Dog without Tail

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Dog without Tail ... Discussion


Aha, Just A Moment, Please
© Susumu Takiguchi, 2003






If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog?
Five? No, four.
Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg!

Abraham Lincoln



If you take a cat (or dog to keep in the parable),
cut off his head (kigo),
cut off his four legs (5-7-5),
cut off his tail (kire-ji) and
present this creature to the world,
what would it be called?

Maybe a very badly damaged dog, unable to live up to his nameing.

Or maybe reborn as something completely different, vaguely ressembling his former self?


Does this in any rephrased way apply to Japanese haiku and its metamorphoses in foreign languages?.?.?

Gabi


Answer by Susumu Takiguchi:

Gabi Greve has raised one of the most important issues of haiku (which could well be "the" most important, if its profound implications and background factors are to be taken into consideration) by using a parable of man's best friend. P. has demonstrated up-front his final,non-negotiable and unflinching conviction in no uncertain terms in his "Declaration of Independence". Both of them are dead serious.

Between Gabi and P., there are hundreds and hundreds of men and women who think or hope they are writing haiku (i.e. dog's legs) but are confused, dismayed, frustrated, exasperated, misled, or indifferent and oblivious in terms of Gabi's question.

What we have here is an example, in the shape of haiku, of a much wider question of transmission of one culture to another. The word "transmission" is interchangeable with or replaced by, depending on the circumstances, transfer, translation, export, dissemination, spread,migration, grafting, adaptation, adoption, copying, imitating, derivative,propagation, indoctrination, assimilation, invasion, Imperialism, imposition etc.

What is transmitted and how, also vary. Aspects of a culture can be transmitted from one country to another (or the rest of the world, as in haiku), from one cultural zone to another, or from one community within these areas to another community. Coercion of wholesale adoption of a culture has been imposed by one nation upon another. One contemporary example of it is in progress under our very nose. Many nations are guilty of the crime, including my own country and Gabi's.

Is such cultural transmission possible, desirable, necessary or beneficial?

Gabi's question lies at the heart of our haiku pursuit. And yet it is seldom, if ever, discussed. Not in the sense Gabi is dealing with it. Why? Why is it not discussed? It is because it has become, or has been made into, a taboo. Hence, a fable is born a la Aesop. A story about a strange dog that seems to some to be having five legs and to others four legs and a tail, a leviathan of leg-pulling legend but at the same time a totally telling tale.

........................................

An Englishman, normally a very good cook, tried his hands on a dish he called sashimi for the first time in his life and served it for my birthday party. It was sashimi all right in every sense of the word. However, it was inedible.

The world of Kyudo (Japanese archery) in Britain has been split into two regimes ever since a Mr. Genuine (an Englishman) stood up and declared that we should not call it Kyudo if it excluded Rei (manners = spiritual side of it) and was reduced to a mere pastime or sport whereby only skills to shoot the target were enjoyed. For Mr. Genuine, Kyudo is nothing but Rei. For his opponents, Rei is nothing but tiresome irrelevance.

..........................................

Back to haiku itself:

Gabi herself has given a newly-born kitten a glorious name: HAIKU. If she calls a cat HAIKU, does it become haiku? NO, IT DOES NOT! So I thought.
Wait, ... wait a moment. I saw this lovely kitten myself soon after it was born and the sight was haiku! His mother, barely one year old, was haiku, too.

Our old friend, late Robert Gibson, coined a controversial phrase "The American Haiku Machine". If he was reading this fable with us, he might have shrugged his satirical shoulders with a wry smile and said, "Well, you know, American haiku poems are dog's tail, but it's a gigantic tail of the gargantuan scale and does wag the dog into the bargain!"

Whether dog's leg or tail, American haiku has been "transmitted" to all corners (and nooks and crannies) of the world, save Japan. Therefore, if American haiku is not haiku, nor is haiku in the rest of the world save Japan and we had better stop doing what we are doing at once, as it is a waste of time for everybody on a massive scale (mind you, haiku is, or even should be, a useless thing and a waste of time, for it to remain haiku,another irony). If that were the case, I would have to close the World Haiku Club immediately as it believes to the contrary, convinced that there is a common denominator which makes what I call "world haiku" (on this more later) possible.

This line of argument would make the blood of some haiku poets boil.
As far as they are concerned, there is no such thing as American haiku or Ethiopian haiku. All there is haiku.. full stop. Haiku transcends and defeats all the differences in terms of race, language, nationality, culture or religion. It is like water running and springing everywhere in the world and water is water.

