by Hiroaki Sato
Shizuko published her second selection, Ring (Yubiwa), in early 1952. Toward the end of September that year she sent the last “mass” of haiku to Kyoshū. Altogether Shizuko left behind a total of 7,300. Then she disappeared. From her own afterword to Ring and from unpublished haiku, we may assume that she committed suicide.
* * *
From Spring Thunder (1946):
あきのあめ衿の黑子をいはれけり
Aki no ame eri no hokuro o iwarekeri
In autumn rain someone pointed to a mole on my nape
湯の中に乳房いとしく秋の夜
Yu no naka ni chibusa itoshiku aki no yoru
In the hot bath my breasts are dear this autumn night
くちびるのかはきに耐ゆる夜ぞ長き
Kuchibiru no kawaka ni tayuru yo zo nagaki
Putting up with the thirst of my lips the night is long
From Ring (1952):
ダンサーになろか凍夜の驛間歩く
Dancer ni naro ka tōya no ekima aruku
Shall I be a dancer: on a freezing night I walk between stations
春雪の不貞の面て擲ち給へ
Haruyuki no futei no omote uchitamae
In spring snow please slap my face of infidelity
體内にきみが血流る正坐に耐ふ
Tainai ni kimi ga chi nagaru seiza ni tau
In my body your blood flows I endure sitting erect
肉感に浸りひたるや熟れ石榴
Nikukan ni hitarihitaru ya mure zakuro
Immersed in sensuality: ripe pomegranate
好きなものは玻璃薔薇雨驛指春雷
Suki na mono wa ruri bara ame aki yubi shunrai
What I like: crystal roses rains stations fingers spring thunder
すでに戀ふたつありたる雪崩かな
Sudeni koi futatsu aritaru nadare kana
Already there are two loves running: an avalanche
まぐはひのしづかなるあめ居とりまく
Maguwai no shidukana ame i-torimaku
Lovemaking: a quiet rain stays and surrounds us
裸か身や股の血脈あをく引き
Hadakami ya mata no ketsumyaku aoku hiki
Naked body: blood vessels on the thighs trail blue
情慾や亂雲とみにかたち變へ
Jōyoku ya ran’un tomini katachi kae
Lust: thunderheads rapidly change their shapes
月夜にておもひつづくるあらぬこと
Tsukiyo nite omoi tsudukuru aranu koto
At this moonlit night I keep thinking of what isn’t quite right
黑人と踊る手さきやさくら散る
Kokujin to odoru tesaki ya sakura chiru
My hands dancing with a black man cherry blossoms scatter
花の夜や異國の兵と指睦び
Hana no yo ya ikoku no hei to yubi mutsubu
Flower night: with a soldier of a foreign land finger-mate
霙れけり人より貰ふ錢の額
Mizorekeri hito yori morau zeni no gaku
Sleeting: the sum of dough I get from a man
北風のなか昂ぶり果ての泪ぬぐふ
Kitakaze no naka takaburihate no namida nugū
Amid north wind at end of a climax I wipe away tears
雷こんこん死びとの如き男の手
Yuki konkon shibito no gotoki otoko no te
Snow falls falls: the hand of a cadaver-like man
菊は紙片の如く白めりヒロポン缺く
Kiku wa shihen no gotoku shiromeri Hiropon kaku
The chrysanthemum whitens like paper pieces: Hiropon inadequate
Hiropon, the pharmaceutical company Dai-Nippon Seiyaku’s trademark for methamphetamine, was commonly used during the war to suppress fatigue. In the chaos following Japan’s defeat, its use exploded outside of its intended medical purposes and methamphetamine abuse grew into a severe social problem. Subsequently, the government outlawed it.
コスモスなどやさしく吹けど死ねないよ
Kosumosu nado yasashiku fukedo shinenai yo
Cosmos and things gently blow but I can’t die
遊廓へ此の道つづく月の照り
Yūkaku e kono michi tuduku tsuki no teri
To a pleasure house this road leads in the moonshine
夏みかん酸つぱしいまさら純潔など
Natsumikan suppashi imasara junketsu nado
Summer citrus sour now the hell with virginity
Natsumikan, “summer orange” (Citrus natsudaidai), is a species of citrus with fruit that bears a striking resemblance to grapefruit but is much sourer; it was thought to be preferred by pregnant women. In the 1960s, a variety was developed with a sweet taste.
