俳句

Last night at Japanese class, a woman from Hohoku-cho came and led a haiku workshop. While watching this woman teach, it was clear that she was in love with haiku. The experience brought back memories of a four-week Writer’s Workshop I lead my senior year of college for elementary school kids at the local library in Madison. Each week students wrote a different poem. At the end of the month, we had a poetry reading where parents came and listened to their children’s poetry. I disliked poetry as a kid due to the constraints of rhyming words. But through high school English classes, I realized that not all poetry has to rhyme. Thus, I began reading it on my own.

Haiku is a poetry style I have never explored. I knew it was 5-7-5 syllables, but beyond that I didn’t know much. I discovered last night that genuine haiku must be about nature and must reflect a season. I can do nature, and I was thinking of all kind of nice, flowery imagery in English. But my lack of Japanese vocabulary and making my imagery reflect a season as opposed to just nature in general was a daunting task. The haiku teacher suggested we write about spring, but I wanted it to be meaningful, not just another haiku about sakura. So I gave up on the idea of spring and opted for something more general. The one that a teacher and I came up with was something like, “The fog covering the mountains in the early morning evokes the memory…[of my Kikugawa home].” I liked it. Alas, other teachers said it was not haiku enough. So after much stress and with the help of four teachers, a proper haiku was created. It ended up being about fall, which is my favorite season, but in actuality, in my head, it reflects every season.

山霧に　(やまぎりに)
日本の暮らし　(にほんのくらし)
思いだす　おもいだす

A flowery translation of this is: The autumn mountain fog evokes the memories of Japanese life. (sounds better in Japanese, ne?) That middle line could be changed to 菊川の家　(きくがわのいえ), meaning Kikugawa home. And apparently やまぎりreflects autumn even though the word for autumn does not appear in the poem. And ぎりis actually きり, but because the word before it starts with a “y,” the “k” in “ki” is changed to a “g” making it “gi.” This is also why the 口in 山口 is pronounced “guchi” instead of “kuchi.”

The teachers put on a sumo haiku contest, which was great fun. I was on the East/Red team. Since none of our Japanese was good enough to understand all the poems everyone created, we ended up voting based on our friends (thanks, folks ;). In the end, my poem ended up winning and I was crowned the grand champion. I don’t think the haiku teacher liked it that much since it was not seasonal enough, but nonetheless I received a booklet of haiku postcards and a haiku book as my prize. I think I could get into studying haiku since they are short enough to not feel daunted by the task of translating.

One thing I really appreciate about Japanese culture is how they pay such close attention to nature and the changing of the seasons. It all has to do with Shintoism and various things. Sometimes it seems over the top and I desperately wish they’d pay more attention to nature when building homes and businesses. But the average person does take the time to smell the roses and observe nature and the beauty of each season. I hope that when I return to the States I am more aware of the changing of the earth with each coming and going season.