An Interview with Makoto Ueda

Makoto Ueda
Honorary Curator, 2004–2005

True Before It Is Made Truth: An Interview with Makoto Ueda

by Eve Luckring

The following interview, proposed by Scott Metz, was first published

in Roadrunner 12.3 (December 2012) and Roadrunner 13.1 (May
2013). This interview also appears in a Spanish translation at El Rincón del
Haiku.

Makoto Ueda is the author of fifteen books about Japanese poetry, of

which two are written in Japanese. He is professor emeritus of Japanese
literature at Stanford University.

As a translator, critic, and biographer, he has provided English readers

some of the finest resources on haiku, senryu, tanka, and Japanese
poetics. His numerous groundbreaking publications have broadened and
deepened the understanding of Japanese literature through the rigor of his
scholarship and the incisiveness of his commentary. He has published
influential tomes on Bashô, Buson, and Issa, and he is the first translator
to anthologize the entire spans of modern Japanese haiku and tanka in
individual books published in English.

English-language readers’ notions of haiku and tanka have been shaped

primarily through translations of premodern poets. Therefore, Professor
Ueda’s work on 20th century writers, as well as his contextualization of the
premodern masters within their literary milieu, has had an enormous
impact, destabilizing and expanding the knowledge and practice of
English-language poets working in the genre. His translations of senryu
provide a much needed cultural history for English readers, while his
translations of female haiku poets help to fill a gaping hole in the genre’s
history. Professor Ueda’s scholarship has nurtured English-language
haiku’s growth from infancy into a burgeoning childhood.

We are honored to offer a rare interview with Professor Ueda, who granted
me the privilege to correspond with him despite challenging health issues.
The exchange took place via the postal system over the summer and
autumn of 2012. Eve Luckring and Scott Metz prepared the following
questions, with substantial input from Richard Gilbert and Jack Galmitz.

Eve Luckring
San Francisco, November 11, 2012
Would you please share with us six, or so, of your favorite haiku,
choosing examples that represent different historical periods in
the development of Japanese haiku?

Could you say why these particular poems move you, or exemplify
excellence, or have contributed to the development of Japanese
haiku?

It has been more than ten years since I worked with Japanese haiku. I’ll try
to remember, but what I recall are the poems that are not very famous.
They are as follows:

By Matsuo Bashô (1644–94):

kumo nani to ne wo nani to naku aki no kaze

spider—what is it,
what is it you are crying?
autumn wind

This is one of Bashô’s early haiku. The repetition of “what is it?” echoes
the Danrin style, but covering it is overall loneliness felt by the poet. He
knows the spider doesn’t cry, yet he wonders what the crying voice would
be like if it were to cry. The haiku is reminiscent of a Zen question.

By Chiyojo (1703–75):

yûgao ya onna no hada no miyuru toki

moonflowers in bloom
when a woman’s skin
gleams through the dusk

Moonflowers are white, looking somewhat like flowers of a morning glory.

They often grow in the yard of a farmhouse, as they eventually produce
gourds. Apparently, in the evening dusk a farmer’s wife is bathing in the
yard, and while her face and hands are suntanned, the parts of her body
that have been covered by clothes are stunningly white. The haiku seems
a little erotic.

By Yosa Buson (1716–84):

hata utsu ya ugokanu kumo mo nakunarinu

tilling the field—

the cloud that did not move
is gone

Buson wrote many painting-like haiku, one of which is this one. It presents
a peaceful country scene where a farmer is tilling the field all day. The
haiku suggests something that a painting cannot suggest: the passage of
time. Time passes slowly but steadily, whether or not man is aware of it.

By Kobayashi Issa (1763–1828):

aozora ni yubi de ji wo kaku aki no kure

in the blue sky

I scrawl letters with a finger—
the end of autumn

This seems to be one of many existentially negative haiku characteristic of

Issa. He writes in the air several characters which in no time disappear in
the deep sky. Ultimately, the haiku suggests the futility of all things the
poet does.

By Takahama Kyoshi (1874–1959):

kiri hitoha hi atari nagara ochini-keri

a paulownia leaf
basking in the sunlight
falls to the ground

This is a shasei haiku, the poet looking objectively at a large paulownia

leaf falling to the ground. The leaf is somewhat yellowish, as the fall
season approaches. The poem reminds of a great man dying after a life of
fame and glory.

By Katsura Noboku (1914–2004):

mado no yuki nyotai nite yu wo afureshimu

snow on the window—

a female body makes hot water
overflow the tub

Traditionally women who write haiku have been very few, as they were
more attracted to tanka which expresses emotion far more freely. But they
have greatly increased since the mid-20th century, and today they
outnumber men. Katsura Noboku was one of the most eloquent of them,
as seen in this example.

What would you most like the international community to

understand about Japanese haiku and its development over time?