The problem is that these extreme views are easy to form but difficult to convince. They are also highly emotive, denying frank and meaningful discussion. What we need to do is to cool off and do some objective and practical analysis of the issue. We must know the anatomy of it and to know its anatomy we must do the dissection. Our fabled dog needs to be cut open!
It's no longer a simple question of legs or tail but everything about the dog, ranging from its heart to the tip of its hair, and not least its owner.

* * *

Takahama Kyoshi was a shrewd player of this game.
He was appreciative of good poems even if they were not in line with the cannons of his Hototogisu School. "A good piece of poem this is, indeed", he used to praise such poems, adding, "but it's not haiku." His verdict of what was and was not haiku was final and held sway over much of the Japanese haiku world and his influence reverberates even today. If we apply his principles and those of his followers to the haiku poems written in today's Japan, many of them will fail as haiku. They, therefore, will be termed as a dog's tail, or at least dog's diseased leg.

However, this is still about Japan.
Haiku poems written outside Japan are of a different order altogether. Some may argue that it is the same thing. Yes and No. The free verse or whatever else deviation from the traditional haiku school in Japan have encountered the same sort of problems which non-Japanese haiku poets are experiencing now. Similarities can be found there. At the same time, the similarities end and fundamental differences will soon emerge. They will do so at least from the following two sources:

(a) the Japanese poets of non-traditional haiku schools have the experience of studying and practicing the traditional haiku (classic as well as modern) and are well versed in it, even if they may no longer write haiku along that line (many write both);
(b) the Japanese language and the whole culture behind it. The latter is what Gabi is talking about, citing the wisdom of the legendary President.

James W. Hackett said to me many times and categorically that there was absolutely no point for non-Japanese to imitate Japanese haiku and that it was impossible.


One of the leading British haiku poets, who is nameless, has said to me that mimicking Japanese haiku was like living in cloud-cuckoo-land and that now that we had developed our own haiku in its own right there was no longer any need to continue to learn from the Japanese. Worse still, the poet not only showed no interest in knowing Japan or her culture but also positive dislike of it.


I have learned from reports of other people and also from my own experience some strange behaviour on the part of non-Japanese haiku poets and/or those non-Japanese individuals who are supposed to be interested in Japan and her culture. It is assumed that they all want to visit Japan, the country they dream of. However, when they finally and actually pay a visit to Japan, many of them often appear disinterested in looking at, or studying, all those things which could help make them understand what they had thought they would never understand, i.e. inscrutable Japan.

Ion Codrescu says that haiku is like birds which fly across national boundaries, over oceans and continents. No one can stop them.

It has been observed that many American children believe that haiku was invented in America, or at least it is American poetry.
The Hollywood Machine has shown that Enigma was an American invention. Who invented wine, Champagne, shochu, port, Madeira or Drambuie? Take Champagne for example, many countries produce a drink which is all Champagne but name.
Is haiku in the same situation, or the opposite? Or, is the case of haiku a happy one in that what we write is haiku, haiku and haiku both in name and substance?
Does it matter to call something like

"lily: / out of the water... / out of itself"

haiku or not, except that the author says so? Non-traditionalist haijin in Japan have begun to use the word "tanshi", meaning short verses, which is interchangeable with haiku, though they have not given up using the magic word "haiku".

If something is as good as Nicholas Virgilio's poem just quoted, does it matter at all what it is called? Is it not us lesser poets who spend time worrying about such trifles? In a sense we have managed to reduce "What is haiku?" to one of the most tiresome and futile questions of modern times. Few other things put me off and send me off to sleep more compellingly than this question.

Thus, I am not so much interested in whether to call something haiku or not as what is actually written under that name. I am deeply concerned that so many of them are not up to scratch and that generally the standards and quality leave much to be desired. I am worried to death about this state of affairs, so much so that I suffer from sleepless nights and am driven to want to do what little I can do to help improve the situation.

The difficulty is that the name (haiku) and the substance (poems) are inexorably linked because the name is not just a name but has all sorts of baggage with it such as definitions, prerequisite, rules and conventions or characteristics. If the definitions of haiku included that it must be written in Japanese how simple the world would be! Until the attempt at transmitting haiku to other languages began, such had been the case.

