Seasons of the Fleeting World: Writing Haiku

Writing haiku: give it a try!

I have no clue about how many people, in the world, write haiku, but in the country where this genre was born, almost 400 years ago, they are millions —over ten million, it is said—, and there are likely a thousand haiku groups that publish a monthly or bimonthly haiku journal —the smaller groups/journals may have a hundred members/subscribers, while the largest journal, Hototogisu, is said to have some hundred thousand subscribers. Besides, many Japanese write haiku without belonging to a group, lead by a teacher/master, and submit their poems to newspapers, haiku magazines, and web sites dedicated to haiku. Nowadays, almost everywhere, out of Japan, a great number of us, ordinary people, write haiku. It is not a bad thing, of course (not from my point of view, anyway); yet, any time we surf the web, through social network such as Facebook and the like, it happens to read verse labeled ‘haiku’ by their authors, which simply lack the essence of haiku —as well as the form, quite often.

This book comes from a project thought to introduce haiku poetry to our group of poets, belonging in the free Association 'Poets Unite Worldwide'. It is not to be intended as a book written by a master: I'm not such. Thus, I’m not in the position to teach other poets how to write astonishingly excellent haiku. I'm just a poet who loves haiku (and tanka, too) and have been writing this demanding genre of Japanese poetry for a good number of years —yet, despite this, I’m still learning.. And in my learning of the basics of haiku, though I’ve enjoyed the works of R.H. Blyth, Kenneth Yasuda, William Higginson and others, I am especially indebted to Robert D. Wilson, Richard Gilbert, Makoto Ueda, and Susumu Takiguchi: their work has been –and still is– an inspiration to me, as a lover of Japanese poetry.

The original idea was to provide, for our group of poets, a basic knowledge of what the haiku world is, from a practical point of view. But, with the passing of time, the text I was assembling has grown, and now it has reached more than forty thousand words, in seven chapters plus appendix.

Indeed, this happened because I re-examined my first experience, many years ago, as a haiku reader and, later, as a beginner haijin (haiku writer). My first steps were not easy, since I lacked the so called cardinal points, that can help find the right way to appreciate haiku poetry. In order to understand the basics, I had to refer to Japanese history and culture, so as to grab a bit of the Japanese mindset. This is the reason why I've enclosed (so many thanks to Wikipedia for existing!) brief chapters about the Japanese history, culture and aesthetics.

Although a good number of critics argue that English-language haiku is separate from Japanese haiku and its tradition (and some add that haiku is not translatable), I stay with those who consider the value of tradition as the major guiding light on the way of haiku. Yet, this point of view does not mean to deny validity to gendai (modern) haiku, and indeed, many gendai haiku poets do respect tradition even in their being 'modern'.

Anyway, the added chapters represent the necessary side-dish to the main course: the 185 poems of this collection. Furthermore, the poets who have submitted their poems for this project, have granted me to add my own suggestions (when deemed useful), as 'footnote' to the poems themselves; but they are not true commentaries: I’ve simply added my own version of the poem —that is, how I would write that same haiku. This has occured mostly because, as it often happens to beginners, a number of the poems end up with a bit too many images and/or too many words, maybe also with the intent to make the poem lyrical (but haiku poetry is not such). Besides, a number of haiku just describe a scene, while they should try to focus the 'action' on something specific, creating 'resonance' through juxtaposition. But never mind: skill to do comes from doing!

Forty-five poets (plus me) belonging in the free Association 'Poets Unite Worldwide', have taken part in this compilation. My gratitude to each of them, since this collection represents our first step on the difficult path of haiku: a demanding poetic genre, but full of charm and satisfaction.

(Fabrizio Frosini, Firenze, April 2017)

Further acknowledgments:

'Wikipedia', primarily, and other sources freely available on the internet under the GNU Free Documentation License; so useful especially for the chapters on Japanese history and culture.

