JL 21 — Writing Haiku Today: A Japanese Poet’s View — Takayuki Mori

Writing Haiku Today: A Japanese Poet’s View — Takayuki Mori

Written By: Takayuki Mori (森 高幸)

I have been writing haiku for many years.

I have also spent many years taking part in haiku meetings, selecting poems, and helping other poets improve their work. Even now, at seventy-two, I still find haiku difficult.

Perhaps that is one reason I continue to write it.

Haiku is a very short form of poetry. In Japanese, its traditional form is based on a 5–7–5 pattern of seventeen sound units, or morae.

Seventeen sounds are very few.

Because there are so few, every word matters.

When I write a haiku, I must decide what is really necessary and what can be left unsaid. Quite often, what is removed is as important as what remains.

For me, haiku is not simply a way of describing beautiful scenery.

I want to write about the truth of things, about human life, and about the small moments in everyday experience that suddenly touch the heart.

To do that, I first have to look.

Seeing with My Own Eyes

When I teach haiku, I often return to the importance of seeing with one’s own eyes.

A flower is blooming.

Rain is falling.

A bird is flying.

Anyone can see these things.

But when several people look at the same scene, they do not necessarily notice the same thing.

One person may notice the color of the flower.

Another may notice a petal beginning to fall.

Someone else may remember a person who once loved that flower.

The scene is the same, but what each person sees is different.

That difference is where a haiku may begin.

I try to ask myself:

What did I really see?

Why did I notice it?

Why did it remain in my mind?

And what did I feel at that moment?

But even when I feel something strongly, I try not to explain the emotion too directly.

If I simply write, “I am sad,” or “I am lonely,” the poem may leave very little for the reader to discover.

I would rather show the thing or the moment that gave rise to the feeling.

Then the reader can enter the poem in his or her own way.

A Farewell and the Scent of Osmanthus

For example, I wrote this haiku:

Japanese:

ややありて悟る別れや金木犀

Romanization:

Yaya arite / satoru wakare ya / kinmokusei

English translation:

a little later

I know now it was goodbye—

sweet osmanthus scent

At the moment of parting, the speaker does not yet fully understand that this was truly a farewell.

Only a little later does the realization come:

That was goodbye.

And there is the scent of sweet osmanthus.

I did not write, “I was sad.”

I did not write, “I missed that person.”

I wanted the feeling to arise from the delayed realization of the farewell and from the autumn fragrance of the flower.

The Japanese poem is based on the traditional 5–7–5 rhythm, although kinmokusei in the final phrase gives it one extra mora. This is called ji-amari, or an extra sound.

I generally value the 5–7–5 form very highly. But there are times when I feel that the word itself must remain.

For me, such a departure should be a conscious choice, not carelessness.

In this poem, another important element is the cutting word ya after wakare, “farewell.”

That ya creates a pause.

There is “farewell,” and then there is “sweet osmanthus.”

Between them is a small silence.

I think that silence is part of the poem.

Kigo: More Than a Sign of the Season

I place great importance on kigo, the seasonal word.

Japan has four seasons, and our traditional life and culture have developed closely around them.

Kigo include natural things such as cherry blossoms, cicadas, the moon, autumn leaves, and snow. They also include traditional customs and events such as New Year, the Doll Festival, Tanabata, Bon, and many seasonal festivals.

But a kigo is not simply a label that tells us the season.

A seasonal word can carry memory.

For many Japanese people, kinmokusei, sweet osmanthus, does not mean only “autumn.”

Its fragrance may suddenly bring back a street walked long ago, a schoolyard, an evening on the way home, or someone we once knew.

The poet does not have to explain all of these things.

Sometimes the seasonal word can carry them quietly.

That is one reason kigo is so useful in such a short poem.

The Importance of the Cut

I also value the cut in haiku.

Traditional Japanese haiku often uses kireji, cutting words such as ya, kana, and keri.

These words do more than divide a sentence.