Japan closed her doors to the outside world for over two centuries ("sakoku"), which made the country one of the most insular nations in the world. After the Americans all but blasted the doors open in 1853/54, Japan was forced to follow the open door policy but she tended to revert back to insularity from time to time and the people's mindset has long remained closed and insular (which is what I call "seishinteki-sakoku", or mentally chained and closed). Unfortunately, even today the Japanese are in the state of "seishinteki-sakoku" in many ways, and haiku poets are no exception.

Most of the Japanese haiku poets are unaware of or have little interest in haiku written outside Japan. If they were asked whether or not these are haiku in the first place the answer would be most likely to be in the negative.
However, there is nothing they can do about what people in the rest of the world choose to do outside their shores. They cannot erect copyright or patent (intellectual property) over haiku as a whole to prevent foreigners from writing them.

So, yes, P. is absolutely right when he says that the Japanese do not own haiku in the sense I have described.

I am appalled and in despair when faced with the narrow-mindedness and isolationist attitude of the Japanese haijin when what they should really be doing is to be proud of their cultural heritage being loved and enjoyed by so many people in so many countries and in so many languages in the world. Instead of sneering at them, they should be glad, do their best to show their appreciation and if possible offer to do anything they can to help. This is matched by my dismay and concern about the arrogance and ignorance displayed by some non-Japanese haijin.

Gabi has thus, probably inadvertently, opened a can of worms or Pandora's Box, and thrown the ghost of a cat (headless and limbless) into the bargain!

..........................................

So, where do we stand?

We stand at a certain specific stage of the long history of haiku of at least five hundred years, leaving hundreds of years which preceded haiku but created the soil for it: over 300 years since Basho, over 100 years since Shiki and the first-wave introduction of haiku outside Japan, roughly 50 years since Kyoshi and also the real spread (second wave) of haiku overseas through America and 10 plus years since haiku became disseminated in the entire world (the period of what I call "the world haiku").

It ought to be sobering to think that it is only during these 10 plus years or at most the last 50 years plus that the overseas haiku tail of the dog has been growing.
Of course, like many other things, the pace of development has accelerated with haiku during the post-War period, especially the most recent years.
Fundamentalists are not commendable whether it is in religions or haiku but the arrogance or ignorance shown by those who trample on traditional haiku with so little experience is grotesque and unacceptable. While it is only natural that we should make mistakes, form misconceptions or misunderstandings at time about foreign countries and cultures, we should nevertheless be humble enough to correct them once we realise the mistakes.
Even if they are not mistakes as such but, say, different interpretations or perceptions, it is still desirable for us to listen to the people of these foreign lands.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

GABI:

To envigorate the ghost of a cat, I now offer the crutch of a "haiku moment".
Trying to translate that into Japanese, not easy
.
za haiku momento
za haiku shunkan
.
studying some Haiku Nyumon Japanese instruction books I can not find any such thing.
What are we to make of this phenomenon?

.......................................................................


Gabi has brought up a case in point in a timely way:

The Haiku Moment.
"The Haiku Moment" may not be a mistake as such. On the contrary, it may be a new addition to the tool to understand haiku. That, however, does not change the fact that we should treat it cautiously and challenge its nature, function and validity in a sincere and serious manner. Some opportunistic Japanese commentators have jumped at "The Haiku Moment" and started to introduce it in the most uncritical and un-intellectual way to their people, which in turn will inevitably be taken (wrongly) as a seal of approval by those who believe in "The Haiku Moment", which is most, if not all, of the non-Japanese haiku poets.

That, if it happens as it is most likely to, would be most deplorable and sad for the world haiku. Without dealing with this problem properly and coming to the right reassessment of it, the American-led world haiku outside Japan will not have a healthy long-term development.

The ghost of a cat needs no invigoration as it is virile and ferocious. By way of explaining the intricacies of the question of "The Haiku Moment", I cite my essay on the subject below for your reference. Few, or no one, had questioned "The Haiku Moment", swallowing the concept hook, line and sinker, until Professor Haruo Shirane mildly and gently cautioned against it.

...........................................

Most of the below can be found here:
Aha, Just A Moment, Please
© Susumu Takiguchi, 2003
World Haiku Review 2-1

When I first got involved with haiku poems written in the English language some twenty years ago, two things instantly stood out. One was that curious thing with which everybody seemed to be obsessed: the haiku moment. The other was something understandable enough, but still peculiar: identifying or linking haiku with Zen.