Japanese haiku was well introduced to Western readers by such pioneers

as R. H. Blyth, Harold G. Henderson, and William J. Higginson. The nature
and history of haiku have since been studied fully by a number of authors,
and there seems to be little to add. Perhaps more of today’s haiku may be
translated, but it is hard to distinguish good and bad poems in our own
time.

If among modern poets there is one who might need more attention in the
West, that would be Yamaguchi Seishi (1901–94). I think he was the
greatest haiku poet in the 20th century, greater than Masaoka Shiki
(1867–1902). Though his haiku collection was published in English
translation in 1993 [Note: The Essence of Modern Haiku: 300 Poems by
Seishi Yamaguchi, Weatherhill], he does not seem to be known too well.
His poems were truly “modern” in subject-matter, technique, and the way
in which he perceived nature. He used words and phrases in a refreshingly
new way. He saw things intellectually and made them into haiku
intellectually. Here is the most famous of his haiku:

natsu no kawa akaki tessa no hashi hitaru

river in summer—
a rusty iron chain, its end
soaking in the water

The iron chain soaking in the river that flows amid a large city—the haiku
suggests the sterile existence of modern men living in an industrious city.

How, or in what ways, has Western art/literature/politics

influenced Japanese haiku since the 1930s?

Since the beginning of the modern period, Japanese haiku has been under
the powerful influence of Western culture. The idea of shasei, proposed by
Shiki, had its roots in graphic realism prevalent in Western painting the
latter half of the 19th century. Natsume Sôseki (1867–1916), who wrote
haiku under Shiki, was a professor and accomplished scholar in English
literature. Kawahigashi Hekigodô (1873–1937), who advocated “haiku with
no center of interest,” got his original inspiration from reading Western
literature, especially Gorky’s The Lower Depths. In similar ways,
subsequent haiku writers have received some kind of influence from
Western literature and civilization. I’ll cite three examples since the 1930s.

The first example is one of proletarian haiku that had its peak during the
first half of the 1930s. In 1930 Kuribayashi Issekiro (1894–1961), a founder
of the movement, said “Capitalism has come to a standstill when it
developed into imperialism. At its fall there appears a reaction, namely a
movement to class literature—proletarian haiku.” Following is the haiku he
wrote in 1937:

taihô ga ôkina kuchi akete ore ni muite iru hatsuzuri

a cannon
with its huge mouth
 turns toward me
on the New Year’s paper

This is a free-verse haiku, as many proletarian haiku were. In the New

Year’s newspaper, the poet saw the photograph of a large cannon with its
muzzle turned toward him. The war between China and Japan started in
1937. Issekiro founded a couple of haiku magazines and advocated
proletarian haiku, until he got arrested in 1941 under increasingly
oppressive measures of the government. Proletarian haiku met the same
fate.

The second example has to do with a provocative essay that shocked the
haiku world after the end of the Second World War. In 1946, Kuwabara
Takeo (1904–68) published an influential magazine article condemning
haiku as a “second-rate” art form. [Note: a translation by Mark Jewel is
available at Simply Haiku 4.1, 2006.] Before writing the article, he had
distributed twelve anonymous haiku among various people and asked their
opinions on the poems. Their answers were widely different, the same
poem praised highly by some and censured severely by others. No haiku
poem, Kuwabara concluded, could be recognized as good unless its author
is known to be a famous poet. In other words, a haiku poet must first
establish his fame in an area other than haiku. Though mentioned nowhere
in the article, Kuwabara’s method and conclusion were the same as those
in Practical Criticism (1929) by I. A. Richards, who did a similar experiment
in England. Kuwabara was a professor of French at Kyoto University and
was well versed in Western culture.

The case of Nakamura Kusatao (1901–83), one of Kuwabara’s

contemporaries, would serve as the third example of Western influences
on Japanese haiku. Kusatao majored in German at Tokyo University and
read a good deal of Western books, especially works of Nietzche, Holderlin,
Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Strindberg. Those works formed the
basis of his later view on life and helped him to become a major haiku
poet. One of his finest haiku is:

sora wa taisho no aosa tsuma yori ringo uku

the sky looks

primeval blue; from my wife
I receive an apple

The poem was written when the poet had lost his home in an air raid
during the Second Wold War. It reminds us of Adam and Eve in the Garden
of Eden as described in the Bible. Kusatao had plenty of biblical
knowledge; in fact, he eventually became a Christian.
You have translated into English a multitude of Japanese haiku
written in a broad range of styles by poets who have advocated
varying principles as to what haiku should aspire to.

In Far Beyond the Field, you say “Most often a haiku is a poem
where one or more images present the germs of what the poet
feels—the fountainhead, in fact, of her inspiration. The value of an
individual haiku depends upon the depth in which its images
probe human reality.”