They can create a pause, shift the reader’s attention, or allow two images to face each other.

Sometimes a cut gives the reader a moment in which to feel something that the poet has not explained.

In the haiku above, the ya after “farewell” separates the realization of parting from the sweet osmanthus.

The two things are connected, but I do not explain exactly how.

I leave that connection to the reader.

When a Japanese haiku is translated into English, this kind of cut is difficult to reproduce.

A dash, a line break, or punctuation can sometimes create a similar effect, but there is no exact English equivalent of a Japanese kireji.

Translation must therefore make choices.

This is one of the reasons I find the translation of haiku so interesting.

Why I Still Write 5–7–5

There are many kinds of haiku today.

Some poets write free-form haiku. Some do not use kigo. There are many experiments, both in Japan and outside Japan.

I do not deny their value.

But for myself, I continue to write mainly in the traditional 5–7–5 form.

I like the discipline.

Sometimes I begin with too many words.

I want to explain too much.

Then 5–7–5 forces me to decide what is essential.

I remove one word.

Then another.

Sometimes, after removing something I thought was necessary, I discover that the poem has become stronger.

That experience has happened to me many times.

So for me, fixed form is not simply a restriction.

It is a way of testing the language.

Every word has to earn its place.

Shasei: Looking Carefully

Another idea that has deeply influenced Japanese haiku is shasei, “sketching from life,” associated especially with Masaoka Shiki.

I value shasei very much.

But I do not understand it as simply copying what is in front of me.

A camera can record a scene.

A haiku must do something else.

The poet must look carefully enough to discover what matters in that scene.

And the poet’s own life inevitably enters that act of seeing.

A young person and an elderly person may look at the same old tree and see something different.

A traveler seeing the sea for the first time and someone returning to a sea filled with memories do not see exactly the same sea.

The object is real.

But the person looking at it is also real.

For me, haiku exists somewhere between the two.

Human Life in Haiku

My own haiku developed within the lineage of Nakamura Kusatao.

I was fortunate to receive his instruction in the later years of his life, and his approach to haiku has continued to influence me.

Kusatao did not limit haiku to the beauty of nature.

He tried to bring human thought and human life more deeply into the traditional haiku form.

That has always been important to me.

The subjects of haiku are not only flowers, mountains, birds, and snow.

They can also be aging, family, work, illness, travel, death, reunion, farewell, anxiety, humor, and ordinary daily life.

But haiku cannot explain a whole life.

It has only a few words.

So instead of explaining everything, I try to find one thing.

One scene.

One object.

One moment.

Sometimes a whole human life can be felt behind something very small.

A pair of shoes.

A hospital window.

A bird crossing the sky.

A forgotten object in a drawer.

The scent of a flower.

For me, this is one of the greatest attractions of haiku.

Not Saying Everything

As I grow older, I think I have become even more aware of the importance of what is not said.

When we are young, we often want to explain ourselves.

Perhaps poets do the same.

But haiku teaches us to stop before everything has been explained.

This does not mean making the poem deliberately obscure.

It means trusting the image.

Trusting the seasonal word.

Trusting the silence.

And trusting the reader.

I sometimes feel that a haiku is complete not when everything has been said, but when the right amount has been left unsaid.

That balance is difficult.

I still struggle with it.

Haiku Must Come from Life

I also believe that haiku requires honesty.

I do not mean that every poem must be an exact factual report of something that happened.

Poetry is not a diary entry or a police record.

But the poem must contain something that the poet has truly seen, felt, imagined, or understood.

Beautiful language alone is not enough.

When I read many haiku in a haiku meeting, I can sometimes feel the difference between a poem that has been constructed only from words and one that has come from an actual encounter with life.

The second kind may not always be perfect.

But often it has something alive inside it.

That is what I look for in my own work as well.

A Very Small Poem, a Very Large World

Haiku is often described as one of the shortest poetic forms in the world.

That is true.