They stood out simply because neither was anything I had ever heard of in Japan, for at least the last fifty years. It seemed much less likely that other Japanese had heard of them before I was born. I asked a countless number of Japanese haijin if they had perhaps heard of them. The answer was invariably "NO". Generally speaking, from the point of view of anyone on this planet, by definition, foreigners speak "foreign languages" as their mother tongues. It would not, therefore, have surprised or worried me if foreigners had said something -- or anything -- foreign to me. That's their job. However, since they were talking about haiku, it was an entirely different story.

To ascertain why such had become the case, my initial enquiry was to ask, circumspectly, those who seemed to believe in, or who were under the strong influence of, these two curious and puzzling things. They gave me either a blank look or a pitying smile. It therefore became blatantly obvious to me that even to discuss these two things -- and possibly many others like them ?- with these people, would be an uphill struggle. Such conversation could be more like a mine field if I were to be so reckless as to challenge these holy grails.

Every other line of haiku books or articles in English, and every other word coming out of the mouths of haijin writing haiku in English, spoke passionately about these two things, and made affectionate reference to them. Remarks of leading haijin were quoted as proof of validity and legitimacy, generally presenting these precious two things as gospel.

Their haiku world seemed to be governed by them. People of other nationalities, seemingly talking all sorts things in their mother tongues, turned out to be saying the very same thing, only more strongly, once their remarks were translated into English for me to understand. Just as Pat Boone saw "your face in every flower", so I started to see these two mysterious references in every item I laid my hands on -- for instance, in titles of haiku publications and the names of publishers:

Haiku Moment (one of the most celebrated anthologies), Snapshot (one of the most prestigious haiku publications), A Zen Wave, FROGPOND (from "splash"), AHA Books, Press Here, presence, still and Zen Haiku by Santoka Taneda (the subtitle of a famous book).

Not to mention many thousands of Internet mailing list commentary and critique offered for haiku poems, and haiku discussions which touted terms and subjects such as "capturing the moment", "one-breath poem", "time capsule", "a frozen moment",
"here and now", "stillness", "deep stillness" and so on and so forth.


Undaunted, I set out to make a proper enquiry into the cause and effect of these two seemingly all-important icons of haiku in English, of which millions of Japanese haiku poets have been totally unaware. This study was divided into two stages. In the first and superficial stage, the more I studied them, the more I felt how ludicrous they were -- and what an extraordinary thing it all was that foreigners had got it all wrong for fifty years -- or even over a hundred years!

No wonder that I found precious few haiku in English to be anything remotely like Japanese haiku. And no wonder at the same time I should hear Western haijin say of what they've read, how very few contemporary Japanese haiku are at all like their own. However, I thought there must be something more to it.

Hence, the second stage, where I decided to dig deeper and tried to get "inside" the minds and hearts of the Western haijin. It was simply unthinkable that these people had been deluding themselves for 50 or 100 years, totally satisfied with churning out false or fake haiku based on false or fake notions. Naturally, my thoughts were directed to enquire whether or not such Western approach to haiku had any merit in itself, irrespective of its legitimacy or relevance to Japanese haiku.

In other words, even supposing they got it all wrong from the Japanese point of view, do their resulting poems have any literary relevance and worth in their own right, whether or not they are called haiku? This last point seemed to be the bottom line and their last bastion of defence. As a young American student of haiku poetry put it recently, " …Is there still a clear-cut definition of haiku, or did people the likes of Jack Kerouac ruin it all for us American writers?" (Melissa Haney)

Three sets of my conclusions at that time could be summed up as follows:

Firstly,
both "haiku moment" and "Zen approach" are good tools for Westerners to try to understand this "mystical" thing called haiku in the same sense as "things Japanese" must, almost by definition, be mysterious and inscrutable to Westerners.

They are like using a Geiger counter to discern radioactivity, or a stethoscope to diagnose a malfunction of our bodies. However, these two concepts are not, and do not, create haiku itself any more than a Geiger counter is, or creates, radioactivity. More importantly, there is much more substance in haiku than these two concepts could carry. They might be useful, like a guide dog, but if one is over-reliant on, or worships them, especially to the exclusion of other important considerations, the resulting effect would be severe limitations.

Secondly,
the description of the "haiku moment" or Haiku=Zen=Haiku indicates such "wonderful occurrences" which, in reality, would be few and far between, if even at all. I had rarely seen haiku poems which would come anywhere near the height, profundity, intensity and many other almost impossible attributes which the "haiku moment" and Haiku=Zen=Haiku concepts seemed to be celebrating. While such wonders might occur occasionally, to me they would be like religious miracles or fruit machines.