In Bashô and His Interpreters, you say: “To put the matter briefly,
I believe that a hokku, when appreciated by itself, is a short,
three-phrase poem intended to charm the reader into
contemplating an aspect of nature or the human condition,
usually through the help of a seasonal image. I also share the
view that the seventeen-syllable poem presents an observation or
sentiment in all its immediacy, before it is intellectually
conceptualized.”

Do you believe that a poem written in English (or other

languages) needs to be written in a fixed form in order to be
called a haiku?

Or, that it needs to be written in three lines or have ”three

phrases”?

Are there any formal requirements (like short/long/short phrases,

a clear grammatical break, a season word) that you would require
of haiku written in languages other than Japanese?

When I translated a Japanese haiku into English, I had a fairly liberal

attitude in terms of its form. All I aimed at was that the work translated
into English was in three lines—preferably short/long/short phrases—and
read like an English poem. I didn’t believe it should have a 5-7-5 syllable
pattern. Rather, my thinking was to follow what seemed to be a standard
view in America: an ideal haiku in English has the form of three lines of 2,
3, 2 accented beats; but I have to confess that in most cases my
translations fell far short of the ideal. There was no question that a normal
Japanese haiku had three phrases. I therefore didn’t agree with those who
translated it into the form of one line (like Hiroaki Satô), two lines (like
Harold Stewart), or four lines (like Nobuyuki Yuasa).

Above is my opinion on translating a Japanese haiku into English. I believe

an original haiku written in English (or any other languages other than
Japanese) should be freer in form. After all, in Japan itself there have been
those like Kawahigashi Hekigodô and Ogiwara Seisensui (1884–1976) who
advocated what they called the “free-verse haiku.” Ozaki Hôsai (1885–
1926) and Taneda Santôka (1882–1940) produced some of the best works
in that form. I think a number of fine English haiku belong to this category,
although I am in no position to make evaluative judgment on them.

Is referentiality important to haiku?

Reference to nature, which changes with the cycle of seasons, was

essential to classical Japanese haiku. As you know, historically it derived
itself from hokku, the opening verse of renku, which was required to
present a season word. Today a large majority of those in Japan who write
haiku still use season words, though those words have been expanded and
become inclusive of foreign vocabulary. A small number of haiku poets
who reject kigo do exist, but many of their haiku incidentally contain words
implying a season or suggest nature by the whole tone of the poem. There
is no doubt that a haiku poem gains its depth in meaning when it is
connected with nature or part of nature.

A similar thing may be said about haiku written in English. In America,

seasons are not so clear as in Japan; in fact, they differ greatly in various
parts of the area. But my hope is that an English haiku has some kind of
“flavor of nature” somewhere, because nature is a basic part of haiku. In
case the poem does not have that flavor, it may be called, not haiku, but
senryu, or short free verse, or some such name.

Your response went straight to referentiality with regard to

nature, the cycle of seasons, and the use of kigo—all essential to
classical haiku.

What about referentiality to other literature? allusions to

historical or current events? —what Haruo Shirane calls “cultural
memory” and discusses in regard to “the vertical axis” in Traces
of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory and the Poetry of
Bashô (1998)? Or (although we have no equivalent
of utamakura and haimakura) references to famous places?

Is this type of referentiality, or allusion, something that can

equally enhance a haiku’s “depth of meaning,” as much as a
reference to nature?

Do you feel this type of allusion is an important feature for haiku

written in other languages in order to further develop the
“vertical axis” Shirane said was often lacking in English-language
haiku?

Referentiality to historical events and famous places is important to haiku,

but its importance seems to have decreased in modern times. It was
particularly significant in Bashô’s haiku, partly because he admired past
medieval poets like Saigyo and Sogi, and partly because he was a writer
of renku which made frequent use of the “vertical axis.” Modern haiku
poets do not appear to pay that kind of high regard to past cultural
tradition. They make much less use of utamakura or haimakura.

I agree that the vertical axis is often lacking in English haiku, although I
hesitate to make a generalization in view of my limited reading of it. The
situation is the same to some extent in modern Japanese haiku, in spite of
Takayanagi’s example I cite. [Note: See below.]

Uda Kiyoko, the president of the Modern Haiku Association, has

said in an interview:

So, yes, haiku “cuts” explanation: this is haiku. Haiku “cuts”:

scenes, actions, everything, and cuts time and language. So,
though it is said that “cutting” is really omission, I think that
“cutting” is at the same time the essential proposition of haiku.

And, if asked about what haiku is, there are a variety of aspects of
haiku—that is, as a seasonal verse, or as a form of poetry
consisting of “five-seven-five”—but the essence of haiku is
“cutting,” in my opinion. (Simply Haiku: A Quarterly Journal of
Japanese Short Form Poetry, Winter 2009, vol 7 no 4; accessed
Sep 16, 2012
<http://simplyhaiku.com/SHv7n4/features/Gilbert.html>).

