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The Art of Haiku: Its History Through Poems And Reviews reviews Selected Haiku, with Essays and Commentary. Part I: 1937–1960, BY +ANEKO 4OHTA 4RANSLATED BY THE +ON .ICHI 4RANSLATION 'ROUP 7INCHESTER 6A 2ED -OON 0RESS PAGES ¼˝ x½˝. 'LOSSY WHITE CARD COVERS PERFECTBOUND )3". 0RICE FROM THE PUBLISHER AT WWWREDMOONPRESSCOM Reviewed by Hiroaki Sato aneko Tôta B WRITES THE KIND OF HAIKU THAT +some of those not in the know — those not familiar with “modern HAIKUv— may find to be clumsy, incompetent, or nothing more than snippets of prose left unfinished. Take the two pieces that the tanka POET )WATA 4ADASHI B exalts as “the masterpieces that FORM THE HIGH PEAKS IN THE HISTORY OF MODERN HAIKUv wankyokushi kashôshi bakushinchi no marathon kareina hakahara join arawani mura nemuri 4HE BOOK UNDER REVIEW GIVES THE NAME AS +ANEKO 4OHTA ON THE GROUND THAT IT IS THE POETS hESTABLISHED STYLE AND THE APPELLATION HE CHOOSES TO USE IN %NGLISH v Kaneko Tohta: Selected Haiku, Part I ) PUT THE TWO WORDS IN QUOTATION MARKS BECAUSE 2ICHARD 'ILBERT THE LEADER of the translation group that produced the book under review, seems to have an odd notion of gendai HAIKU ) EXPECT TO DEAL WITH THE MATTER IN A FUTURE ARTICLE FOR Modern Haiku. )IDA 2Yûta et al., eds., Gendai haiku zenshû )) 4OKYO 2IPPû 3HOBô Modern Haiku 44.1 The first one could easily be a puzzle. Read it simply, without, for ex ample, speculating from the Chinese characters employed what might be meant, and it seems to say, “Curved, burnt, (a or the) marathon at GROUND ZEROv "ECAUSE bakushinchi hGROUND ZERO v STILL MEANS ONLY ONE thing in Japan, the point where either of the two atomic bombs dropped ON (IROSHIMA AND .AGASAKI EXPLODED THIS PIECE MAY SUGGEST SOMETHING portentous, something macabre, as it must be talking about Hiroshima OR .AGASAKI BUT WHAT EXACTLY 7HAT IS IT THATS hCURVEDv !RE THE #HI nese characters applied to wankyoku hCURVED LIKE A BAY v MEANT TO SUG GEST SOMETHING GRAPHIC ! CURIOUS *APANESE READER MIGHT WONDER Also, if the same Japanese reader happens to come across this piece in a text that gives the reading kashôshi for , he may wonder: Why GIVE SUCH AN ANOMALOUS READING )TS STANDARD VERSION IS yakedoshi. A Japanese writer can facilitate the readings of difficult Chinese charac ters or suggest or impose a specific reading on a word by the use of the hRUBYv FONT PRINTED ON ITS RIGHT SIDE IF THE WRITING IS PRINTED VERTICALLY ABOVE IT IF ITS PRINTED HORIZONTALLY AND +ANEKO DOES THE LATTER HERE BUT FOR WHAT PURPOSE Then, when told that this piece is meant to be a haiku, the reader MAY WONDER FURTHER (OW COULD IT BE )TS HARD TO SCAN IT SYLLABICALLY !T BEST IT COMES OUT AS nn ;OR n=n WHICH GIVES LITTLE HINT OF the haiku form. There have of course been hypersyllabic haiku, most people know, as they learn in school that even the haiku saint Bashô WROTE THINGS LIKE THE FOLLOWINGWHICH +ANEKO HIMSELF CITES IN DISCUSSING hTHE HAIKU FORM AND RHYTHM v IN HIS INTRODUCTION TO HAIKU ro no koe nami o utte harawata kôru yo ya namida 3CULLS VOICE SLAPPING THE WAVES MY INTESTINES FREEZE TONIGHT THE TEARS Kashôshi IS THE READING +ANEKO GIVES IN his postwar haiku history, Waga sengo haiku-shi 4OKYO )WANAMI 3HOTEN AND IN Kaneko Tôta / Takayanagi Shigenobu shû 