But I do not feel that its small size makes its world small.

For me, the question is the opposite:

How much can exist outside the seventeen sounds?

How much can the reader feel beyond the words?

How much of a life can be suggested by one small image?

I do not think there is a final answer.

That is why I am still writing haiku.

At seventy-two, after many years of writing, selecting, and teaching haiku, I still begin in the same place.

I look.

I listen.

I ask myself what really moved me.

Then I try to remove everything that is not necessary.

5–7–5.

A seasonal word.

A cut.

And, if I am fortunate, something of life remains.

That is what writing haiku means to me.

---

About the Author

Takayuki Mori (森 高幸) was born on October 8, 1954, in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. He graduated from Waseda University in 1978 and joined Mitsubishi Logistics Corporation that year. He retired in 2014.

He joined the haiku society and journal Banryoku in 1983. In 1991, he became a dōjin (senior member) of Banryoku and joined the Haiku Poets Association. He became a dōjin of Mori no Za, the successor journal to Banryoku, in 2017.

Since 2023, he has served as the representative of the haiku society Gunsei. He joined the management committee of Mori no Za in 2024. His published work includes the haiku collection 30's.

---

Published on World Literature 24 by Dr. Ashraful Musaddeq

JL 20 — Reading Haiku in English: What Translation Changes

Reading Haiku in English: What Translation Changes

A frog jumps into an old pond. Put “splash” at the end of an English version and the water sounds sudden and close. Use “the sound of water” and the ending feels less sharply defined.

We are still picturing the same event. Yet a few words have changed how we hear it.

Translators make choices like this throughout a haiku: where to pause, how much to explain and what English needs to supply. Noticing those choices gives us more to enjoy in a poem that may take only seconds to read.

1. Seventeen Sounds Are Not Seventeen English Syllables

Traditional Japanese haiku commonly follows a 5–7–5 arrangement of sound units, usually described in English as morae. These units differ from English syllables.

The word haiku offers a simple example. English speakers normally hear two syllables. In Japanese, ha-i-ku counts as three morae.

A translator who chooses seventeen English syllables is working with a different measure. Filling that measure may require extra adjectives, articles or explanations. The arithmetic can remain intact while the poem becomes heavier.

A seventeen-syllable version can still succeed. Its rhythm and phrasing need to earn their place in the English poem.

Following the history from waka to haiku helps us understand the Japanese pattern. Reading a translation aloud helps us hear what the translator has made of it in English.

2. Bashō’s Pond: What Does the Water Sound Like?

A familiar verse by Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) makes these choices audible:

古池や蛙飛びこむ水の音

Furuike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto

A plain gloss would give us an old pond, a frog jumping in and the sound of water.

Mizu no oto names water and sound. Rendering it as “splash” makes that sound immediate and recognizable. It also gives the English a sharper acoustic character than the more open phrase “the sound of water.”

Read either choice in the whole poem. A brisk verb may work beautifully with a quiet ending. A forceful final word may draw attention away from everything before it.

The Pause after the Pond

The cutting word ya follows furuike, “old pond.” English has no exact equivalent that carries all its grammatical and expressive possibilities.

A dash can mark a break. A line ending can let us linger at the pond before the frog moves. Writing “Oh, an old pond!” brings an openly exclamatory voice into the scene.

Each choice changes the opening. A cut can create emphasis, separation or a shift of attention. There is no need to turn every cut into a long meditative silence.

Before explaining what the pond symbolizes, listen to how the English version moves from the pond to the frog.

3. A Flower Can Arrive in a Different Season

A flower’s name may seem easy to translate. Its season can be harder to carry across.

A seasonal word known as kigo connects the scene with a literary calendar. That calendar may differ from the one a reader knows at home.

The morning glory in the well-bucket poem by Chiyo-ni (1703–1775) belongs to autumn in Japanese haiku tradition. A reader who grows morning glories in summer may picture another season entirely.