It seemed, therefore, not only churlish, but almost a sacrilege to dismiss them outright. The right attitude for one, I concluded, was simply to look fondly forward to a day when a haiku poem would finally be created which truly satisfies attributes of both these conventions.

Thirdly,
I concluded that there could, should and would be a positive way out. Given that it would be neither possible nor desirable for a non-Japanese nation to write haiku in precisely the Japanese way, one positive and worthwhile thing for them to attempt, I thought, would be to try creating a new form of poetry based on, or inspired by Japanese haiku, or a new form of haiku which was different from Japanese haiku.

The endless debate of whether or not to call something haiku seemed counter-productive and pointless most of the time. So long as one realised that the "haiku moment" and Haiku=Zen=Haiku had little to do with the actual Japanese practice, one would be on the right track.

The poems thus written in the West could be developed, as they have been for the last 50 or 100 years, as one of the new and non-Japanese haiku-like short verses, or short-verse-like new haiku, provided that "haiku" was released or liberated from the pedestal on which it had been raised. Iconoclasts were once again summoned to serve, but this time they must be found among the "haiku moment" people and Haiku=Zen=Haiku followers, and not among outsiders such as the Japanese.

In other words, I was quite clear that these fallacies must be broken by those who had created or fallen into them. This seemed to be a more realistic way forward than the second possibility as described in the preceding paragraph. In fact, it could open up all sorts of literary possibilities of merit. These possibilities added to my optimism about the future of world haiku, which I will deal with later.

These reflections became my convictions by 1997, the time I had first conceived holding a world haiku conference which could, with luck, make a difference and trigger off a new kind of world haiku movement. The strength of my convictions kept the movement going against all odds, sneers and oppositions.

And then came the breakthrough in 1998.
One of the Japanese Basho scholars living outside Japan, and whom I respected greatly, had his major book published that year. I am, of course, talking about Professor Haruo Shirane, and the book in question is the now-famous
Traces of Dreams - Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho.

On first reading, there was no doubt in my mind that this book would have almost a revolutionary effect on the fundamental thinking about haiku of non-Japanese people, albeit a slow, quiet and subtle effect. I was at once glad and relieved that many American (and by extension, the world's) haiku conventions would be corrected by this book, or at least reconsidered.

As a Basho scholar myself in the 1980s I was familiar with the work of such scholars as Ueda, Akabane, Yasuda and this Professor Shirane himself, all residents in a land foreign to Japan. Their writings were indispensable toward my research as they differed in methodology from the usual works issued from the oceans of nationally resident and homogenous Japanese Basho scholars. I believed that a non-Japanese academic approach, especially methodology, was needed for the study of haiku in general, and of Basho in particular.

For this purpose, it was obvious that people like Professor Shirane, bi-lingual and living outside Japan, were ideal explorers, unfettered by restrictions in Japan as well as unbiased by foreign misconceptions. Their risk, however, was that they could, as has happened to so many, be dismissed by their peers in Japan, while at the same time not be understood by those Western people who held prejudices and ignorance about Japan. They were, in fact, like gold dust.

In the following year, what could be even more important for the world haiku movement happened, if at least from a short-term point of view. In July 1999, I attended the Haiku North America conference in Chicago where Professor Shirane read a paper which would later be published in Modern Haiku (Vol. XXXI No. 1 Winter/Spring, 2000): "Beyond The Haiku Moment: Basho, Buson, and Modern Haiku Myths" . My first impression was that what Professor Shirane said in the paper was, in fact, a most obvious thing for any Japanese haijin, although not every one of them could express it in such a lucid and "kind" way.

However, as I had been studying exactly the same issue, I was also painfully aware that his paper would have a profound -- and even devastating effect on many Western haijin who would refuse to stand corrected by his powerful and persuasive argument. This might not happen overnight, I predicted, partly because Professor Shirane was so polite, kind and positive in what he had to say, but mainly because Western haijin, especially those who regard themselves well-established, could have had the natural and predictable reaction of resentment, defensiveness, or even hostility -- for as long as it would take them to become humble or confident enough to take the bull by the horns. No one likes to be criticised.

Much encouraged as I was by Professor Shirane's hugely important input for the betterment of the world haiku movement, I could not help having mixed feelings. At that time, I was already in the advanced stages of my preparation for WHF2000. The event was to be held in just over six months' time. I planned to ask people for a series of papers dealing with the "haiku moment" as a major topic of debate. From the point of view of this anxious organiser of the first world haiku conference, Professor Shirane had "got in first", in the true sense of the word, even if by pure accident.

