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WHCessay
- Kara-Kuchi Ronso
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A HAIKU MOMENT OF TRUTH
Susumu Takiguchi
Oxford, UK
If we were to regard haiku-producing countries today from a
"geo-political" perspective of strength and influence, then the
breakdown of power would be something like this: Japan is a superpower; the
United States (North America) is a major power; Australia, the Balkans, France,
and the United Kingdom are middle powers; and all the other countries are minor
powers.
Many haiku poets would frown at the political incorrectness of such a power
analogy, and disapprove of the distorted projection of the haiku world it would
surely generate without detailed qualitative appraisals of all countries' haiku
output. However, if we do not have the courage to face up to the reality of some
major inequalities in world haiku, we will never be able to tackle the pressing
issues of the form's international development.
The most conspicuous feature on the above map is Japan's self-imposed national
seclusion (sakoku). What occurs in the haiku community outside Japan has little
relevance to, or impact upon, the country where haiku originated and is most
active. Correspondingly, what happens in the Japanese haiku community is little
known in the rest of the world. There is intercourse between Japanese and world
communities, but it amounts to a trickle, like the flow of Japanese goods to the
Chinese and the Dutch communities on Dejima (artificial island off Nagasaki)
when Japan practiced isolationist politics for real (1639-1854).
The second most striking characteristic on the map is the dominant position of
North America. Since World War II, the U.S. and Canada have advanced such vital
features as haiku magazines, anthologies, clubs, associations, and haiku
conferences, and have developed qualitative values in terms of innovation,
theory, and original research.
Considering these characteristics in the context of haiku as an international
form, a number of questions and issues arise.
CONTOUR LINES
The first question to ask is whether or not it makes sense to compose haiku
outside Japan, disengaged from Japanese culture and the language in which the
form was first created. If it does, how should the poet overseas communicate
through haiku with readers in other nations, who have different cultures,
traditions, thoughts, and different poetic principles and sensibilities?
Many Japanese will dismiss any haiku written in anything other than Japanese as
nonsense, mainly because they do not understand them. Those few Japanese who do
praise foreign-language haiku are normally academics specializing in the
language in which the poems are written or in the literature of that foreign
language.
Yet, the question of whether haiku can be written successfully outside Japan is
now essentially irrelevant. As the haiku poet and Waseda University professor,
Sato Kazuo, has pointed out, "Haiku has already travelled overseas".
Haiku poems are written and enjoyed in over 70 languages, by a large haiku
"population" that continues to grow. In other words, no one can stop
the international haiku movement, regardless of whether Japan notices it or not.
The second issue that arises is connected to the above. Outside Japan, haiku is
giving those with open minds a new way of looking at things and of expressing
their thoughts and emotions. Shortest of all forms of poetry, haiku can be one
of the richest, and sometimes even deepest, platforms of self-expression. This
is conspicuous in the many haiku web sites and mailing lists on the Internet.
However, I see chaos beginning to emerge as world haiku develops in different
ways and at different speeds in different countries. Many haijin (haiku poets)
seem not to know whether what they are creating is really haiku. They look to
contemporary Japanese haijin for guidance but there is precious little guidance
either available or willingly given. Also, factionalism and petty rivalry have
been imported from Japan and have added to the existing local factionalism in
some countries.
A third issue is the domination of English as a language of non-Japanese haiku.
English has played an important role in promoting and disseminating haiku around
the world, but it has also fashioned the characteristics of non-Japanese haiku
in an Anglo-Saxon way. Other languages have been marginalized as a result.
Fourth, within Japan itself, there are signs that the haiku "bubble"
is bursting just as the economic bubble did in 1989, creating a messy situation.
Public arguments on haiku in Japan have become rather tawdry and commercialised.
Ugly factionalism hinders progress and creates all manner of problems.
A way forward is to try and expand our imagination and open our hearts
internationally. That way, we can reach out to the sense and sensibility of
haiku poets around the world. What is good in the Japanese haiku tradition can
thus be combined with the new poetic values being generated in other haiku
nations.