The English name gets the flower into the poem. It does not necessarily bring autumn with it.

Replacing it with a familiar autumn flower would solve one problem by creating another. The plant has a particular role in the scene: its vine has taken possession of a bucket needed for drawing water.

A brief note lets the poem keep its flower while giving the reader the missing seasonal association.

Readers can explore this cultural context further in Haruo Shirane’s Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons: Nature, Literature and the Arts (2012). Seasonal meaning develops through literature, art and custom. It cannot be recovered from a gardening calendar alone.

4. Buson’s Sea: Repetition Is Part of the Movement

In a celebrated verse by Yosa Buson (1716–1784), the words seem to move with the water:

春の海終日のたりのたり哉

Haru no umi / hinemosu notari / notari kana

The sea moves gently throughout a spring day. Buson repeats notari across the last two rhythmic groups, allowing the movement to continue as we read.

A phrase such as “gently rolling” can convey the movement clearly. It may also lose the repeated return we hear in the Japanese.

An English repetition has to find its own rhythm. Depending on the words chosen, it may sound soothing, playful or more emphatic than the translator intends.

Read the version aloud. Does the sea have time to move? Does the final phrase settle or stop abruptly?

The closing kana adds another choice. Its expressive force may appear through punctuation, rhythm or an English phrase. There is no single mark that can simply replace it in every poem.

5. Issa’s Snail: Warmth without an Added Lesson

In a poem by Kobayashi Issa (1763–1828), a snail is urged to climb Mount Fuji. The English translator has to find a voice for that unlikely encouragement.

The contrast in scale is already extraordinary: a tiny creature and an immense mountain. Addressing the snail brings the speaker close to it.

English can make that address affectionate, teasing, solemn or commanding. Even a small addition such as “little” can increase the tenderness.

The added affection may suit the translator’s reading. It still comes from a decision about how the speaker should sound.

The poem is often approached as encouragement to persevere. That is one possible response. Turning it into a statement such as “Never give up on your dreams” removes the snail’s physical presence and replaces it with advice.

Look back at the creature before settling on a lesson. Its slow progress beside that enormous mountain gives us plenty to feel and imagine.

A translation can let readers smile and feel concern without telling them which lesson to take away.

6. Grammar Makes Small Decisions Visible

English often asks translators to settle matters that Japanese leaves less explicit.

Articles and Number

“The old pond” sounds like a particular pond we might already know. “An old pond” introduces one. “Old pond,” without an article, creates a compressed poetic opening.

Japanese does not use English-style articles. The translator must decide which English phrasing serves the poem.

Number can also require a decision. A Japanese noun does not always mark singular or plural. When a translation gives us one creature or several, context and interpretation may be doing part of the work.

The Familiar Three Lines

Japanese haiku is often presented in one vertical line. Three lines are a familiar English convention rather than a reproduction of the original page.

Line endings can separate images, suspend a phrase or place emphasis on the last word. A one-line English version can let relationships emerge through the sentence itself.

Try reading straight through without pausing at each line break. Then pause where the translator has placed them. You may hear how much the arrangement contributes to the poem.

7. The Human Experience behind the Image

“Literal” can be a useful description of a translation’s aim. It does not mean that interpretation has disappeared.

Choosing between “jumps” and “leaps” already changes energy and tone. Deciding where to place a pause changes how the reader meets the next image.

Takayuki Mori’s Haiku After Shiki brings a practicing poet’s experience into this discussion. For him, close observation matters deeply. So does the person doing the looking. He also recognizes the value of leaving something for the reader to discover.

Translators face a related difficulty. They can describe the object accurately yet explain its emotional significance so insistently that the reader has little left to discover.

If the translation strips too much away, the distinctive warmth, humor or unease may disappear.

When a version moves you, look again at the words that made it happen. Has the feeling emerged from an image, a familiar turn of speech or an explanation? That question can help you appreciate the translation while remaining curious about its choices.

