International Association and the Ginza Poetry Society, and often winning or placing in international haiku contests. For three years she also cohosted the acclaimed NHK television show, Haiku Masters.”
“The book has been in good hands, then!”
“Indeed. Let me share two of Nagamura’s poems from the spectator section, the last of which is the book’s title poem.”
late afternoon sun shaft
sneaks toward
a vacant front seat
and
stadium lights off
summer night glimmers
of grace, grit, and gold
“Fine haiku to conclude with, Issa. Well, folks, we’ve come to the end of our show. Got any closing sports metaphors to toss our way, Shiki?”
“Thank you, Captain. Well, I already told you the book was a home run but, at least for me, it’s more like a grand slam. Now all I need is a good hot dog.”
“That’s it for now, folks. Tune in next week for our live coverage from Matsuyama of the Haiku Koshien annual high school haiku tournament. Until then, play haiku!”
Grit, Grace, and Gold: Haiku Celebrating the Sports of Summer, by Kit Pancoast Nagamura is available in paperback only (148 pages; 5″ x 8″. Glossy cover; perfectbound).
About the Reviewer
Michael Dylan Welch is a poet, editor, and publisher who has reviewed hundreds of books, mostly of haiku. He founded National Haiku Writing Month and cofounded the American Haiku Archives and the Haiku North America conference. He lives in Sammamish, Washington. Visit his website www.graceguts.com
Ozawa Minoru is a celebrated haiku poet, winner of the 2006 Yomiuri Literature prize in Poetry, and contributor to a variety of newspapers and literary journals. Well-Versed: Exploring Modern Japanese Haiku is a collection of roughly three hundred modern haiku by different poets, curated from Ozawa’s commentary in the magazine Haiku Arufa over the course of a decade, from 2008-2018. This volume, translated by Janine Beichman, resembles an earlier anthology she translated by Ōoka Makoto: Oriori no Uta: A Poet’s Anthology (1994). As in the previous collection, Ozawa devotes a full page to each haiku.
In his preface Ozawa describes the basic conventions of haiku: seventeen syllable prosody (usually 5/7/5), a seasonal word (kigo), and a caesura or “cutting word” (kireji). Mind you, he tells us that in the modern form, practically all these rules can be broken. Haiku can be longer or shorter than seventeen syllables and don’t necessarily demand a seasonal word. Still, the vast majority of the haiku he has selected are seventeen syllables long, and only three of the nearly three hundred poems are without a seasonal word.
Haiku are perfectly designed little machines for seeing. In fact, the form engages all the senses, but what they conjure up most is a singular image in the mind’s eye. Each poem opens onto its own universe and the present volume presents us with over three hundred pictures of the cosmos to contemplate. Nature reins (or rains) but here we also have portraits of the weather of the human heart. A book of this sort can be read from cover to cover—one could start reading it on New Year’s Day, then slowly, daily, dip into the poems page by page following the course of the seasons so as to enjoy how each poem savours the particular time and place of each day. If you live in Japan, the seasons will match what’s caught in the book. Another way is just to dip in, trawl through the book as one might any kind of anthology, landing on a word or image that captures the eye. Linger there, read Beichman’s accomplished translations and Ozawa’s illuminating commentaries. The anthology follows the seasons but not the course of historical time. The oldest poets—giants who essentially invented modern haiku, like Masaoka Shiki and Takahama Kyoshi—share company with contemporary poets.
For the uninitiated, allow me to elaborate on the structure of haiku according to the Japanese. The basic unit of a haiku is not counted by “syllable,” per se, but by what linguists call “mora” (“morae” in plural). This makes a huge difference in Japanese, where vowels can be short or long, and glottal stops and the labial consonant also count as morae (the final “n” in “ten,” for example). Morae are the building blocks and generators of rhythm and time in haiku. A word like Tokyo, for example, will look like only two syllables in English (or possibly three, if you pronounce it “To-kee-yo”), but in Japanese it counts as four since those “o”’s are long (as in tō-kyō). As a consequence, trying to keep to a seventeen-syllable count in English usually results in a long-winded poem. Haiku are better when less than seventeen English syllables.
Gary Snyder wrote that haiku resemble mantras or koans, and that one has to meditate on them to get their message: “the words stop but the meaning goes on.” Certainly many of the best haiku operate like riddles and some contemporary haiku can be very abstract, even surrealistic.
Ozawa notes in this anthology the predilection in haiku to inhabit the feelings of other animals and natural phenomena. New Criticism used to call this kind of impersonation the pathetic fallacy, but Ozawa chalks it up to a kind of animism that is congenial to the Japanese. Lafcadio Hearn more vaguely called it sympathy. Just one example of such a haiku, by Abe Seiai (1914-1989):
The rainbow itself
believes
in time
(niji jishin / jikan wa ari to / omoikeri)
Classical poets, Ozawa tells us, avoided rainbows as poetic subjects, sensing that they were ominous things. Here Seiai ascribes agency to the rainbow, an awareness that it, like us, is subject to time: here for a moment then gone.
In his preface Ozawa tells us that haiku typically tumble vertically in Japanese, in a single line like a yorishiro lightning rod connecting the gods from heaven to earth. In English, like other European languages, the letters crawl like snails, horizontally. Beichman tries to capture something of the original effect by having her lines dribble diagonally down the page (see our excerpt).