Years ago I ‘met’ and appreciated Abigail Friedman’s book, 'The Haiku Apprentice: Memoirs of Writing Poetry in Japan', as a different approach, useful for beginners, to the haiku world. For the others, see "Bibliography & useful references".

~*~

chō wa yume no / nagori wake iru / hana-no kana

butterfly – / traces of a dream within / a field of flowers

[Fukuda Chiyo-ni (Kaga no Chiyo), 1703–1775]

~*~

I. About Japanese History and Culture

To speak about haiku – and of Japanese poetry in general – we can't prescind from Japanese history and culture, also recognizing that the literature of that country has been deeply influenced by non-Japanese cultures: particularly by China, in ancient times, and by Europe from the late nineteenth century onward.

Starting around 300 BC [that is, at the end of the so called Final Jōmon period (900–300 BC), when rice culture and iron processing, through China and the Korea peninsula, came to the Japanese Islands and radically changed the way of life of its inhabitants], Buddhist, Confucian and Daoist influences have mixed with the primal animist beliefs (Shinto), that was the native faith of the first Japanese people, thus seeding many reactive changes in the religious and cultural system of Japan over the centuries, and shaping the mindset of the Japanese until about the last part of the 19th century.

In the 6th century AD, the Yamato dynasty — one of many tribes who had settled Japan in prehistory—founded a state modeled on the Chinese states of Sui and T’ang [taken together, Sui dynasty (581–618) and T’ang dynasty (618–907) represented a high point in Chinese civilization, and a golden age of cosmopolitan culture, with the then T’ang capital, Chang'an (present-day Xi'an), the most populous city in the world. They also encouraged Buddhism and helped it to spread further]. As their influence expanded, the Yamato language became the common spoken language in Japan.

Through the spread of Buddhism, before the 5th century, literacy had been introduced to Japan in the form of the Chinese writing system, since the Japanese language had no written form at the time. From the 7th century to the 8th century, the Japanese emperors further spread the use of logographic Chinese characters. As a result, Japanese borrowed many words from Chinese. At first, the Japanese wrote in Classical Chinese. Over time, a writing system evolved: Chinese characters ('hànzì' —but called 'kanji' by the Japanese) came to be used to write Japanese words, resulting in the modern ‘kana’ syllabaries. Around 650 AD, a writing system called ‘man'yōgana’ (since it was used in the ancient poetry anthology Man'yōshū) evolved: it used a number of Chinese characters for their sound, rather than for their meaning. Over time, kanji were simplified, and eventually became two syllabic scripts: ‘hiragana’ and ‘katakana’, which were developed based on man'yōgana syllabary.

All of the above, over the centuries, has shaped the Japanese mentality —at least when we refer to traditional Japan, before the Meiji period (1868–1912). As Robert D. Wilson (in 'A Study of Japanese Aesthetics') puts it: The Japanese mindset utilizes metaphysical silence, impermanence, the undefined, the untouchable, ambiguity, minimalism, and other forms of non-concrete thinking in the creation of their poetry.

Historically, regarding poetry, at the time of Japanese Emperor Temmu (631-686 AD), the courtiers began to compose poems using Chinese (‘kanshi’, meaning: poems in Chinese written by Japanese poets, using kanji), thus starting the long process of assimilation and transformation that led to their own poetic forms: waka (literally poetry in Japanese). Waka actually included a number of different styles; the most important being tanka (short poem) and chōka (long poem). All but tanka fell into disuse at the beginning of the Heian period (794–1185: the golden period of Japanese history —together with the preceding Nara period, AD 710-794 — when Buddhism, Daoism and other Chinese influences were at their height, along with the arts, especially poetry and literature), and disappeared shortly after; hence the term waka remained to indicate the tanka style (Murasaki Shikibu, for example, wrote about 950 waka for her ‘Genji Monogatari’, The Tale of Genji, written at the beginning of 1000 AD). The proper term, tanka, fell out of use until it was revived at the end of the 19th century by Masaoka Shiki.