He had dealt with the very same subject superbly well. Not only was the WHF2000, therefore, denied the honour of dealing with this important issue properly and for the first time in the world haiku context, but also Professor Shirane had left an example which would be hard to follow. He had already covered many of the things which I had originally planned to say about the "haiku moment". Repetition of his points would only be redundant.

Consequently, I had to make a change of plan for WHF2000. For this purpose, I had many discussions about the "haiku moment" and Professor Shirane's paper with the late John Crook who had keen personal views on the subject. I also discussed the issue with other people, including Brian Tasker, a fine and balanced thinker on haiku poetics in Britain. Out of these discussions emerged the idea of having a special project at the WHF2000 debating chamber, whereby four or five papers would concentrate on the sole issue of the "haiku moment" and the Zen-approach in response to Professor Shirane's "Beyond The Haiku Moment" essay.

B. talked in defence of the "haiku moment". J. defended both the "haiku moment" and Zen-approach while emphasising that Western haiku, based on these two attributes, had become a viable and respectable literary product of fifty years or longer historical development.
D.'s paper presented examples of alternative approaches to "haiku moment" and Zen-haiku. M.'s paper attempted to assess Zen's influence on haiku in a more balanced manner, showing a way forward by not clinging to either extreme. The aim of the project was to demonstrate the importance of dealing with the "haiku moment" and Zen-approach questions properly, thus triggering an active and productive debate across the world, especially focusing on the Shirane essay. The overall impression was that the Western haijin were feeling (and not without reason) "attacked" by the Shirane essay and were therefore put on the defensive.

This was perfectly understandable.
Most of the Western haiku conventions, "do's and don'ts", guidelines, teachings, and "advice" have emanated from the basic thinking and various components of the "haiku moment" and Zen-approach.

So, should these two foundations collapse, then the whole of Western haiku would be in danger of collapse.

It should therefore be obvious that believers in the "haiku moment" and Zen-approach were in need of reviewing the whole process through which these two things had developed, and if necessary, doing something radical about them. Professor Shirane, of course, was not attacking the Western way. On the contrary, he was offering a helping hand, if such a gesture were to be welcomed, so that Western haiku would be given a chance to develop to full potential -- a potential which may have been limited by the "haiku moment".

I had exactly the same motive as Professor Shirane. I do not go along with those Japanese haijin who dismiss, outright, Western haiku or any haiku outside Japan. I am in favour of any creative endeavour. I endorse any effort to bring forth new worth, value and merit out of tradition in art and culture. I am in favour of innovations and experiments interacting with historical evolution. I am in favour of haiku being related to other forms of poetry or art, being put to test in various ways and being expanded both in form and content. I am against fakes, irrelevancies and works of inferior or no quality.

I am against dogma. I am against misconceptions and misinterpretations. I am against restricting the creative urge and rich subject matter with which we humans are blessed. Why limit our gifts? After reviewing the last 50 or more years of Western haiku, we might benefit by giving it another 50 years or more to further develop.

Eighteen months past WHF2000, two-plus years from the Shirane essay and over three years since the publication of his "Traces of Dreams", things seem to have moved forward in a significant way. The current state of play of world haiku could be described as a "state of flux". While from a negative viewpoint, it is in confusion, I would rather call it "creative chaos", which is no bad thing. Whether it is negative confusion or positive chaos, at least two "undesirables" seem to have emerged, as might be expected in such circumstances.

One is a set of fundamentalists who have dug in their heels, fanatically shouting hackneyed slogans and cliches of the "haiku moment" and Zen-approach to such an extent that some of them are even advocating abandoning Japanese haiku or ignoring the Japanese perspective, including Professor Shirane's contribution.

The other is a set of rather sly and dishonourable people who, like chameleons, have conveniently adopted a camouflage, or jumped ship and are now joining in the new chorus condemning the "haiku moment" and Zen-approach, while hiding their own pasts of blindly following these two doctrines. These are people beneath contempt. Fundamentalists are at least honest -- but mad. The polemics over "haiku moment" and Zen-approach are definitely not behind us. On the contrary, they have not yet properly been argued.

Between these two extremes are those confused people who now do not know which way to go. They are, in fact, our hope. In this sense, the more confused they are, the better. There are many talented poets in that group, and I have no doubt that the confusion, ironically, will lead them toward writing good haiku. Professor Shirane started to lift the lid from the cultural Pandora's box. WHF2000 pushed it wide open. There have since been repercussions in many places, including Japan. Parallel movements have been underway, especially in forums such as Haiku North America, which now has definitely become one of the most important meeting places where new ideas are initiated and old conventions are tested.

