| Tournament
Chairman’s Closing Address |
 |
01/07/02
The First
WHC Global Haiku Tournament: April, May & June 2002
As a new initiative, the
World Haiku Club provides alternative ways for haiku practice. The Global Haiku
Tournament is a case in point. Though serious in its intended aims, the most
important characteristic of GHT is that it is a new tool for haiku enthusiasts
across the world to learn haiku in a light-hearted and playful manner, a rare
scene in the serious world of haiku. It is significant and encouraging that the
GHT with such aspect should be endorsed by The Japan Times, the largest
English-language newspaper of Japan.
Haiku may be a deadly
serious business for some, but it is and should remain for most a delightful
hobby, cultural pastime or amateurs’ forum for enjoying other people’s
company. This does not mean in the least that poets of the former camp produce
of necessity good haiku. Nor does it mean that poets of the latter camp churn
out only doggerel. Evidence is abundant to the contrary.
Words such as “tournament”
or “competition” have over -- and undertones of violence, aggression and
rivalry, which some may deplore if used in haiku. There is indeed an important
message in such concerns. However, it is still part of our instinct as human
beings to fight and compete. If contemporary haiku is about human affairs as
well as about nature, then we cannot exclude these undeniable realities of
ourselves. So, the real question to ask is: what is the human way of fighting or
competing, and what for?
One answer to that question
in the area of haiku is to approach a tournament or competition in the spirit of
a game or sport, or even “disport”, the old form of sport. This spirit used
to permeate haiku activities in the past, at times lowering their standards if
in excess but also saving haiku from going to the other extreme. We seem to be
just in that “the other extreme”.
Many observations concerning
the same question were heard during the GHT for the last three months. Many
specific questions have been raised, if not answers. Also, being the first of
its kind, the GHT has had its share of teething problems. No doubt lessons will
be learnt from them for future tournaments scheduled for next year, and many
years after that.
However, the overall
feelings of the participating teams, their captains and players alike,
spectators and the Tournament officials are that we have had an unprecedented
learning experience. Before it started, we did not know quite what to expect
from the GHT. In the event, we came away from it with a strong feeling that we
had done something extraordinary.
There are no other ways of
experiencing those intense few hours of the Tournament with over 300 e-mails
criss-crossing around this globe, across different time zones and national,
cultural and linguistic barriers, than actually being there. In a way, it is
astonishing that two to three hundred active haiku poets in the world
participated simultaneously in a single haiku event of this scope and
complexity. The GHT, however, will be reported extensively in the July issue of
World Haiku Review. It is also planned that The Japan Times will publish the
results of GHT.
Report after report, team
members have talked about how closely and intensely they got involved with each
other, learnt from each other, opened their heart to the team or group (“za”
in Japanese) spirit which had the dominion over petty egotism.
The inclusion of renku as a
significant part of the Tournament was a long-deliberated, difficult and
calculated risk we decided to take for reasons which will be debated in coming
months when we walk many more miles in our renku journey. The gamble has paid
off. It reflects the long-term policy of the World Haiku Club to encourage and
help the development of world renku.
More immediately, the
decision to include renku has had the aim of giving an impact, a shock even, to
both haijin and renkujin into realising that neither of them can understand
haiku truly without learning renku and vice versa. Renku had been in the
doldrums long before Masaoka Shiki all but killed it. Shiki’s haiku reform was
the saving of the genre at the expense of renku. From the viewpoint of renku,
this mother of haiku defied modernisation, expansion of scope and “Westernisation”,
all of which Shiki made available to haiku. Shiki is the Father of modern haiku.
We owe today’s popularity of haiku across the world to him. Had he lived
longer, he might have tried to reform renku as well.
The separation of haiku from
renku was a cause of the unprecedented prosperity of haiku. What is seldom
talked about is that it also led to confusion, problems and controversy in haiku
over matters which could have easily been explained with the help of renku. On
the other hand, renku was saddled with cumbersome shikimoku (rules) and other
baggage (not least the necessity that people need physically to gather together)
which were not suitable for busy, complex and changing modern life.
What, then, has made renku a
modern phoenix, rising again from the ashes? What is the prospect of its future
development, especially on the world stage? These issues will be discussed in
part at the World Haiku Festival 2002 in Yuwa Town, Akita, Japan in the coming
September. These issues are also behind the decision to go ahead with the
inclusion of renku in the GHT. The Internet provides us with a potentially most
promising outlook for the revived renku to be enjoyed world-wide. The GHT is a
platform to facilitate such an enterprise.
On balance, there is no
doubt that we can celebrate the success of the First WHC Global Haiku
Tournament. This is only a beginning of the long journey of this annual event.
Next year, it will be better. My heart-felt congratulations go to the winning
team, The Pointed Radishes, as they deserve high praise. They also go to all
members of other teams, cheerleaders, spectators, reporters, compilers,
distinguished judges and all those who have made the GHT a memorable event. They
deserve their hard-earned rest and should enjoy a sense of fulfilment and
friendship re-enforced. They are all winners.
I must mention three names,
however, lest they should be forgotten, who have worked like mad behind the
scene: Mitty Abe who begot the idea of the GHT and planned it, Paul Conneally
who directed the GHT and led it to its successful conclusion and Debi Bender who
oiled the wheels, nursed wounded egos, shepherded those who went astray and
fixed countless computer glitches for people, beside editing World Haiku Review.
The greatest winner, in a
sense, may be the Global Haiku Tournament itself. A tiny history has been made.
Kengin,
Susumu Takiguchi
GHT
Tournament Chairman
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