And as you know, Bashô was recorded by Kyorai in his Kyoraishô

(circa 1704 CE):

Placing kireji in hokku [haiku] is for those beginners who do not

understand the nature of cutting and uncutting very well. . . .
[However,] there are hokku which are well-cut without kireji.
Because of their subtle qualities, [for beginners] more common
theories have been founded, and taught. . . . Once, the master,
Bashô, said, as an answer to the question of Jôsô [one of Bashô's
ten principal disciples. 1662?–1704]: “In waka, after 31-on, there
is kire. In hokku, after 17-on, there is kire.” Joso was immediately
enlightened. Then, another disciple asked [on the same topic],
and the master, Bashô, answered, “When you use words as kireji,
every word becomes kireji. When you do not use words as kireji,
there are no words which are kireji.” And the master said, “From
this point, grasp the very depth of the nature of kireji on your
own.” All that I have described here is what the master revealed,
until the very threshold of its true secret [oral tradition], the
thickness of one leaf of shoji-paper.
(Kyorai. (2001) ‘Kyoraishô,’ in Isao Okuda (ed.) Shinpen nihon
bungaku zenshu vol 88: “Renga-ron-shu, nogaku-ron-shu, hairon-
shu”—The new edition of the complete works of Japanese Classic
Literature, vol. 88: “Theories on Renga, Noh, and Haiku”], (Y. It?
and R. Gilbert, trans.). Tokyo: Shogakukan, 497–99 (as reprinted
in Simply Haiku: A Quarterly Journal of Japanese Short Form
Poetry, Winter 2009, vol 7 no 4; accessed Sep 16, 2012
<http://simplyhaiku.com/SHv7n4/features/Gilbert.html>).

Although English-language poetics does not contain kireji (cutting

words), do you think kire (cutting) is a defining aspect of haiku,
no matter what language it is written in?

Do you think that it is important to have a clear grammatical

break, or to disrupt grammatical syntax, or to create a semantic
cut in the writing of haiku?

Kireji is a certain “postposition” (ya, keri, kana, etc.) or verb ending that
originally comes from classical Japanese. It is like punctuation, which did
not exist in classical Japanese. In haiku, it is often used to cut a poem into
two parts, leading the reader to compare or contrast the two. Haiku is
often a poem of internal comparison; to that extent, kireji serves as an
important element of Japanese haiku.

As far as haiku in English or other languages utilizing internal comparison,

there needs to be no kireji. English haiku may use punctuation (colon,
semicolon, ellipses, etc.) or line change, or other ways to juxtapose
images or scenes or actions.

What about traditional Japanese aesthetic concerns such as ma,

yugen wabi, sabi, etc.? In your opinion, should any of these, or
other specific Japanese aesthetics, play an important role in haiku
written in other languages despite their foreignness
(notwithstanding some parallels) to other cultures’ aesthetic
systems?

I see no reason why haiku written in languages other than Japanese should
contain yugen or sabi or other Japanese ambience.

Could you expand upon what you mean when you say “an
observation or sentiment in all its immediacy, before it is
intellectually conceptualized”? Do you believe this to be
important for haiku as well as hokku?

I think all literary works tend to present “the true” before it is made into
“truth,” and Japanese haiku are generally more so that way than most
other genres. As a matter of fact, there have even been some who would
exclude haiku from literature because it is so close to actual life. It is well
known that Ishida Hakyô (1913–69) once said “Haiku is not literature. It is
raw life. Composing haiku is synonymous with living life.” Probably Hakyô
overstated the case, but he was emphasizing the representative nature of
haiku.

Could you discuss this idea in relation to haiku written by the

“obscurists” and other postwar poets?

The so-called “obscurist” haiku poets sometimes went too far toward “raw
life” and used too much of personal material for others to understand. One
of the poems often quoted as an example is by Nakamura Kusatao:

hikigaeru chôshi ie saru yoshi mo nashi

a toad—
the eldest son, with no reason
to leave home

[Note: This poem was written in 1933. Nakamura Kusatao: 1901–

83.]

The haiku uses internal comparison between “the toad” and “the eldest
son.” The eldest son, as Kusatao was one, had a responsibility to succeed
the household with all its family encumbrances; that was the custom in
Japan several generations ago. For a freedom-loving modern man, it was a
very heavy responsibility he would like to evade if at all possible. Yet the
poet could not evade it, for there was “no reason to leave home.” The poet
compares the situation to that of a toad. However, different readers have
different images of a toad. In the first place, they may not be able to read
the two Chinese characters used for “toad” in hikigaeru.

Among postwar poets whose haiku are hard to understand are those who
write with highbrow tones and difficult vocabulary characteristic of
intellectuals. I’ll cite a famous example composed by Takayanagi
Shigenobu (1923–83), an example well known to English readers because
it appears in The Haiku Handbook by William J. Higginson:

mi wo sorasu niji no
zetten
shokeidai

body-arching rainbow’s
pinnacle
gallows-stand

(trans. by Higginson)
Higginson has amply explained the meaning of the haiku in his book, and
that is about what average Japanese readers would get. Yet, according to a
student of Takayanagi’s, the poem was based on a haiku written by his
mentor, Tomizawa Kakio (1902–62):

nyûbô ya aa mi wo sorasu haru no niji

the breasts—
oh, body-arching
spring rainbow!

