Part 1
A Kikokushijo’s Exploration of Haiku and its Translation Across Cultures

Haiku offered Masaoka Shiki a means of artistic expression through which his literary talents flourished. In a more pragmatic sense, his poems gave him a profitable career that he could maintain even while bedridden. Scholars argue his poems served as cathartic tools for confronting his life’s problems, and I believe this must be true to some extent. For Shiki, haiku laid down a path to navigate life during the Meiji period’s rapid transformation and cultural unfamiliarity even from his bed. Extrapolating further, we observe that haiku caters to the individual and whatever environment they are situated in. Like any other literary form, it has the capacity to guide its author on both figurative and literal journeys. Thus, in this project, I explore how learning to compose haiku can reshape my perspectives and identity as a kikokushijo (a Japanese person raised abroad) to whom Japanese remains a second language.

I remember first learning about haiku in third grade, at my public school (somewhat ironically) here in America. At the time, there was no mention of kigo or the challenge of capturing vivid images with a limited syllable count. The syllable count of 5-7-5 was the only parameter. I even remember the picture book that went along with the haiku unit: “Won Ton: A Cat Tale Told in Haiku” (2011). When we discussed in our class how haiku has been reduced to children’s poetry in the Western tradition, this book immediately came to mind. The authors, Lee Wardlaw, likely had limited knowledge of haiku (it’s not clear what qualifications he had to write about haiku). I never encountered haiku again until much later, perhaps in early high school. It was around this period that I began to feel homesick for Japanese culture while living in Korea and began to watch Japanese television regularly. I encountered a Japanese television show called “Purebato” where celebrities would write haiku and an accomplished haijin (haiku master) would evaluate these poems. While the show is sensational with its clear purpose of entertaining viewers, it’s clear that its evaluation of haiku is authentic and performed by an acclaimed expert. It is here that I begin to piece together basic knowledge of haiku, such as the inclusion of kigo. Notably, I had never thought of haiku in the Japanese language until this point. I have been watching this show with my family for some years now, and that finally brings me to this project. I always prefer learning from real paper in such artistic pursuits, and found myself at Kinokuniya, a Japanese bookstore chain with a branch in New York City. After snooping around for a while, I mustered up the courage to ask an employee whether they have a saijiki or any book pertaining to haiku.

While he came up empty on any versions of a saijiki, he led me to a short book titled “Natsui Itsuki no Sekai Ichi Wakariyasui Haiku Jyugyō.” This was the same expert who appeared on the television show “Purebato” and gave me my first glimpse into the haiku world. Excitedly, I purchased the book—though I lamented the cheaper price in Japanese yen compared to the U.S. dollar. Although the book certainly doesn’t go in-depth into the intricacies of haiku, it did provide the foundation for my own composition of basic haiku. I mainly relied on this book and an online saijiki to compose my poems. Each one presented novel challenges and lessons.

• 霧深しガタンゴトンと電車揺れ

kiri fukashi
gatan-goton to
densha yure

My first haiku. Regrettably, it remains somewhat general in spite of several revisions—a poem anyone might recreate. But it is my first, and I figured it must be important to keep a record of it. In this haiku, I illustrate the beginning of my fall break, when I was venturing toward New York. Not only was it my first time traveling alone to the city, but it was a rather spontaneous plan. At the time of boarding the train, I had barely figured out what to do and where to stay that night. I was still at a moment of uneasiness, actively reaching out to people and researching affordable hostels. I attempt to express this instability with the shaking of the train car. I thought this was a good way to accentuate the seasonal kiri, an embodiment of the uncertain, hazy future. Though slightly dramatic, it did provide a backbone for understanding one of the basic structures of haiku: 12 syllables of shasei that paint a vivid picture that highlights the essence of the kigo. I expect readers to imagine the sight of fog, the sounds of the train running on the track, and then to feel the physical sensations of a rocking train.