From Shizuko’s uncollected haiku:
黑人兵の本能強し夏銀河
Kokujinhei no honnō tsuyoshi natsu-gkinga
The black soldier’s instinct strong: summer galaxy
霧五千海里ケリー・クラッケへだたり死す
Kiri gosen kairi Kerii Kurakke hedatari shisu
Fog 5,000 nautical miles Kelly Kracke separated dies
* * *
* Most of the information on Shizuko in this essay comes from Kawamura Ranta, Shizuko: Shōfu to yobareta haijin o otte (Shinchōsha, 2011). All of Shizuko’s haiku can be found in that edition.
† As it came to light many years later, the Gifu air base under US control trained soldiers for nuclear and chemical warfare.
“Gendai Haiku:” What Is It?
The Term Questioned
In recent years gendai haiku (現代俳句), has attracted considerable attention in the United States. Scott Metz, the editor of the online magazine Roadrunner Haiku Journal, published many haiku and articles on the subject. He was particularly drawn, he said, to Richard Gilbert’s work on Kaneko Tōta that Jim Kacian of the Haiku Foundation published through Red Moon Press. Gilbert leads the Kon Nichi Translation Group at Kumamoto University in Japan and runs the website gendaihaiku.com. Paul Miller, the editor of Modern Haiku, addressed gendai haiku in his detailed discussion at a Haiku North America gathering in August 2011.
So what is gendai haiku as the term is understood in Japan? Does it mean anything special? The simple answer is no, it just means “modern haiku.” It is defined by time period rather than by content or approach. And the accepted time period ranges from the end of the nineteenth century to the present.
This is clear in the encyclopedia on gendai haiku, called Great Dictionary of Modern Haiku (Gendai haiku dai-jiten), published in 1980 by Meiji Shobō. Its editors’ purpose was to supplement an earlier volume the same house published in 1957, Great Dictionary of Haikai (Haikai dai-jiten). The coverage of the earlier volume, as the title suggests, began with haikai, and ended with terms, poets, anthologies, movements, and such, up to the time of its editing in the mid-1950s. The coverage of Great Dictionary of Modern Haiku, in contrast, begins with Masaoka Shiki and ends in the late seventies. That means the new encyclopedia covers everyone who is anyone in modern haiku and every notable phenomenon related to haiku spanning nearly a hundred years.
There also exist a number of selections and anthologies with “gendai haiku” in their titles that do not limit themselves to a readily identifiable group of haiku or haiku writers. Great Dictionary of Modern Haiku lists a dozen multivolume collections that fit the bill. I have two of them, one of which is a six-volume assemblage called Complete Collection of Modern Haiku (Gendai haiku zenshū), published between 1977 and 1978 by Rippū Shobō. Each of the six volumes carries six to ten haiku poets, each represented by two hundred fifty to four hundred pieces in the poet’s own of whichselection, along with the
poet’s commentary on a dozen or so of them, topped with an overall assessment by a well-known writer of prose or poetry but not necessarily of haiku. But from the perspective of the subject, one thing to note about this compilation is that it does not really define gendai haiku.
The editors of Complete Collection of Modern Haiku state that the volumes cover haiku poets since the days of Nakamura Kusatao, Ishida Hakyō, Katō Shūson, and Saitō Sanki, but do not favor either those of “the traditionalist school” or those of “the avant-garde school.” Of the four, the first three—Nakamura, Ishida, and Katō—may have been relatively tame, at times categorized as they were as “the life-exploring school” (jinsei tankyū-ha), which means, I take it, those who explore what our life is all about and describe their findings in haiku. But the fourth, Saitō Sanki, is known for the movement called New Rising Haiku that, as we’ve seen, ended in arrests and convictions in 1940 and 1941, just before Japan went to war with Great Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States. Some poets in the movement wrote haiku that were markedly antiwar and the authorities didn’t like it.
The editors themselves are more eclectic: Iida Ryūta, a traditionalist haiku poet; Ōoka Makoto, a non-tanka, non-haiku poet famed for his small but perennial newspaper column on classical and modern tanka and haiku; Takayanagi Shigenobu, best known for his lineated haiku; and Yoshioka Minoru, a surrealist poet. Why didn’t these people clearly define the term “gendai haiku”?