‘Utakotoba’ [歌言葉], the standard poetic diction established in the Kokin Wakashū (or Kokinshū, as its abbreviated term: the Imperial anthology of waka, conceived by Emperor Uda, during his reign, and published by order of his son, Emperor Daigo, about the year 905 —although its finished form dates to c. 920 AD), was seen as the very essence of creating a perfect waka, through a sound unit counts of 5–7–5 and 7–7 ‘on’ (sound unit).

From waka, over time, a number of poetry genres developed, such as renga (collaborative linked verse) and, later, haikai —or haikai no renga (also called ‘renku’).

What was traditionally referred to as hokku [発 句] is the opening stanza, 5–7–5 ‘on’, of a renga. Traditional renga was a group activity, in which two or more poets collaborate to create a poem by writing alternate stanzas, in response to the verse that came before. Hokku was just the very first part of the linked, collaborative composition, but its position as the opening verse made it the most important component, setting the tone for the whole composition.

Although the earliest surviving renga is found in the Man'yōshū (the oldest existing collection of Japanese poetry, compiled around 760 AD, in the Nara period), the renga form of poetry was established as a distinct style around 1200 (Kamakura period, 1185–1333), while the oldest known collection of linked verse appears in the Tsukubashū (The Tsukuba Anthology, compiled c. 1356, in the Muromachi period), the first imperial anthology of renga.

Together with waka (tanka), renga was one of the most important literary expressions in pre-modern Japan. In the Muromachi period (1336–1573), renga became popular in the court and it even spread to the priestly classes and thence to wealthy commoners. In much the same way as waka, renga anthologies were produced under the imperial aegis. Born 223 years before Matsuo Bashō, the Japanese poet and Zen monk Sōgi (1421–1502) was considered the greatest master of ‘ushin’ [orthodox] renga poetry — that, in his time, was typically 100 verses in length (Hyakuin renga), all following the standard poetic diction (utakotoba) established in the Kokinshū.

As momentum and popular interest shifted to the renga form, waka –the tanka style– was left to the Imperial court, and all commoners, even poets whose great literary skill was acknowledged, were excluded from the highest levels of waka training.

During the medieval period, renga was cultivated by the warrior class (samurai) as well as by courtiers, being a part of the cultural knowledge required for high society. Ushin renga, in particular, was considered elite genre and carefully guarded by the aristocratic class: those of lower status could become proficient at different kinds of renga, but not at ushin renga.

Furthermore, with the passing of time, since too many norms were formalized, the set of rules (shikimoku) had become so complicated to restrain the free poetic imagination.

During the Tokugawa shogunate (or Edo period, 1603–1868, the final period of the so-called traditional Japan), with a relaxation of the rules, renga poets were able to express broader humor and wit. A simplified form of 36-verse, called ‘Kasen’, became the most popular form of renga, and the use of commonly spoken words was allowed. The new style was called haikai no renga (: comical linked verse), or just haikai (comic, unorthodox) —the term ‘renku’ (coined much later) is also used. Matsunaga Teitoku (1571–1653) is credited as the founder of haikai.

Hokku, the first stanza of renga and haikai, with a 5–7–5 sound unit count, was the most important part of the linked verse, as it set the tone and style of a particular sequence; for this reason it was usually composed by a master or a senior poet. Often written by a special guest, if present, it was considered a part of the greeting in a renga gathering. It included a kigo (seasonal reference), as well as a kireji (cutting word, so as to provide sort of suspension in the text). The kigo usually references the season the renga was created in.

The second stanza of a renga, of a 7–7 sound unit count, was called 'waki-ku'; traditionally, the person who helped organize the gathering was honored with creating it.

By that time (c. 1600), the hokku had begun to appear as an independent, standalone poem, and was also incorporated in haibun (a combination of prose and hokku), and haiga (a painting