HAIKU 2000
To help achieve these objectives, the "World Haiku Festival 2000" is
being held in England this year, culminating in events in London and Oxford
between August 25 and 30. Organized by the World Haiku Club [which the author
chairs] in collaboration with the Poetry Society, National Poetry Day, the Japan
Festival Education Trust, and Oxford Brookes University (with the support of
organizations including the Embassy of Japan, the Japan Foundation, the Haiku
Society of America, and the Daiwa-Anglo Japanese Foundation), the event is
designed to connect the minds and hearts of people around the world through
haiku. Haijin will gather from across the globe to celebrate the achievements of
world haiku and discuss ways in which it should develop in the future.
Further to the festival, the World Haiku Club is collaborating with other
leading international haiku poets to establish a new worldwide organization
called the World Haiku Association (WHA), which will be inaugurated in early
September at a conference in Tolmin, Slovenia. This will be an epoch-making
conference.
WESTERN MISPERCEPTIONS
The current tendency in the West is to modify Japanese haiku "rules"
to suit Western requirements, or to move on to vers libre. However, compared
with progressive haiku currently seen in Japan, the Western version is still
tentative and lags behind.
At the same time, strange phenomena are developing in the West of which most
Japanese haiku poets are unaware. For example, ask any ordinary Japanese haijin
what they think about the "haiku moment," and the answer will likely
be that they haven't got the foggiest idea what you are talking about. Ask them,
then, about the question of "Zen and haiku." They will probably say
they have hardly thought about haiku in that context. What a curious thing this
is!
These two issues are probably the most important aspects of the haiku form for
haijin in the West, and perhaps in the world. Thousands and thousands of haiku
are written, appraised, emulated, and taught according to these two criteria.
And yet Zen and the "haiku moment" are not even on the mind of
ordinary haijin in Japan, a country that dwarfs all other haiku nations put
together.
What on earth does this mean? Have the Western haijin got it all wrong? If these
two foundation stones are removed as false, will we witness the dramatic
collapse of the Western haiku edifice, which has towered outside Japan
throughout the post-war period?
Since the notion of the "haiku moment" is perceived in a similar way
as the essence of Zen, these two items can be said to be two sides of the same
coin. Numerous non-Japanese books and articles on haiku have glorified the
"haiku moment," beginning with analyses by writers and philosophers
such as R. H. Blyth, Suzuki Daisetsu, Robert Aitken, Alan Watts, Harold G.
Henderson, Kenneth Yasuda, James W. Hackett, Jack Kerouac, and Gary Snyder. Many
haijin on the Web never stop talking about it.
It is hoped that World Haiku Festival 2000 will inspire a new outlook on haiku
from which to generate a serious debate about received doctrines and established
canons of non-Japanese modern haiku, however unshakable they may now seem. The
archetypes are, after all, the product of at least half a century's efforts on
the part of Western haijin to develop the form, perhaps responding to the words
of Henderson (Haiku in English, Tuttle, 1967), "Our poets have the task of
developing traditions, standards, and presumably conventions of our own."
Apart from the "haiku moment" and "Zen and haiku," modern
Western haiku reflects other conventions that need to be re-examined and
re-assessed. These include the minimalist style, excessive use of imagery,
insistence on the present tense, abuse of nouns and noun-phrases; frequent
neglect of verbs, articles, prepositions, and other essential parts of speech;
abuse of surprises, and obsessive use of juxtaposition.
Contrary to the intentions of the advocates of these Western inventions, these
devices tend to lead to tiresome stereotyped form, mediocre and repetitious
themes, unpoetic rendering, and, no less importantly, distorted English.