In 1947, with the thought police officially abolished in Japan, a group of thirty-five haiku poets got together to set up an association called Gendai Haiku Kyōkai—kyōkai meaning “association,” “society.” In doing so, the charter members, which included Kusatao, Hakyō, Shūson, and Sanki, appear to have had only one standard for membership: to exclude Takahama Kyoshi and some big names aligned with him. Kyoshi was the foremost traditionalist who wielded “dictatorial” power through his magazine Hototogisu. That exclusion apparently created a problem, and the organization collapsed in 1961. According to the Great Dictionary of Modern Haiku, the reasons were unclear, but the main impetus apparently was the schism between those who thought haiku to be writings that adhered to two rules—yūki, an inclusion of a kigo, “seasonal word,” and teikei, the “set form” of 5-7-5 syllables—and those who were a little more expansive and inclusive.
After all, haiku writers are a contentious lot. Kaneko Tōta tells us that his mother warned him not to get involved in haiku by saying “haiku is a hijinx” (haiku wa kenka). She was in a position to know. Her husband, a physician, was a haiku poet, and his haiku gatherings often ended in fistfights among the participants.
The result of the collapse was that those who accepted non-yūki-teikei haiku decided to keep the original name of their association, Gendai Haiku Kyōkai, and carry on, while the splinter group called itself Haijin Kyōkai, with Nakamura Kusatao becoming its president. It was this new group that four decades later, in 1999, created a furor when it submitted a request or demand to publishers that the school textbooks they put out include only yūki-teikei haiku. They argued that in haiku “the kigo and the 5-7-5 set form are inseparable.” But the fact that the Gendai Haiku Kyōkai continued to admit those who spurned kigo and teikei, “the set form,” has only muddied the meaning of gendai haiku.
Avant-Garde Haiku
Now, making a distinction between the traditionalists and the avant-garde would surely make sense, though the editors of the six volumes chose not to make such a distinction. This makes one wonder if any group or association of haiku poets has been called avant-garde (zen’ei) in Japan?
In fact, there has been no haiku organization that called itself zen’ei, but the notion of zen’ei in haiku has existed for some time. Following Japan’s defeat in 1945, Takayanagi Shigenobu may well have been among the first to use the term when, in 1947, he characterized “the haiku saint” Bashō and the haiku he created as “pseudo-avant-garde” in The Tower of Babel (Babel no tō). That may have reflected the chaos following the national catastrophe. The predominant sentiment was to dismiss anything connected with pre-defeat customs and practices as “feudalistic,” “undemocratic,” or unworthy of “a new Japan.” When it comes to haiku, the Kyoto University humanities professor Kuwabara Takeo condemned haiku as “a secondary art” at the end of 1946, but that was not the only bomb thrown at haikudom. Other prominent critics said similar things.
Takayanagi’s 1950 debut collection, Fukiko (the name of his daughter), consisted of haiku broken up into various lines, itself a radical departure as practically all haiku till then was written and printed in one line. Four decades earlier, Ogiwara Seisensui had advocated breaking haiku into two lines for a brief while, but that hadn’t affected much in the way of breaking up haiku into lines. Also, all the haiku in Takayanagi’s small hand-set booklet dealt with seemingly nonhaiku subjects, so much so that the short lineated pieces were accepted as haiku, one could say, because the poet put them forward as such. The following is from his 1952 collection The Count’s Territory (Hakushaku-ryō):
森
の 夜
更 け の
拝
火 の 彌 撤
に
身 を 焼
く 彩
蛾
A Roman transliteration of the poem without line breaks would read: mori no yofuke no haika no misa ni mi o yaku saiga, a total of twenty-one syllables. In English: “In / a forest late / at night / in / a fire- /worshipping Mass / burning itself a / painted / moth.”
Takayanagi delighted in experimentation. The Count’s Territory even had a piece entirely made up of ⬤, 〇, and three other symbols. In all the pieces supplementing his 1979 collection, The Japanese Navy (Nihon kaigun), he used the last sound of each line to start the next line.
Predictably, by the time Takayanagi’s first book came out, there were haiku poets identified as zen’ei, and some of them started the magazine Marine Distance (Kaitei) in 1962, with zen’ei as its central concern. Kaneko Tōta was the leader of that group.