4OKYO !SAHI 3HINBUNSHA BUT NOT IN Gendai haiku zenshû )) +ANEKO 4ôta, Haiku nyûmon (HokuyôSHA n Reviews This ONE COMES OUT AS nnn "UT IN THIS CASE THE STUDENT READING IT IS bound to be told that Bashô wrote such pieces only during a short period when he was trying to break out of the constraints of the by then firmly es TABLISHED HOKKU FORM SEEKING INSPIRATIONS IN #HINESE POETRY )N +ANEKOS case, the teacher may not give that kind of explication, even if he notes that +ANEKO WROTE THIS IN .AGASAKI 7OULDNT THE STUDENT BE CONFUSED The second piece — which seems to say something even more puzzling, “Resplendent cemetery field: vaginas exposed the village SLEEPSvMAY MAKE IT AS A HAIKU IF BARELY THIS ONE COMES OUT AS nn )N TRUTH OF THE lVE PIECES THE TANKA POET )WATA PICKS FROM THE hSERIES of great works Nagasaki v WHICH INCLUDES THE TWO CITED ABOVE ONLY ONE COMES CLOSE TO THE STANDARD nn BECAUSE IT FALLS INTO nn nishi no umi ni buoy uku zugai yori nurete But THEN THIS ONE RAISES A QUESTION ON ITS SYNTAXTHE QUESTION +ANEKO addresses at some length by making a distinction between onsetsu hSYLLABIC BREAK v AND bunsetsu hSYNTACTICAL BREAK v IN HIS DIS CUSSION OF hTHE HAIKU FORM AND RHYTHMv 3YLLABICALLY BROKEN THREE PARTS WILL READ hIN THE SEA OF THE WEST v hTHE SKULL WHERE A BUOY mOATS v hMORE WET THANv 3YNTACTICALLY THE lRST TEN SYLLABLES MAKE A SENTENCE MORE OR LESS AND SAY h)N THE WESTERN SEA mOATS A BUOY v WITH THE NEXT EIGHT FORMING AN ADJECTIVAL CLAUSE hWETTER THAN A SKULLv .OW *APANESE HAIKU WRITERS ARE GENERALLY DIVIDED INTO TRADITIONAL ISTS AND NON TRADITIONALISTS 4RADITIONALISTS INSIST ON INCLUDING SEASON al indicators, yûki AND STICKING TO THE hSET FORM v teikei . 9OU MIGHT SAY AN hOUTSIDER v THE NON HAIKU NON TANKA POET -IYOSHI Toyoichirô n DElNED THEIR POSITION CLEARLY when he said: “a haiku with no seasonal indicator and in no set form WILL BE NOTHING MORE THAN A MODERN SHORT POEMv .ON TRADITIONAL ists, in contrast, neither insist on seasonal indicators nor the set form, Haiku nyûmon n -IYOSHI 4OYOICHIRô h9OGI TO SHITE NO HAIKU v geppô (monthly pamphlet) at tached to Gendai haiku zenshû )) Modern Haiku 44.1 although, mindful of the kind of danger Miyoshi warned against, most of them do not seem to go whole hog. +ANEKO IS AMONG SUCH NON WHOLE HOG NON TRADITIONALISTS IF YOU will. For one thing, his idea of including or not including seasonal in dicators, kigo or kidai , is far from radical. Many of the “tra DITIONALv kigo have lost their specificities, he says, and argues for add ING hNEW SUBJECTS v shin-daizai , defining their overall character AS hPHYSICALITY v nikukan , saying they consist of three categories: hmESH v nikutai : human body, animal body, and such hTIME v jikan : things that show the passage of time, such as morning, noon, evening hSOILv OR hEARTH v tsuchi hSPACESv IN THE NATURAL WORLD SUCH AS wind, sky, earth, mountain, and sea +ANEKO ADMITS THAT THESE NEW SUBJECTS ARE hVERY CLOSE TO ;TRADITIONAL= kigov )NDEED THERE IS LITTLE NEW ABOUT HIS APPROACH FOR THE SIMPLE REA SON THAT THE YEAR HISTORY OF kigo is a history of expanding inclusive ness. .ATSUISHI "ANYA B THE SELF APPOINTED mAG BEARER OF AVANT GARDE HAIKU HAS ADVOCATED THE CREATION OF hKEYWORDSv FOR HAIKU WITH HIS BOOK Gendai haiku keyword jiten +ANEKO JOINED .ATSUISHI