8. How to Compare Versions without Knowing Japanese

Begin by reading one translation slowly. Picture its objects and actions before consulting the notes.

Then read a second version. Identify one concrete difference: a verb, an article, a repeated word or a line ending.

Ask what changes in your experience. Does the creature move faster? Does the speaker sound more affectionate? Does an added word make a connection that the other version leaves open?

After comparing the versions, consult a gloss or commentary. Makoto Ueda’s Bashō and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary (1991) is particularly useful because it places translated poems beside explanations and different critical readings. Hiroaki Sato’s On Haiku (2018) helps widen the discussion beyond a single English formula.

A gloss will not give you everything that reading Japanese would provide. It can help distinguish a detail named in the text from one supplied by a translator or reader.

You may prefer one version. Keep the other nearby for a while. It may draw your attention to something you missed in your favorite.

Return to the pond. Read “splash” aloud. Then read “the sound of water.” Notice the shape of your mouth, the length of the phrase and how quickly the sound is over.

The event has barely changed. Your experience of the poem has.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Why is haiku difficult to translate into English?

Its brevity concentrates decisions about rhythm, seasonal associations, grammar and the relationship between images. English may require choices that Japanese leaves less explicit.

Must an English translation follow 5–7–5?

No. Japanese morae and English syllables differ. A seventeen-syllable version can succeed but the count alone does not establish accuracy or poetic quality.

Is a kigo simply a description of the weather?

No. A seasonal word can carry associations from literature, customs and a shared poetic calendar. These associations may need a brief explanation for readers elsewhere.

Does a dash reproduce a Japanese cutting word?

It can suggest a break or shift. It cannot reproduce every function of a cutting word. Translators can also shape the pause through line breaks, phrasing and punctuation.

Should an English haiku always appear in three lines?

No. Three lines are a common English convention. Translators may use other arrangements to convey rhythm and relationships within the poem.

Why compare more than one translation?

Comparison makes choices visible. Differences in verbs, articles, tone and layout can reveal how each version shapes the reader’s experience.

References

1. Donegan, Patricia and Yoshie Ishibashi. The Poetry of Chiyo-ni: The Life and Art of Japan’s Most Celebrated Woman Haiku Master (2025). Tuttle Publishing.

2. Henderson, Harold G. An Introduction to Haiku: An Anthology of Poems and Poets from Bashō to Shiki (1958). Doubleday.

3. Higginson, William J. with Penny Harter. The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share and Teach Haiku (1985). McGraw-Hill.

4. Sato, Hiroaki. On Haiku (2018). New Directions.

5. Shirane, Haruo. Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons: Nature, Literature and the Arts (2012). Columbia University Press.

6. Ueda, Makoto. Bashō and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary (1991). Stanford University Press.

7. Ueda, Makoto. The Path of Flowering Thorn: The Life and Poetry of Yosa Buson (1998). Stanford University Press.

8. Ueda, Makoto. Dew on the Grass: The Life and Poetry of Kobayashi Issa (2004). Brill.

JL 19 — Chiyo-ni: Finding Haiku in Everyday Life

Chiyo-ni: Finding Haiku in Everyday Life

Someone goes to draw water and finds a morning glory tangled around the well bucket. The flower has interrupted a familiar task. Water will have to come from somewhere else.

Chiyo-ni (1703–1775) gives us this small difficulty without explaining how we should feel about it. We can imagine the beauty of the flower and the inconvenience of leaving it alone.

The poem is an inviting introduction to her work. It can also become so familiar that we stop looking beyond it. Her other poems, paintings and literary relationships reveal an artist whose world extended well past the garden.

1. A Poet in a Town of Travelers

Also known as Fukuda Chiyo-ni or Kaga no Chiyo, she was born in Mattō in Kaga Province, now part of Hakusan in Ishikawa Prefecture. Her father mounted scrolls and other artworks.