Association with this poem makes Takayanagi’s haiku more sensual and
erotic. The “body-arching rainbow” suggests a woman in bed, bent
backwards with sexual excitement. The “gallows-stand” points toward a
state of trance after maximum excitement and, eventually, toward death.
How does an average reader get an implied meaning like this?

Given the distinct developmental histories of haiku and senryu in

Japanese literature, and the lack thereof in the English language,
as well as the way that the two forms have become more
convergent in contemporary practice in Japan, what are your
thoughts about how poets writing in English have distinguished
between haiku and senryu?

Haiku and senryu have to be considered two distinctly different genres in

today’s Japan. No Japanese haiku poet has written senryu, as far as I know.
Even though haiku poets do not expressly say so, I suspect they look down
upon senryu as being nonliterature or as being in a lower depth in the
hierarchy of literary genres. Senryu is tremendously popular in Japan. I
subscribe to a well-known Japanese weekly magazine, every issue of which
publishes a handful of senryu chosen by a certain professional storyteller. I
also watch a weekly Japanese TV program in which a team of guests
compete with a host team with senryu; both hosts and guests are
amateurs. There seems to be no one called a professional senryu poet in
Japan today.

[Note: Of related interest, see the interview with Ônishi Yasuyo (b. 1949) at
<http://gendaihaiku.com/onishi/index.html> and “A Brief Survey of Senryû
by Women” by Hiroaki Satô in Modern Haiku, Volume 34.1, Spring 2003 at
<http://www.modernhaiku.org/essays/senryuWomen.html>.]

The situation is quite different in America. Haiku with no seasonal

implications and with satirical or humorous contents are called senryu, and
I have no objection to that. I have little to say on the subject, because I
have read too few English senryu.
What other translators of Japanese haiku into English do you
especially appreciate? Can you say why?

I highly admire the works of R. H. Blyth. He did a great deal to introduce

Japanese literature to the West, especially in the area of haiku and senryu.
The four volumes of Haiku and two volumes of A History of Haiku are
monumental works he authored in the way of making haiku available to
English readers. Such famous authors as J. D. Salinger, Jack Kerouac, and
Gary Snyder are said to have come to know haiku through his books. His
translations are generally precise and read well in English; especially I like
their inclusion of no word that is not in the original, unlike those by most
other translators before him. His comments on haiku, based on his rich
knowledge of English literature, are full of insightful perceptions and
expressed with wit and humor. Perhaps he overemphasized the Zen aspect
of haiku, but that was perhaps inevitable in view of the fact that he was a
devotee of Zen. With all things considered, I think he must be said to be
the most important person in the international community of haiku.

In the introduction to Bashô and His Interpreters, you comment:

“In the final analysis, translation is a form of literary criticism as
well as artistic creation . . .”

Could you expand upon what you mean by translation being a

form of literary criticism?

How is translation like “artistic creation”? Could you give a few

examples of haiku you've translated wherein you feel that the end
product (your artistic creation) was especially successful?
Why/how so?

I think translation is a form of literary criticism in the sense that the

translator’s notion of literature reflects itself in the works he translates. It
does so whether or not he is conscious of it. As the critic applies his idea of
literature to the criticized work, so does the translator to the translated
work. He shapes it in the way he feels a literary work should be.

For instance, Harold G. Henderson translates a haiku into an English poem

with rhyme in his book, An Introduction to Haiku. Obviously, there is no
rhyme in the original Japanese. Henderson defends it by saying that his
notion of a short poem has a sort of “frame,” a frame like that of a picture.
To take another example, Hiroaki Satô renders a haiku into a one-line
English “poem” in From the Country of Eight Islands edited by Burton
Watson and himself. His reason is that the original Japanese haiku is
always printed in one line and that the English translation should follow
that pattern. His one-line translation emanates from his idea of haiku,
which is a one-line poem.
Unfortunately I have to decline your request that I show what I think are
the best samples of my translation. I have no sample to show to myself or
others. I have always endeavored to do my best, but I have never felt I
attained that goal.

You wrote in Far Beyond the Field, “The finest work done by a
female haiku poet exemplifies her era just as well as that of a
male poet, even though her status in her time’s haiku circles may
not have been very high” (ix).

Could you discuss this concept of the importance of era

(exemplifying era) in haiku composition?

Why do you feel it is so important?

What are some examples of 20th/21st century haiku that you feel
represent this concept?