• 焼肉は赤か茶色か紅葉かな

yakiniku wa
aka ka chairo ka
momiji kana

In this haiku, I want readers to visualize grilling meat at an outdoor park, as I did for a barbeque picnic event with the Korean Student Association. I propose the similarities between the fall foliage and the color of the grilled meats, as I checked their doneness. In the compositional sense, I hope I appropriately used the kireji of “kana” to quietly assert this parallel. My other thought was that the word yakiniku may mislead readers to picture an indoor restaurant, but I figured that varying interpretations are one of the unique things about haiku, and an effect that is natural considering the extreme brevity of the syllable limit. In choosing the kigo for this haiku, I was reminded of the profound depth of haiku and mastering the nuanced connotations of a seasonal idea, especially given the numerous ways of articulating momiji. Do I use kōyō instead? Do I use a variation like momijiyama? I still don’t know whether I selected the optimal kigo, but I went with the one that sat right with me after some research and repeatedly voicing the haiku.

• 鼻すすり寝床を出れば林檎パイ

hana susuri
nedokoro o dereba
ringo pie

I obviously didn’t have anyone to provide tensaku (corrections and an evaluation) and have no clue whether or not these haiku are good or even compositionally sound as haiku. I am, however, fond of this piece. I went down with an illness during the weekend, and my symptoms were a fever, nose congestion, and sluggishness. While I was out of commission, my housemates baked an apple pie with the apples we picked together at Lyman’s Orchards and left some out on the dining table for me. The first line enlightens the audience of my sickness while setting up the emulated surprise of a fragrant, warm apple pie. The kigo of apples contributes to this heartfelt, pleasant tone, while nodding to the resilience of the fruit that grows in the colder months of the fall. I also wanted to note how the harvest season of apples here in New England coincides with that in Japan. I was considering creating an American saijiki, with distinctly American seasonal words, and realized they might not be as different as I initially expected.

• 渋滞や車窓に映る秋の山

jūtai ya
shasō ni utsuru
aki no yama

I wrote this haiku about driving through the Connecticut roads and the expansive fall foliage surrounding them. I wanted to juxtapose the bustling traffic of people with cars driving to wherever they need to be and the unmoving mountains. But when the traffic finally forced me to stop and look around closely, there were subtle movements in the grand mountains: branches swaying, leaves falling, and even wildlife. These are the motivations that drove me to compose this piece. I struggled with this poem quite a bit, and am still not entirely content with the result. There is so much I want to express, but I truly felt the constraint of following the 17-syllable limit. The main trick I wanted to employ in this poem was the strategic cutting of scenes to lead readers to visualize the scene in a controlled, dynamic order.

• 大都市や太き森林虫の声

daitoshi ya
futoki shinrin
mushi no koe

I again felt the difficulties of expressing a specific message through such a limited writing style. I wrote this poem about the boisterous, urban atmosphere of New York and the persistent life force

of nature that exists within it. While sitting in a park after dusk, I was overwhelmed looking upward and seeing large skyscrapers towering over me. However, I was even more impressed by the large trees that grew parallel to the buildings and the cries of insects that could be heard over the urban soundscape. I wanted to express the tranquil fortitude of nature, which led me to my word choice in describing the trees. I wonder if I could take it one step further and convey the same natural strength without explicitly stating the thickness of the trees. I had considered a handful of other kigo for this piece as well, but again, I was faced with decisions. One kigo failed to capture my experience because it was strictly related to the daytime. I was pushed to look further and really investigate each kigo in greater detail.

• 顔しかめ靴のうらには銀杏の実

kao shikame
kutsu no ura ni wa
ichō no mi

I wanted to explore more humorous interpretations of haiku while still keeping with Shiki’s theme of shasei. In particular, I want readers to first question what caused such a sour face, then pan down the length of the body and focus on the shoes, then be hit with the realization of the source of the pungent smell, much like how I felt at the time. In the first two lines, readers are encouraged to use their sense of sight, and then are hit by a sudden trigger of smell. I attempted to further build up this eureka moment by using kanji scarcely in the first two lines, then using the kanji spelling in the kigo to make it pop.