Should we be pessimistic or optimistic about the future of world haiku after the serious reappraisal of the "haiku moment" and Zen-approach and the many conventions emanating from them? And what of reviewing the state of play in countries including Japan? Definitely optimistic. Most optimistic, even. And this diagnosis is coming from a normally pessimistic person. My observation and instinct tell me that we are now on one of the richest and most fertile grounds of haiku creation in terms of its form, style, contents, scope, variety, depth and width of coverage. This kind of outlook is unprecedented in its long history. It has become a genre of world literature with all its glorious individual, regional, cultural and linguistic diversity. What wonder! What a fantastic cultural phenomenon!

Needless to say, we still have problems. We always will, in fact. There are problems of translation, of definition, of purists versus vanguards, of taboo areas such as eroticism or human horror and misery, of egoism, of the gap between haiku and non-haiku poets, of negative haiku politics which those mean-minded indulge in, of shallow or misguided understanding of haiku, of all sorts of confusions and muddle-headedness about haiku, of putting haiku on a pedestal and of proliferation of inferior haiku or "anything goes" haiku etc.

However, in the bigger picture, these difficulties are infinitesimal compared with the almost miraculous cultural, artistic and spiritual benefits that haiku has succeeded in bringing to us all. We must not take these benefits for granted as we have with air, water or freedom. We must cherish haiku and let it grow further. We must liberate and protect it from the tyranny of haiku fundamentalists, haiku rogues or terrorists, from abusers, from the art-killers including political
correctness or self-appointed high-mindedness, from superficial worshippers as well as misguided haiku teachers and pontificators.

There is little we can do, anyway, about some of these problems.
For instance, too many people seem to occupy themselves worrying about all manner of rubbish haiku or at least works of inferior quality, as if they were given a special mission (by whom ? by themselves?) to bash and punish them. Inferior works have always been prevalent in any art, as in anything which humans have done. It would be extremely depressing even to think about the enormous quantity of rubbish haiku churned out everyday.

However, there is nothing we can do about it. More worrying -- but in the time which could be saved by stopping their worry (about that which does not need worrying about) -- what people should address is the top end, where standards and quality of haiku still leave something to be desired. As a rule of thumb, if someone becomes busy worrying over somebody else, it indicates that the worried someone has something about himself which is even more worrisome.

Now, reverting back to my optimism about the future of haiku, we have abundant evidence to prove it within our own ranks. Ferris Gilli of the USA has demonstrated at Hibiscus School, in her elegant and quiet way, how some haiku practiced in America (or at least her haiku) can offer an excellent and invaluable direction to haiku; one of the best testimonies of "haiku moment" put to good use. Sonia Cristina Coman of Romania has proved how a non-native speaker of English can write good haiku in English, and how haiku could be a "universal language" (at least among haiku poets).

Mitty Abe of Japan has convinced us that haiku could be enjoyed in more ways than one by introducing photo-haiku and other multimedia innovations.
Paul Conneally of the UK is bringing haiku to those who have never encountered it before, connecting different regions of the world through haiku events, and he is encouraging poets of haiku to explore the genre from different angles in addition to his indefatigable efforts to help schools and local communities to learn and enjoy haiku.
Paul David Mena, Carol Raisfeld both of the US, Serge Tome of Belgium, and Micheline Beaudry, of French-speaking Canada, are proving that hitherto taboo areas such as erotica and sexual love can legitimately become a profound and worthy haiku subject.

an'ya (US), Sue Mill (Au) and Alison Williams (UK) have succeeded in teaching beginners basic haiku composition without imposing any particular rules or school of thoughts. Englishman, John Carley has just begun his directorship with WHCpoetrybridge, bringing haiku poets and non-haiku poets together by spanning a bridge between the two, adding new dimension and paradigm to haiku.
Debi Bender of the US is introducing deeply-felt study and views of Japanese women poets, especially haiku poets, in her special project, adding to her correct approach of "going directly to the sources of Japanese haiku". She has been doing many other things to deepen the understanding of haiku in new ways, of which the WHCshortverses list is a hugely successful example.

These are merely a small number of examples within WHC to support my optimism.
There are many other people in the Club who also give me positive signs for optimism. Looking beyond WHC, I detect all sorts of good signs, which are increasingly underpinning my optimism. The good news is that there are an increasing number of people who share my optimism. So long as clear water keeps on pouring into muddy water, the latter will become clear in time.