She grew up within the literary culture shaped by Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694). He died before she was born. She encountered his legacy through later poets, including his disciple Kagami Shikō (1665–1731), who visited her in 1719 and recognized her talent.

Poets visited the family home and exchanged verse with her. Letters kept those conversations going across distances while books circulated through the expanding world of Edo print culture.

She also participated in Japanese linked poetry, composing with others rather than working only on the short verses now most often translated individually.

Knowing this changes the way we picture the person behind the morning glory. She learned from others, offered poems for consideration and took part in a shared literary practice. There was conversation and work behind the apparent ease of a few lines.

2. The Morning Glory Interrupts a Task

The version printed in Chiyo-ni kushū (1764) reads:

朝顔に釣瓶とられてもらひ水

Asagao ni / tsurube torarete / morai mizu

In plain prose: a morning glory has taken over the well bucket, leaving the speaker to borrow water.

The Japanese names the bucket without describing every turn of the vine around its rope. As we read, we supply the situation: a flowering plant has occupied something the household needs to use.

What the Poem Leaves Unsaid

The verse moves from the bucket’s capture to water obtained elsewhere. It leaves out any debate about whether to pull away the vine. We encounter the speaker’s response through the borrowed water.

We may read that response as consideration for the flower. We may also smile at a plant apparently taking possession of household equipment. Tenderness and humor arise from the same difficulty: someone needs water and the flower is in the way.

Calling the poem simply “kindness to nature” can make us hurry past its wit. The flower has no interest in the household’s plans. Its growth has nevertheless required someone to change them.

3. Two Openings and a Seasonal Surprise

Readers may encounter asagao ya instead of asagao ni. Both forms have historical support. The 1764 collection uses ni while surviving examples and later presentations also use ya.

Read the two openings aloud and the difference becomes easier to hear.

Ni connects the morning glory grammatically with what has happened to the bucket. Ya, a cutting word, gives the flower a more distinct pause before the rest of the scene.

Recognizing the two versions helps us understand why English translations do not always begin in quite the same way.

Why an Autumn Flower?

In the Japanese poetic calendar, morning glory is an autumn kigo, or seasonal word. This can surprise English readers whose gardens associate it with summer.

The seasonal word brings a literary calendar into the scene. Readers coming from waka and tanka will recognize how a familiar plant can carry associations beyond what any one garden tells us.

English versions must choose how to convey these relationships. Japanese sound units, often called morae, also differ from English syllables. Rhythm, pauses and the relation between images deserve attention alongside the count.

4. Many Gourds from One Vine

Another plant produces a very different scene:

百なりやつるひとすじの心より

Hyakunari ya / tsuru hitosuji no / kokoro yori

Its sense can be paraphrased this way: a profusion of gourds comes from a single vine, imagined as having a heart.

The eye moves between the many fruits and the slender growth supporting them. The difference in scale gives the poem its first surprise.

Kokoro brings an inward quality into the image. “Heart” is one way to approach it in English, though the word carries meanings that extend beyond the physical organ.

The word allows us to imagine an inner source of energy in the plant. We may begin to think about creativity or generosity. The poem gives those thoughts something concrete to return to: many gourds growing from one vine.

There is no need to make the plant stand for just one thing.

The Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of History holds a work pairing her inscription of this verse with a painting of gourds. There, the words share space with an image of their subject. We can follow the verse, look back at the gourds and notice what each asks us to imagine.

5. A Nun Whose Work Kept Circulating

In 1754, she took Buddhist vows and adopted the religious name Soen. The suffix ni identifies her as a nun.

Her religious commitment offers part of the context for reading her later work. The morning glory poem, however, was associated with her earlier years. Reading it entirely through the nun she later became can obscure the long career that preceded her vows.

Her public literary activity continued after she became a nun. In 1763, the Kaga domain selected her poems for scrolls and fans intended as gifts for Korean envoys. Her collection followed in 1764.