Japan is a small country area-wise, with a large population. Japanese

people are less individualistic and more totalitarian, especially so in the
feudal times, when they were expected to serve for their family clan,
country, etc. Thus when some new fashion caught the attention of a few
people, it might spread very quickly and end up gaining utmost popularity.
The situation was the same in haiku. In the first half of the 18th century,
for instance, the so-called “plain” style popularized by Kagami Shikô
(1665–1731) conquered most areas of the haiku world of Japan. The latter
half of the 19th century was mostly the era of what is called the
“tsukinami” (conventional) style, a style made up only by conventional
words and techniques peculiar to the existing haiku.

In the early years of the 20th century, the Hototogisu (mountain cuckoo)
school was prevalent among haiku poets. It taught that haiku should
concentrate on the beauties of nature for its subject-matter. Its head was
the dictatorial Takahama Kyoshi, and I already cited an example of his
haiku (“a paulownia leaf . . .”). Here is another:

shûten no shita ni nogiku no kaben kaku

under the autumnal

sky, a wild chrysanthemum
lacking one petal

In a poem the author is to be made to recede backward as much as

possible—that is what Kyoshi taught.

In the 1930s several major poets began to oppose the tenets of

the hototogisu school. The most influential among them was Yamaguchi
Seishi, who extended the meaning of nature to include a number of
modern man-made objects such as a motion picture, a smelting furnace,
and a steam-engine. In haiku he looked at them from a cool, nonhuman
point of view:

shûya au kikansha ni tsuzuku sharyô nashi

autumn night I watch

a steam engine
followed by no car

A steam engine is a modern subject nonexistent in classical haiku. Usually

it is followed by a long train of passenger or freight cars, but in this
instance there is none. Does the engine stand for something?

The number of haiku schools gradually increased since the end of World
War II. According to the Museum of Haiku Literature, schools that publish
“little haiku magazines” total somewhere between 800 and 1,000 in Japan
today. Poets have become more individualistic, each with his or her tenet.
The concept of “era” in the traditional sense is disappearing—or has
disappeared—in the 21st century.

What do you believe were some of the most significant

changes/developments in Japanese haiku poetics during the
postwar period?

I think there were three major movements in Japanese haiku poetics

during the postwar period. The first was “social haiku”; the second,
“avant-garde haiku”; and the third, “surrealistic haiku.”
Social haiku started partly because some poets wanted to oppose
Kuwabara Takeo’s argument for haiku as a “second-rate” art form. [Note: A
translation by Mark Jewel is available at Simply Haiku 4.1, 2006
<http://simplyhaiku.com/SHv4n1/features/Kuwabara.html>.] Kuwabara
blamed haiku poets’ concentration on the beauties of nature with little or
no concern with political or social happenings. Especially “humanist”
poets, such as Nakamura Kusatao and Kato Shûson, argued against this
blame and tried to show their concern with contemporary Japanese
society. Other poets, like Suzuki Murio (1919–2002) and Satô Onifusa
(1919–2002), did not belong to the humanist group, but wrote haiku that
connote the discontents and struggles of the lower class. Here is Murio’s
poem published in 1947:

kanashiki kana seibyôin no kemuridashi

how sad—
the smokestack
of a VD hospital
In the background is the image of a large city, with a number of prostitutes
serving soldiers of the Occupied Forces. In a short time venereal diseases
are widespread, their patients filling hospitals and clinics. The dark smoke
coming out of the stack in the poem symbolizes the patient and his
secreting fluid.

Avant-garde haiku, meaning a new type of poetry that refreshes the

traditional form, had existed many times in Japanese haiku before World
War II. The term in the postwar period is applied specifically to the works
of Kaneko Tôta (b. 1919), Abe Kan’ichi (1928–2009), Higashigawa Kishio (b.
1927), and others who advocated the expression of the poet’s perception
intellectually in terms of images. Haiku, according to them, was a
metaphorical presentation of the creative self by way of imagery. An oft-
quoted example by Tôta is:

ginkôin-ra asa yori keikô su ika no gotoku

like squids
bank clerks are fluorescent
from the morning

Tôta explains: “In the dark morning each bank clerk holds fluorescent light
lonesomely and shows a vivid shape peculiar to the finny tribe. That has
settled down into an image.” In other words, he intellectually made his
consciousness into two images; he brought the squid and the bank clerk
together, though they were distant and unrelated from each other.

Surrealistic haiku are those that make use of techniques like incongruous
comparisons, dreamlike metaphors, and abstruse words and phrases.
Some free-verse poets, like Hagiwara Sakutarô (1886–1942), Nishiwaki
Junzaburô (1894–1982) and Takahashi Shinkichi (1901–87), wrote moving
poems in the preceding years, and haiku poets might have read their
works. Among surrealistic haiku poets Takayanagi Shigenobu shocked
readers by bringing out his first collection of haiku in 1950; above all, his
haiku were printed in multiline form. Other poets like Nagata Kôi (1900–
97), Nakamura Sonoko (1912–2001), and Akao Tôshi (1925–81) stuck to
the 5-7-5 form, although they used obscure and inscrutable language. I
have cited Takayanagi’s haiku before; here is an example by Tôshi
published in 1957:

ongaku tadayou kishi hitashi yuku hebi no ue

music is afloat—
a snake’s hunger
invades the shore
Are the poet’s spiritual hunger and the uneasiness symbolized in the snake
slithering along the shore?