Similarly, so long as good haiku poems keep on being produced, bad haiku poems will probably sink to become sediment on the bottom of the haiku pond. Or, to paraphrase a remark by Nagai Kafu (1879-1959, a Japanese novelist):
bad haiku poems are a filter through which to pass the good.


[In this March issue, my essay on the "haiku moment", "A Haiku Moment of Truth", is reprinted from the influential Japanese English-language weekly magazine, Look Japan. It can be found in the "Karakuchi Ronso" feature, which is designed especially to deal with ontroversial topics. Professor Shirane was awarded the first prize of the World Haiku Festival 2000 Essays Contest for his essay reviewed in this editorial - ST]






A HAIKU MOMENT OF TRUTH / Susumu Takiguchi
in my library

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The paper I am writing for the main theme "Haiku and Education" of World Haiku Festival 2004 to be held this summer in Croatia begins with the same observation:

"The true and ultimate aim of using haiku as a teaching tool must be to teach children or any other learners including adults, a different way of reaching truths. Before the stage to seeking and reaching truths, there are a number of processes for them to learn. The first is for them to recognise a different way of looking at things. Things they see maybe the same usual ones they are accustomed to but it is a new way in which to look at them.

"After seeing the exhibition of Hiroshige's ukiyo-e, even the English people start looking like the faces Hiroshige depicted. One cannot walk about the streets of Montmartre in Paris without "seeing" Maurice Utrillo's landscape paintings. Similarly, haiku makes us look at things differently. In this added new dimension of one's perceptions, in P.'s words, lies a lot more secrets (if they are secrets at all) of haiku than in any of its rules.

As it is a way of looking at things rather than culture- or language-specific things themselves, the "dimension" has a much better chance of being transmitted across cultural or linguistic barriers. This, in turn, makes the outlook for world haiku more hopeful. It seems high time I explained the term "world haiku" and what WHC is trying to do about it. It is a complex thought and I am citing my interview with Simply Haiku as it deals with this matter at length and hopefully will help you understand my point.

Susumu Takiguchi


Susumu Takiguchi - Interview By Robert Wilson 2003

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"... For me, haiku has afforded a dimension to my perceptions that I had not previously had..."
Best regards, P.


"... I think though that the haiku form has given me a way of saying things, and of seeing things, that don't have so much to do with Japanese culture as they do with simply seeing things and talking about them. Encountering the world is more essential to me than Japanese culture is. Haiku is a way of encountering the things of the world, especially the small, delicate, temporary, and often unnoticed things..."
Best, P.

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SUSUMU:

Dear P. et al,

I suppose Gabi is too busy looking after HAIKU (not the poetry but the kitten, which is a poem, I mean, haiku) and his mother, as well as dealing with all these early summer phenomena to respond to P.'s challenge now. I still would very much like to know what she thinks about the question she herself has raised.

However, I am also itching to know more about what P. means by the "dimension" which he has obtained through haiku, some explanation of which has been given in his later post quoted above. I sense that herein lies some of the most important things which are happening to haiku outside Japan. I am also hoping to discover or reconfirm that these things are capable of giving viable underpinning to what WHC is trying to pursue, if not achieve.

Susumu

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Dear honrable Members of this Haikuforum

Susumu is right, HAIKU-kun keeps us busy in such a nice way, with his mother O-Tsu playing around, and it will be such a short time to enjoy a baby cat...
so I have put it off to answer. Or maybe, there is no answer.
Or maybe my answer (especially to P.) would be a JAPANESE HAI, meaning

yes, I do
or
yes, I do not
or
No, I do
or
No, I do not.

Take your pick.


Haiku is a CHANCE to learn about a foreign culture, but if you can do without, it is your choice. As a European, I am maybe more eager to learn about other cultures, after all it was just one hours drive to have dinner in France, back then in the good ..... days.

Seeing the tiny things of life, which make it so precious, is a big part of what Haiku can inspire us. Seeing the good parts in a human being, seeing the rose and neglect the thorns or seeing the thorns and neglecting the rose or seeing the rose and smelling it too...
Life is so manyfold, Haiku has no end in this endeavor.
We can all experiment with our perception of things, then the non-perception, then the next layer, and the next...

This may not be an answer to anything, just a musing on a rainy day.
I am glad my Haiku-kun has four tiny little legs and I enjoy them all.

Greetings from Japan
Gabi
2003



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No-Definition of Haiku, my Way

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