A poem on a fan or hanging scroll entered a different kind of encounter from a verse exchanged at home. These gifts show how far her writing could travel from the household scenes we associate with her.

She died in 1775. Her career had included participation in poetic gatherings, correspondence and work in both words and images.

6. A Woman’s Voice within a Shared Tradition

The history of Japanese women writers includes many forms of authorship. Chiyo-ni was neither the first woman to compose poetry nor the only woman active in Edo-period haikai.

Her achievement comes into better focus when we look at particular poems and the settings in which readers encountered them.

Describing her work only as delicate or gentle leaves little room for the morning glory poem’s comic reversal. It also misses the imaginative leap in the gourd poem, where a word for inward life enters the description of a plant.

Gender shaped literary opportunity and recognition. It also deserves attention in the language used to praise a writer. Even generous praise can become limiting if it tells us in advance what kinds of feeling a woman’s poems must contain.

Yosa Buson (1716–1784) was her contemporary. Placing them within the same period is more useful than imagining her as a late addition to a completed sequence of male masters.

Reading these overlapping careers together gives us a fuller sense of the period. It leaves room for a poet to be witty in one verse, reflective in another and difficult to summarize in a phrase.

7. Poems, Stories and the Evidence

A famous story connects a dragonfly-catching poem with the death of her child. It offers an immediately affecting picture of a grieving mother.

The Chiyo-jo Haiku Museum cautions that the verse is absent from her collected body of more than 1,900 poems and regards the attribution as legendary.

It is an important distinction to keep in view. A moving story may reveal how later readers imagined a poet while telling us much less securely what happened in her life. The feeling it creates cannot settle the question of attribution.

The morning glory poem invites a related kind of care. Its practical scene feels personal enough that we may imagine we are watching the poet herself. We can respond to that intimacy while leaving open how closely the poem follows a particular morning.

8. Reading beyond the Well

Begin with Patricia Donegan and Yoshie Ishibashi’s The Poetry of Chiyo-ni: The Life and Art of Japan’s Most Celebrated Woman Haiku Master (2025). This new edition brings their earlier translation project back into print with poems, biographical material and artwork.

Then read her alongside other women in Makoto Ueda’s Far Beyond the Field: Haiku by Japanese Women (2003). Reading several poets together helps us hear differences that the broad category “women’s haiku” can hide.

For a practicing poet’s perspective on seasonal words and the cut, read Takayuki Mori’s Haiku After Shiki. Following the history from waka to haiku also helps clarify terminology. Her short verses are widely called haiku today. In their Edo-period context, hokku is the more precise historical term.

Return to the morning glory and gourd poems after exploring a larger selection. One plant interrupts the supply of water. Another produces more fruit than its slender vine seems able to support.

Before deciding what either scene means, picture it. Follow the vine around the bucket. Then imagine the weight of the gourds on their stem. The thoughts that follow will have something particular to grow from.

Back at the well, the water is still needed and the flower is still in the way. The poem ends with water borrowed elsewhere. We can only imagine what happens when someone returns to the well.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Who was Chiyo-ni?

Chiyo-ni (1703–1775), also called Fukuda Chiyo-ni or Kaga no Chiyo, was an Edo-period Japanese poet, artist and Buddhist nun associated with Mattō in Kaga Province.

Was she a direct pupil of Bashō?

No. Bashō died in 1694 before she was born. She developed within his poetic legacy and received recognition from his disciple Kagami Shikō.

Why does the morning glory poem begin with either ni or ya?

Both readings have historical support. The 1764 collection uses ni. Ya creates a more distinct cut after the flower. English translations may reflect different versions.

Is morning glory a summer kigo?

In Japanese haiku tradition, it is associated with autumn. Literary seasonal classifications do not always match a reader’s local flowering calendar.

Is the dragonfly poem reliable evidence that she lost a child?

No. The Chiyo-jo Haiku Museum treats that attribution as legendary. The poem should not be used as secure evidence for her biography.

Where should a new reader begin?

