Current
Events: Senryu samplings from
Bitoh Sanryu
Susumu Takiguchi
a review of:
Senryu
- Haiku Reflections of the Times, selected by
Bitoh Sanryu,
translated and edited by Matthew Spellman, Mangajin, Inc., 1997, pp. 118, US$ 8.
95, Yen 1, 300
All too often we tend to hear people in the West argue about whether certain
works are *xxxxx, or senryu, or have elements of both. I have never heard the
same argument in Japan. As far as modern xxxxx and senryu are concerned these
two different forms would just not normally get confused there. Instinctively
the Japanese know the difference. Why is this so?
First, the Japanese senryu seems more distinctively senryu-like than its Western
counterpart. Comic elements are more pronounced, irony and mockery are more
explicit and the topic and choice of words are normally totally different from
those of xxxxx, far more so than we see in work produced in the West.
Xxxxx in Japan, on the other hand, is more "serious" in what it wants
to say than senryu and its sense of humour, when employed, more subtle. Only
sometimes xxxxx can be on the verge of becoming senryu if comic elements are too
obvious, or too facetious, but such xxxxx are deemed more as a failure than
anything else.
Xxxxx of the traditional school, still the backbone and vanguard of the art in
Japan, simply cannot be mistaken for senryu. Furthermore, even free-style xxxxx,
or avant-garde xxxxx is normally too serious to be called senryu. In short,
modern Japanese senryu is nowhere near like xxxxx save 5-7-5 format which is
observed nearly all the time not because of its intrinsic value but for
convenience and effect.
Such examples are amply given in the book under review. In fact the 100 senryu
selected here perhaps have the characteristics I have pointed out much more than
many others composed in modern Japan. The main reason for that is that this is
an anthology of so-called "current events senryu", mocking and
attacking what's going on in the world of corrupt politics, decadent society,
degenerate
culture and the disjointed international community. Senryu exposes "the
weaknesses of human beings and the contradictions of life", according to
Bitoh Sanryu who selected works for the book.
These samples were collected from among countless senryu works published in the
popular "Current Events Senryu" column (started in 1950) of the
Yomiuri Daily between 1989 and 1997. They were composed by numerous senryu
aficionados up and down the country who have flooded the newspaper every day
with the average daily submission of more than 1,000 works. Only five will find
the honourable place in the column. Some examples from the book: -
England and China/ each gets one half of a year/ on this calendar (England hands
over Hong Kong to China on July 1, 1997)
The wall's destruction:/ dust of the post-war era/ rises and dances (The coming
down of the Berlin Wall unleashed all vices, injustices and corruption which had
been concealed and contained in it, creating a pandemonium)
The pension money/ passes right on by/ age sixty-five (The official starting age
for pensions is now 65, but may soon be moved to 70)
After purchasing/ a bit of America,/ tempers flare (Sony purchases Columbia,
Mitsubishi Rockefeller Plaza etc., Americans demanded it but don't like it when
it has materialised)
The Japanese people live long,/but life as prime minister/ is short
(self-explanatory)
"Tax reduction" is/ a dead phrase; "Tax evasion"/ is the
phrase (kigo) of Spring (In spring many incidents of tax evasion but tax cuts
are conveniently forgotten)
"Hello,/ This is NTT:/ you're fired" (Restructuring forced NTT to use
their tool of the trade to tell the bad news)
After his return/ she checks:/ Did he get the axe? (The wife has to check if her
husband's head is still there!)
Dinner expenses:/ not in the household budget/ of a bureaucrat (Because he uses
public money, or bribes for that purpose)
From their mouths/ it rarely leaks:/ radioactivity (Radioactive leaks are
covered up)
Konishiki makes/ a triumphant return to/ Pearl Harbor (The sumo wrestler,
Champion Konishiki, a naturalised Japanese, receives a hero's welcome in his
native Hawaii, Pearl Harbour being the symbol of Japan's initial victory and her
eventual destruction in the last war).
I hesitate to call these works "poems". The book uncritically does so.
The name senryu was derived from a Edo poet of the same name, Karai Senryu
(1718-1790), who was a renowned anthologist of maeku-zuke and later manku-awase,
the origins of senryu. At that time senryu was still a part of renga or renku
and therefore merited the name of poem. The famous "Haifu-Yanagidaru"
is a 167-volume anthology with poems based on Senryu's selection. However, these
ko-senryu, or old senryu, had witticism or irony that was only subtle and mild
compared with modern senryu composed after the Meiji Restoration.
Should there be any in the West who would consider even one example in the book
to be not senryu but xxxxx, his or her definition of xxxxx itself would really
need a proper "redefinition".
*the h-word
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