AND +URODA -OMOKO B IN AND COMPILED hA MODERN SEASONAL ACCOUNT v gendai saijiki. &OR THE OTHER +ANEKOS IDEA OF hSET FORMv IS NOT TOO RADICAL EITHER (E ARGUES THAT hFORMv OR hPATTERN v kata , is absolutely necessary, RECOGNIZING THAT THE hSET FORMv FOR HAIKU nn IS ONE GREAT CHARM of this poetic form, even as he argues that it is to make the matter “too NARROWv TO SAY THAT hTHE FORMAL CHARACTERISTIC OF HAIKU IS SYLLABLESv The definition of haiku he offers, then, is “the shortest poetic form IN @SET FORMv ). )N THE END HE USUALLY DOES NOT GO +ANEKO Haiku nyûmon n Haiku nyûmon (IROAKI 3ATO One Hundred Frogs: From Renga to Haiku to English .EW 9ORK AND 4OKYO 7EATHERHILL (IROAKI 3ATO Japanese Women Poets (M.E. 3HARPE XVII +ANEKO Haiku nyûmon n Reviews FAR BEYOND THE nn OR THE TOTAL OF SYLLABLES &OR THAT MATTER HE doesn’t seem to have written hiposyllabic haiku — pieces that fall well SHORT OF SYLLABLES This contrasts with the advocates of jiyûritsu hFREE RHYTHMv AND kôgo hCOLLOQUIAL LANGUAGEv HAIKU AS WELL AS THOSE IN THE 0ROLETARIAN ,ITERATURE -OVEMENT !MONG THEM ONE MAY NAME /GIWARA 3EISEN sui n /ZAKI (ôsai n AND +URIBAYASHI )SSEKIRO n /NE THING NOTABLE ABOUT +ANEKOS HAIKU IN THIS REGARD IS HIS REFUSAL to deviate from the monolinear format. He does discuss departures from what he calls “the usual practice of writing haiku in a single line WITHOUT ANY SPACE IN ITv BY CITING EXAMPLES OF THOSE WHO USE INTRALINEAR space, punctuation, and lineation. 7ITH THE BEST KNOWN PRACTITIONER OF THIS LAST 4AKAYANAGI 3HIGENOBU n +ANEKO even quotes in full his most extravagant example, one broken into three hSTANZASv WITH A TOTAL OF TWELVE hLINESv "UT +ANEKO LOOKS AT THEM AS PIECES AIMING AT SPECIAL hVISUALv EFFECTS and warns that, if you follow suit, you will end up, unless you are care FUL NOT JUST TURNING OUT PIECES THAT ARE hODIOUS IMITATIONS v BUT YOU will also risk “the danger of turning the haiku itself into something WISHY WASHYv (E MADE THESE POINTS WHEN HE WAS BUT HE HAD never stepped outside the monolinear form and used no intralinear space, no punctuation, before or since. Kaneko Tohta: Selected Haiku, Part I: 1937–1960 comes with a seem ingly formidable editorial apparatus yet with odd, at times tangential, IRRELEVANT DETAILS )T COMES WITH A SERIES INTRODUCTION BY 2ICHARD 'IL BERT THE LEADER OF THE +ON .ICHI 4RANSLATION 'ROUP THAT WORKED OUT 4HESE AND OTHER POETS AND THEIR WORKS ARE INCLUDED IN THE Shinchô spe cial, Tanka haiku senryû 101 nen: 1892–1992 4OKYO 3HINCHôSHA 4HIS valuable compilation presents one tanka, haiku, and senryû poet for each of the YEARS OF THE PERIOD COVERED &OR A DISCUSSION OF THESE THINGS IN %NGLISH SEE (IROAKI 3ATO Japanese Women Poets !RMONK .9 AND ,ONDON -% 3HARPE XXXIXnXXXL &OR A HAIKU POET WHO USES INTRALINEAR SPACING SEE )TAMI +IMIKO n +ANEKO Haiku nyûmon n Haiku nyûmon Modern Haiku 44.1 THIS BOOK AS WELL AS THE OTHERS IN THE SERIES A SELECTION OF +ANEKOS HAIKU UP TO SEPARATED INTO FOUR CHRONOLOGICAL SECTIONS WITH THE NOTES ON THEM IN FOUR CORRESPONDING SECTIONS hTRANSLATOR ESSAYSv BY 'ILBERT AND )Tô 9ûKI A CHRONOLOGY OF +ANEKOS LIFE HAIKU INDICES BY PAGE NUMBER AND hALPHABETICAL v BOTH ARRANGED BY %NGLISH TRANSLATIONS but not by the originals, and translator biographies.
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