• 旧友と散らかりし部屋夜長かな

kyūyū to
chirakarishi heya
yonaga kana

I was able to meet my high school friends for the first time in over two years, and I wrote this haiku about spending time at one of their dorms. I found it incredibly difficult to express this idea of an old friend with sensory cues and opted to directly state them as such. As I continue to write haiku, I definitely want to hone the skill of sketching real images to portray abstract ideas. There is a gentle emphasis on the kigo of yonaga to suggest a long night of catching up and joking around, an idea further illustrated by the messy room. I hope to elicit a pleasant mood in the audience.

• 秋寒や元親友の苦笑い

akisamu ya
moto shinyū no
nigawarai

At the same time, sadly, meeting these old friends also led to some melancholic revelations. We had grown distant—we were in different stages of life, spending time with different people. On my end, I kept noticing small instances of surechigai. In particular, I focused on illustrating a forced smile—an expression that we have all witnessed one way or another. The online saijiki I used describes akisamu as a slight coldness, but not absolute frigidness. This was exactly how I felt while sitting with my friends in a hoodie during a cool evening. I thought my situation also complemented the kigo aptly: there was a bittersweet undertone of the changed dynamic, but it certainly wasn’t heart-wrenching. There was an air of inevitability to the result.

• 付箋あり小説と辞書秋の雨

fusen ari
shōsetsu to jisho
aki no ame

• 小説の読めぬ字と辞書秋の雨

shōsetsu no
yomenu ji to jisho
aki no ame

Here, I wrote a poem about the strenuous task of reading a Japanese novel I bought over a year ago. I wasn’t able to decide on a single rendition for this poem, as I really like the middle verse of both. In the first, there is a simple contrast between the novel and the dictionary, the task and the tool used to tackle it. In the second, a more direct representation of the confusion and stagnation I experience when encountering new kanji. Working on this project has pushed me to think more about what it means to be multilingual and the effort it takes to maintain it in a distant country.

• 夜食喰ふ垂れるリュックやほの明かり

yashoku kufu
tareru ryukku ya
honoakari

In this haiku, I write about the walk back to my house from the Olin Library at night after treating myself to a well-earned snack at WesShop. I wanted to portray yashoku as a reward-like, alleviating treat after a long day of work, as it is described in the saijiki I used. As one of the later haikus I wrote, I tried to use more indirect ways to depict elaborate situations. I refrained from using direct words like toshokan and instead left it to the imagination of the reader by depicting a drooping backpack. The dim light (possibly from street lights, buildings, passing cars, etc.) contributes to the quiet, individual accomplishment of getting work done and enjoying delightful food.

• 上着脱ぎ麺に絡まる鷹の爪

uwagi nugi
men ni karamaru
taka no tsume

In this haiku, I explored the idea of kokigo, a child of their parent kigo. In this example, taka no tsume is the kokigo of tōgarashi. In my experience, visualizing taka no tsume evokes a more visceral reaction due to its intense spiciness, and that was the intended effect. As I got ready to eat Sichuan cuisine at a Chinese restaurant, I revved myself up by entering the warm restaurant from the cold outside. I hope the audience can imagine small details like the rolling up of sleeves or the licking of lips. And this kigo—or rather, kokigo—helps manifest this image.

• 露霜や流れ続ける縦動画

tsuyujimo ya
nagare-tsuzukeru
tatedouga

• 無月や流れ続ける縦動画

mugetsu ya
nagare-tsuzukeru
tatedouga

This was the only haiku where I was given a prompt. I hadn’t been watching Purebato as of late, but recognized this as the best chance to start watching again. For some more context, the participants are always given a unified theme to write about. While I hadn’t given much thought to it before, I realized the teaser for the next week’s show always reveals the next week’s theme. I decided it may be a good idea to check in every week and see what I can compose, then compare with the ones that air on TV. This week’s theme was 「ついやっちゃうこと」 (“Things I can’t help doing”).