THOUGHTS ON THE "HAIKU MOMENT"
So where are Western haijin going wrong in their pursuit of the "haiku
moment"? Certainly, the concept has helped Westerners to comprehend the
essence of haiku at a time when they are getting little clear information from
Japanese sources. The "haiku moment" seems for them to function like a
Geiger counter, measuring the presence and intensity of a poem's
"radioactivity." The problem starts when the "haiku moment"
is given more than this modest role. Firstly, profound interpretations are often
lavished on haiku, which discover much more than is actually present in the
haiku. This mistake, called fuka-yomi (reading too much into it) in Japan, is
made more often than not when the haiku is perceived to have attained the
"haiku moment," in the way that satori (enlightenment) is achieved in
Zen. Such readers get ecstatic in sharing the supposed "haiku moment"
with fellow poets, creating a dangerous escalation and perpetuation of this
supposition. Even if a "haiku moment" does occasionally occur, it
should be treated merely as a welcome windfall, one that is useful alongside
many other attributes for composing or appreciating haiku.
Furthermore, Western haijin sometimes find the "haiku moment" in a
poem when there seems to be no such thing. This would surely discredit the
notion of the "haiku moment."
However, Western haijin would do a serious disservice to themselves if, instead
of waiting for a "haiku moment" to happen miraculously, they tried
frantically to flush it out whenever possible. Anything jumping into water,
flying in the sky, opening or shutting, any sound heard, any animal's eyes
meeting theirs, any surprises natural or human, seem to be turned into
"haiku moments." The truth is that the "haiku moment" will
either come or it won't. It either happens or it doesn't.
Perhaps the worst thing that seems to be happening among some haijin in the West
is the invention or even faking of "haiku moments," instead of waiting
for them to arrive spontaneously. Faked "haiku moments" are an abuse
of imagination, and like other faked things, haiku poems produced in this way
are normally gimmicky, artificial, and lacking in grace and style. They do not
possess the quality of fuga-no-makoto (poetic sincerity).
To sum up, the "haiku moment" has worked quite well as a
made-in-the-West tool with which poets and readers have gained a cognitive grasp
of what haiku is all about. However, as a tool for actually composing and
appreciating haiku poems, the notion may have done more harm than good. Unless
someone stands up now and warns against its rapid spread and perpetuation, the
"haiku moment" may soon become normative. On the World Wide Web, the
infection is spreading at an astonishing pace.
ONE POSSIBLE SOLUTION
There is one possible solution to all this, which is to follow Henderson's
advice quoted earlier, while also implementing one of the initiatives of the
World Haiku Festival 2000. According to this, the haijin of the world would
allow any viable new poetics and individual prosodic rules and guidelines to
exist as integral parts of the whole body of "world haiku" as
additions to, or as legitimate variants of, their Japanese counterparts.
However, abuse or excessive use of these conventions to the exclusion of others
must still be avoided.
According to this solution, the "haiku moment" would be legitimised as
an important part of the new poetics, rules, and guidelines, irrespective of its
relevance to the Japanese perspective. The "haiku moment" could then
be used not only as a tool of understanding what haiku is, but also as a tool of
composing and appreciating haiku poems. There could of course be a Pakistani
way, a French way, a Brazilian way-all legitimate and relevant, especially for
such things as "local" kigo ("season" words in haiku).
If it takes all sorts to make a world, then, let us have all sorts of haiku ways
to build a truly comprehensive and tolerant world of haiku.
First Published in Twaddle
of An Oxonian, The - Haiku Poems & Essays,
Susumu Takiguchi, Ami-Net International Press, England, 2000
also: Look
Japan, Culture Feature, July 2000
In August 2000, haiku poets from around the world gathered in London and Oxford,
England for the main event of World Haiku Festival 2000. Susumu Takiguchi, a
haiku poet and critic, and chairman of Haiku 2000's Steering and Liaison
Committee, considers the state of world haiku today, and proposes some new
parameters for development of the form tomorrow. The author is a haiku
poet/critic, artist, and essayist. He has lived in the U.K. for nearly 30 years,
working by turns as a financial correspondent, a lecturer in Japanese language
and civilization (Aston University), and an investment banker. He is chairman of
the World Haiku Club.
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