Charles Bernstein, an American poet, theorist, editor, and literary

scholar, recently made the following statement in an interview
on The Poet in Today's World:

“[W]e have many poems translated into English which are much
more—they're like expository summaries or paraphrases. . . . [W]e
have poems translated into English from Spanish, Portuguese, for
instance, which are more comprehensible than the originals. They
lose the whole resonance. They become sort of silly—they're like
paraphrases. You wanna keep some understanding of the overall
incomprehensibilities sometimes of the original.”

Each poem, no doubt, presents different difficulties/issues for a

translator. Your book, Bashô and His Interpreters, is a
monumental work for a number of reasons, but particularly
because it makes every attempt to help readers unravel all the
intricacies, allusions, background and cultural capital that might
go into, or surround, a haiku written in Japanese.

It could be argued that much, if not most, of English haiku over

the last hundred years has been written almost exclusively based
upon translations of Japanese haiku (in respectful, reverential
imitation). In other words, translations and how they are
explicated have had an enormous impact on how English-language
haiku and senryu are composed, discussed, and intellectualized.

Could you discuss, if possible, this notion of what “resonance” is

most often lost when Japanese haiku are translated into English?

And, do you feel that the “incomprehensibilities . . . of the

original” is sometimes, or even often times, lost when translating
Japanese haiku into English? How so/in what ways?

It is inevitable that a poem loses something when it is translated. In the

first place, the original poem has certain denotations and connotations,
and while the translator may be able to convey the most of denotations,
connotations are often difficult, sometimes impossible, to transmit to
readers in a totally different culture. To cite an example easy to
understand, here is a haiku by Nishiyama Sôin (1605–82):

matsu ni fuji tako ki ni noboru keshiki ari

wisteria on a pine—
the scene of an octopus
climbing the tree
The original poems is humorous, for, beside the fact that the whole poem
is a parody of famous lines in a noh play, the octopus is a familiar food
item in Japan and has been humorously referred to a number of objects
like a bald-headed man. In America the octopus is not a familiar object; it
is rather an uncanny, bizarre creature seldom appearing in poetry.

Familiarity and humor that go with the image of an octopus are used in a
well-known haiku by Matsuo Bashô:

takotsubo ya hakanaki yume wo natsu no tsuki

an octopus pot—
inside, a short-lived dream
under the summer moon

In many critics’ opinions, here Bashô identified himself with, or at least

had sympathy for, the octopus sleeping in the pot. He wouldn’t have done
so if the octopus was not so close to him in his mind. English readers
wouldn’t feel the same way, because the octopus is an uncanny creature
living under the sea. The familiar and slightly humorous feeling that makes
part of the resonance of the poem is gone from the English translation,
and the translator can do nothing about that.

It is especially difficult to convey the whole resonance of a haiku in

translation, because the verse form is so short. In a long work like a novel,
the translator can try to transmit the resonance by adding words and
phrases, or even sentences. I’ve heard that Prof. Edward Seidensticker, the
famous translator of The Tale of Genji, did not translate haiku for that
reason. According to him, the image of a pond makes the Japanese first
think of “the quiet place,” while Americans’ first association of it is
“water.” Bashô’s old-pond poem, he thinks, is untranslatable.

As for the “incomprehensibilities . . . of the original,” I have an episode to

tell. Prof. Royall Tyler, in retranslating The Tale of Genji, said that the
original has many abstruse, incomprehensible sentences and that he
would try to retain them as such in his translation. Apparently the
comment was made to justify his retranslation, for the existing work by
Prof. Seidensticker was well known for its fluency and readability. Later
Prof. Donald Keene, an expert in Japanese literature and a translator
himself, opposed the view and said that English readers would think the
abstruseness in translation comes not from the original but from the
translator’s lack of skill. I’m on Prof Keene’s side. I think there are
incomprehensible Japanese haiku, but I always skip translating them. I see
no meaning to translate a haiku I don’t understand.

Do you think haiku is a dying art in Japan, in the sense that it is

no longer really a high-art enterprise?
If you feel that it does, in fact, remain a high-art enterprise, who
would you consider to be some of the top poets, and why?

I don’t think haiku is a dying art in Japan. It is hard to call it so when ten
million people are writing it and when more than 800 “little magazines”
publish their works. Whether today’s haiku can be compared in merit to
the best of Bashô and Buson, it is difficult to say. But most of the arts have
not fared well since the middle of the last century. Japanese poetry,
including haiku and tanka, seems to be in the downward trend. I still think,
though, haiku occupies a more significant position in Japan than poetry
does in the United States.