Haiku are as sociable as they are solitary. Ozawa tells us that “haiku at its core is a poetry of greeting” (p. 191). The medieval origin of the form, haikai no renga (comic linked verse) began as a party pastime, where groups of poets would get together and compose a chain of verse starting on some given theme, with one poet kicking off with a hokku (5/7/5) and his or her companion following with the next line, the ageku, a couplet (7/7). On its own, this would constitute a 31-syllable (morae) tanka, but the party would carry on for at least a hundred lines or so. Novelist Ihara Saikaku got his start as an ex tempore haikai no renga poet, giving solo marathons, in one case topping off at as many as 23,500 verses over the course of a single day and night in the summer of 1684.
It was the short-lived Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) who effectively created the modern haiku—isolated snapshots of reality—or what he called shasei, sketching from life. (Like a number of other literati, Shiki’s friend Natsume Sōseki has a haiku in this book.) As this collection shows, haiku can also portray the inner, psychic world without what T.S. Eliot called an “objective correlative”: something in the outside world that reflects the poet’s sensibility. Given the form’s brevity, much is required of the reader’s imagination to complete the image. Still, haiku can often pack a punch, as in this poem by Takeshita Shizunojo (1887-1951), comparing herself to her male colleagues in the public library where she worked:
I’m worth that
whole mob of lazy men
reeking of sweat
(ase kusaki / noro no otoko no / mure ni gosu)
Here the seasonal word is ase, sweat. This is a good example of how Beichman negotiates the image. Japanese syntax generally runs in the opposite direction from English, a challenge for any translator, especially of this poetic form. While the original begins with “sweat,” Beichman ends with it, so the punch is laid in a different place. Much of the pleasure of any poem is its musicality—its rhymes, its assonance—and this is also true for haiku. The task of the translator is not just to capture the sense but also the sound of the poem. An impossibility, one might say, especially with two languages as different as Japanese and English. A good translator of poetry must be a poet herself and by all accounts Beichman, whose superb biographies and translations of Shiki (Masaoka Shiki: His Life and Works) and Yosano Akiko (Embracing the Firebird: Yosano Akiko and the Birth of the Female Voice in Modern Japanese Poetry) have made her worthy of that name.
Haiku aren’t just social (or, like the above, anti-social?), they’re also fun. Here’s one by Nagashima Yū (b. 1972):
Mackerel sky—
for the dog, the interesting things
are other dogs
(sabagumo ya / inu no kyōmi wa / hoka no inu)
Ozawa’s commentary is also a delight. I quote in part:
Somehow this strikes me as a picture of the essential nature of a dog, and, by extension, the essential nature of all living creatures. Except for people, that is. We humans often have an excessive interest in our own selves rather than others. Could it be there is something fundamentally unhealthy about the human spirit? (p. 245)
He goes on to note the contrast between the poet, who gazes at the sky, and the dog, whose eye is trained on other dogs. The poet is looking at the grander picture.
Like dogs, haiku are sociable creatures, and these poems shine especially in the company of others. The genius of a good anthologist is placing them together to create a larger conversation, which is essentially to return them to their roots in linked verse. Much of the pleasure of a collection like this is in reading a sequence of poems and their commentaries. I’ll give just one example of a pair here (they appear on pages 90-91), by the writers Kubota Mantarō (1889-1957) and Yoshiya Nobuko (1896-1973):
Mantarō:
The clock store’s clocks
on a night in spring—which one is
telling the truth?
(tokeiya no / tokei haru no yo / dore ga honto)
Nobuko:
The pleasures of truth
pale next to those of lies
under spring lamplight
(makoto yori / uso ga tanoshi ya / harutomoshi)
Mantarō’s haiku is a kind of visual joke. Back in his day, windup clocks were notoriously inaccurate measures of time, and here’s a shop, closed for the night, where all the clocks are telling different times. This is a good example of how many haiku set up an image for a surprising and witty punchline at the end. Nobuko’s haiku, on the other hand, begins with a counterintuitive declaration, an ethical challenge. Then follows the seasonal image, which evokes an erotic tryst. Romance thrives on lies, but “in haiku too, it is the same,” writes Ozawa. “There is a space between word and thing, and lies step in to bridge the gap. Poetry without lies is no poetry at all.” (91) This is a brilliant observation.
As I write this, my haiku calendar phone app tells me we are in the little heat. As this goes to press, we enter the big heat, so let me conclude with a haiku by Ozaka that captures this micro-season:
With every cell
of my body I greet
the season of Greater Heat
(waga saibō zenko taisho to narinikeri)
Additional Notes:
Romanization and a literal translation of each haiku is provided at the bottom of each page, with a short biography of each poet. Seasonal words float on grey-fill against the black type of the transliterations. Ozawa has added at the end of the book (without commentary), twenty of his own haiku, which prove that he is not only a fine critic but an excellent poet in his own right. Useful notes and handy indexes of seasonal words and poets’ names complete this volume.
On this episode of the Books on Asia Podcast, sponsored by Stone Bridge Press, we have returning to the show Alex Kerr, author of such notable books as Lost Japan, Dogs and Demons, Finding the Heart Sutra and Another Kyoto. Today Alex is going to talk to podcast host Amy Chavez about his latest book Another Bangkok released July 1, 2021. He introduces Thailand’s capital city via its architecture, arts and culture, and shows us how they are similar to Japan. Just a note to listeners that, in addition to the podcast, Alex has provided some visuals of the interior pages of the book for those interested, which can be accessed on the Books on Asia YouTube channel.
In this episode of Alex Kerr’s YouTube channel “Secrets of Things,” Kerr introduces the Japanese andon floor lamp, an item you’ll often come across in classic Japanese literature. See previous episodes of “Secrets of Things” including Ruyi Scepter and Cinnabar Bowl.