But Kaneko was—and remained*—far less daring than Takayanagi in form and content. The first adumbration of this may well have been his manifesto in the inaugural issue of Marine Distance: “We love the shortest ‘set-form’ poetic form in the Japanese language called haiku.” From early on he talked about “social consciousness,” his preference of expressing himself over “haikuesqueness” (haikusei) and so on, but he has since reiterated the importance of not just retaining “the shortest poetic form,” if not the 5-7-5 syllable format, but also of showing the sense of season. And he would have rejected lineation, if asked, for all his interest in the prosodic analysis of haiku.
We should also remember that however avant-garde Takayanagi may appear in his lineated haiku, he started out writing haiku in one line and continued to do so, on seemingly conventional subjects, and publishing them under the pen name Yamakawa Semio. The critic Isoda Kōichi once cited John Cage to question Takayanagi’s role as “a destroyer of the [haiku] mode.” In comparison with Cage, Arnold Schoenberg was “evidently a conservative.” But Cage in his “music of accidentals” was similar to haikai in thinking. Isoda’s conclusion: Takayanagi was “also a conservative.”
In this regard, there were far more daring works during the half century preceding Takayanagi and Kaneko.
Traditional and Nontraditional
Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, it was also during the chaos following Japan’s defeat that the great non-haiku-writing haiku commentator Yamamoto Kenkichi made one of the clearest statements on haiku yōshiki, “haiku mode,” and stated a clear preference. In Modern Haiku (Gendai haiku), he referred to the two well-known schools of haiku that had developed and diverged after Shiki—one under Takahama Kyoshi, the other under Kawahigashi Hekigodō—and declared that “the radical arguments” of Hekigodō and his followers, most prominently Nakatsuka Ippekirō, led to jiyūritsu, “free-rhythm”
haiku, which in the end “disappeared outside the realm of the haiku mode.” For Yamamoto, “the haiku is a short poem with 5-7-5, a total of 17 syllables, nothing more, nothing less.” To this form, the inclusion of a kigo was a must. In other words, he was a stickler for the yūki-teikei format.
Initially, Hekigodō did not write haiku that deviated much from yūki-teikei. Later he began to do so, and wrote haiku like the following:
子規居士母堂が屋根の剥げたのを指ざし日が漏れ
Shiki-koji bodō ga yane no hageta no o yubizashi hi ga more
Layman Shiki’s mother pointing to the peeling of the roof the sun slanting in
This piece has no identifiable kigo and cannot really be scanned, containing as it does a total of twenty-four syllables that may come to 8-12-4, if one attempts to break it down by syntactic unit. Hekigodō wrote it in 1917.
By comparison, Murakami Kijō, who had quickly become Kyoshi’s star, published his first book of haiku that same year—all the pieces in it of course composed in yūki-teikei format. It contained some of the haiku that would make Kijō famous. Among them:
鷹老いてあはれ烏と飼はれけり
Taka oite aware karasu to kawarekeri
The hawk aged alas is kept with a crow
Many in the proletarian literary movement of the 1920s and ’30s went further than Hekigodō and Ippekirō in turning out free-rhythm haiku, spurning “written language” or “literary language” (bungo) in favor of “spoken language” (kōgo). For example, Hashimoto Mudō, who began to write haiku under the tutelage of Ogiwara Seisensui, wrote the following:
戦争ゴッコの鎮台様がおらが一家の藷畑をメチャメチャにして呉 れやがった
Sensō gokko no Chindai-sama ga oraga ikka no imo-batake o mecha mechani shitekureyagatta
The Lord Garrison playing war all messed up mah family’s sweet- potato patch damn it
This has forty-one syllables (8-7-7-6-7-6), or ten syllables more than the standard tanka. “Sweet-potato patch” is an autumn kigo, but one doubts that Hashimoto used it in that role. “The Lord Garrison” refers to the commander of a garrison. The garrison system in Japan was abolished in 1888 in favor of the divisional system, but the head of this army unit apparently continued to be called “garrison commander” well into the 1930s—here in the ostentatiously deferential form of “lord garrison.” Little wonder, then, Mudō was among those arrested and jailed in 1941 for not just writing haiku that don’t look like haiku but also for espousing politically dangerous views through them.