I am not well read in contemporary haiku, and so my choice for top poets
may be too personal to be taken as a standard one. Before I was stricken
by a stroke, I had been translating a good number of 20th century poets,
and I will select three from among them. Ôki Amari (b. 1914), also a
painter, belongs to a group of poets who write not only haiku but many
other genres; her haiku present original impressions of various moments in
her fresh, peculiar diction. Tsubouchi Toshinori (b. 1944), Takayanagi
Shigenobu’s student, holds haiku to be a poem of fragmentary speech and
makes intellectual use of colloquial words and phrases. Natsuishi Ban’ya
(b. 1955), another of Takayanagi’s followers, has done a lot of
experimental writings, one quality of which is to transcend the sense of
the seasons. All those poets work in areas outside haiku as well (the latter
two are university professors), and their haiku tend to be intellectual and
surrealistic.

Would you be so kind as to offer us a few of your translations of these

three poets? (A few books by Natsuishi Ban’ya have been translated into
English, but the other two are largely unknown in English.)

I hesitate to show these, because they are unfinished translations I had

been working on before I suffered a stroke. But here they are, two poems
each from the works of Ôki, Tsubouchi, and Natsuishi.

Ôki Amari:

shonen no tsukue ni chizu to utsusemi to

on the boy’s desk

a map
and an empty cicada shell

shinu to iu yasuragi fuyu no umi ni nashi

death—
that peace is nowhere
in the winter sea
Tsubouchi Toshinori:

aki no kaze shiosaba wo fuku miko wo fuku

autumn wind
blows at a salted mackerel
blows at a prince

ganbaru wa nante iu na yo kusa no hana

“I’ll stand firm!”

don’t say anything of the sort,
flowers of grass

Natsuishi Ban’ya:

hi izuru kuni no tenshi no midaregami

in the Land of the Rising Sun

an angel
with tangled hair

mangetsu ni kizu ari niku niku yasai niku

a wound
on the full moon—meat, meat
vegetable, meat

What is the relevance of haiku in Japan, particularly after World

War II, especially with regards to the postwar gendai and avant-
garde haiku movements?

Most remarkable in Japanese haiku after the Second World War was its
popularity. Although haiku, as well as senryu, had been an art for
commoners before the war, it has become immensely popular as people
began to have more time to spend beside making their living. Today haiku
is regarded as one of the respectable hobbies. Many popular magazines
and newspapers have a haiku column to which readers contribute their
works in the 17-syllable form. Haiku (or senryu) accompanied by a
photograph serves as another popular competition in a TV program. For
that matter, major haiku poets appear on various television programs.
Mayuzumi Madoka (b. 1965), a former Miss Kimono, has become a notable
talent who writes in various journals and appears on TV programs.

A number of women have become part of the Japanese haiku world. Some
say women occupy about 80 percent of the Japanese haiku-writing
population. Beyond doubt a large majority of them are amateur poets who
write haiku in their spare time.
But since the end of the war such women as Hashimoto Tahako (1899–
1963), Mitsuhashi Takajo (1899–1972), and Katsura Nobuko (1914–2004)
have written some of the finest examples of 20th-century haiku. Inahata
Teiko (b. 1931), granddaughter of Takahama Kyoshi, is the editor of the
most influential of the haiku magazines, Hototogisu.

The postwar period was an era characterized by chaotic, transitional and

therefore free creative trends; poets could take liberty in whatever style
they would like to. It was in that period when avant-garde and surrealistic
schools appeared to experiment with extreme styles. Today’s poets do not
seem to go to those extremes. No longer is there any major poet who
writes free-style haiku like Hôsai and Santôka. Very few poets who follow
Takayanagi Shigenobu use a multiline form as he did. But they are well
aware that modern haiku has gone through those experiments in the
recent past. They write haiku in the 5-7-5 form and use season words, yet
their poems are more like free verse in implications.

In your opinion, how does haiku work as a contemporary poetics?

Haiku is one of the shortest verse forms in the world. It is easy to write
one. For Japanese people, the 5-7-5 syllable pattern is the basic rhythm of
the language, and even elementary school children can produce works
without difficulty. For that matter, haiku is being used in American grade
schools to teach the basics of poetry. Some mental hospital patients
compose haiku to help promote their cure. While poetry is on the decline
in many countries, haiku may work as one of the stimulating means to
reawaken the significance of poetry.

Haiku is also the type of poetry that makes use of imagery, while leaving
its speech fragmentary and suggestive. It creates a good deal of
ambiguity, making readers think, associate, and imagine, somewhat like a
Zen phrase. It raises questions, yet gives no answers. Beginnings are
there, yet endings are not. In today’s world where nothing is clearly
closed, haiku may be a fitting art form.

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