My first response was, of course, an issue plaguing many in my generation: short-form media addiction. This time, I had another dilemma of which kigo to incorporate. Tsuyujimo, or frozen dew, highlights the morning and the fleeting impermanence of such a phenomenon. It is static, in direct opposition to the changing lights on a phone screen. Mugetsu, or a moon hidden behind clouds, emits a soft glow similar to that of a phone screen in a dark room. It moves across the sky, in strict opposition with the person glued to the screen, frozen in time. I was ultimately unable to decide on one over the other and left both here because they both convey my thoughts. Also, I am guilty of scrolling through TikTok both in the morning and at night, so I can’t choose one over the other. Jokes aside, I recognize that the process of choosing a kigo is tedious and challenging. In fact, that was easily the hardest part of writing haiku. Portraying scenery that complements the kigo while not stealing the spotlight away from it.

All in all, I am extremely content with my work in this project. I cannot say for certain whether I wrote any good haiku, but I definitely learned a lot in the process. I briefly mentioned in last week’s forum post that Shiki’s haiku reflects the medieval fixation on the beauty of brevity. Most haiku are restricted by some ephemeral kigo like foods that only grow in certain months or cosmic occurrences bound to a fixed time of year. My research on kigo and the saijiki reinforced this idea. There are kigo that pertain to the autumn season in general, and ones that specifically relate to subperiods within autumn: from shoshū to chūshū to banshū. While seemingly excessive, it all coheres with what we’ve learned about Japan’s history. The Buddhist values of impermanence and Shinto emphasis on natural resources were undoubtedly catalysts in the birth of such practice in premodern and modern Japan.

I intend to recommend haiku to my other culturally Japanese friends as a means of reclaiming the heritage language. It was honestly far more educational than I had expected. The act of surfing the web and books to learn haiku composition is certainly a quick and immersive way to explore Japanese culture from one’s own desk. Moreover, I definitely feel more well-versed in some of the nuances of the Japanese language after composing just around 15 haiku. The haiku-specific, poetic connectives like ya and kana forced me to think critically about the words I select with the goal of conveying a specific image. This also applies to selecting words that don’t explicitly state the obvious or explain the situation, although this remains a skill I’m actively developing. This art of expressing abstract ideas through concrete senses is something that can definitely translate into other facets of life, even when writing in languages other than Japanese.

Now for the central question. How does this help us define the good life in Japan? There is definitely something to be said about the great lengths haiku, as an ironically concise art form, goes to describing our sensory experiences, whether they be astronomical phenomena, fruits, vegetables, animals, or anthropomorphic practices. I think so much of haiku is finding the beauty in the little things in life. I think of ichibutsu-jitate, or haiku that exist solely within a kigo. Masaoka Shiki writes, “A purple so deep it’s almost black—the grapes” or 「黒きまでに紫深き葡萄かな」.

There is something deeply moving about uncovering novel qualities about the mundane things that surround our everyday lives. The longest section of the Haiku jyugyō book pertains to surveying kigo in order to compose an ichibutsu-jitate haiku, which is one of the more advanced techniques. It’s advanced because it’s difficult to notice something new about it when countless others have tried the same throughout time. The editor of the book is a beginner in poetry, and Natsui-sensei walks him through writing an ichibutsu-jitate haiku for crickets. Though the editor has a phobia of crickets, he is instructed to use all his senses to learn everything he can about them. After observing them closely for weeks, he loses his fear and even comes to find them cute. While this initially struck me as an extreme example, I think it represents the crux of Shiki’s haiku. If one can find beauty in the little things, how can life not be beautiful? We discussed how Shiki may have used haiku as a form of therapy in facing his unfortunate circumstances. Perhaps he was merely turning a blind eye to his misfortunes and directing his attention to trivial entities like grapes and persimmons. Yet by finding beauty in those seasonal, impermanent fruits, he may have come to peace with his own ephemerality and therefore lived a good life. Haiku is a constant inquiry into what we notice about the world around us, and how we can paint a beautiful portrait of it.

Haiku Jyugyō: (https://www.php.co.jp/books/detail.php?isbn=978-4-569-84096-3)

Saijiki: (https://kigosai.sub.jp/001/秋の季語)