Try The Poetry of Chiyo-ni by Patricia Donegan and Yoshie Ishibashi. Then compare her work with other women poets in Makoto Ueda’s Far Beyond the Field.

References

1. Carter, Steven D. How to Read a Japanese Poem (2019). Columbia University Press.

2. Donegan, Patricia and Yoshie Ishibashi. The Poetry of Chiyo-ni: The Life and Art of Japan’s Most Celebrated Woman Haiku Master (2025). Tuttle Publishing.

3. Higginson, William J. with Penny Harter. The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share and Teach Haiku (1985). McGraw-Hill.

4. Keene, Donald. World Within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-Modern Era, 1600–1867 (1976). Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

5. Sato, Hiroaki, translator. Japanese Women Poets: An Anthology (2008). M. E. Sharpe.

6. Shirane, Haruo, editor. Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900 (2002). Columbia University Press.

JL 18 — Haiku After Shiki: Shasei, Tradition, and the Human Voice — Takayuki Mori

Haiku After Shiki: Shasei, Tradition, and the Human Voice — Takayuki Mori

Written By: Takayuki Mori (森 高幸)

I am not a scholar of haiku history. I am a haiku poet.

I have written haiku for many years, participated in countless haiku meetings, selected poems, and taught other poets. Through all of this, I have continued to ask myself what can truly be expressed in the very small space of haiku. I am now seventy-two years old, but this question has not become any easier.

When I think about the haiku I write today, I cannot separate it from the history of modern haiku after Masaoka Shiki.

Shiki is one of the great starting points of modern Japanese haiku. His idea of shasei, usually translated as “sketching from life,” asked poets to look carefully at the actual world before them instead of depending too heavily on inherited expressions and conventional poetic associations.

That attitude remains very important to me. Before trying to make a beautiful poem, I must first look carefully. What is really there? What did I actually notice? What did I truly feel?

These simple questions are still at the center of my haiku.

At the same time, the history of haiku after Shiki shows us that there has never been only one answer to the question, “What should haiku be?”

Shiki and Shasei

Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902) lived a short life, but his influence on Japanese poetry was enormous. He promoted reforms in both haiku and tanka and placed great importance on realism and direct observation.

The word shasei originally came from the language of painting. In poetry, it suggests making a sketch from the thing itself.

But I do not think that shasei means simply copying an object in words as a camera might record an image. Even if several people look at the same tree, flower, or street, they do not necessarily see the same thing. Each person notices something different.

The moment a poet chooses what to notice, the poet has already entered the poem.

For me, shasei begins with the object, but it does not end with the object.

Different Roads After Shiki

After Shiki’s death, Japanese haiku did not continue along a single road.

Two important figures were Takahama Kyoshi and Kawahigashi Hekigotō, both of whom had worked closely with Shiki.

Kyoshi returned actively to haiku in 1912 and emphasized realistic haiku that maintained the traditional seventeen Japanese sound units, or morae, together with seasonal topics. From 1927, he developed the idea of kachō fūei, broadly understood as composing poetry through nature and the seasons.

Hekigotō moved in a different direction. He challenged conventional seasonal practice and fixed form and became a central figure in the New Tendency Haiku movement.

Another important poet and critic, Ogiwara Seisensui (1884–1976), joined this movement and in 1911 founded the haiku magazine Sōun together with Hekigotō. The two later differed in their views. Seisensui went on to advocate jiyūritsu haiku, or free-form haiku, in which the poet was not bound by fixed 5–7–5 structure or by the necessary use of a seasonal word.

Among the poets who developed under Seisensui was Taneda Santōka (1882–1940).

Santōka is a particularly interesting poet to me.

I myself mainly write haiku in the traditional 5–7–5 form, and I place great importance on kigo, seasonal words. In that sense, my own direction is quite different from Santōka’s.

Yet I have always found his poetry compelling.

Santōka became a Buddhist priest and spent much of his later life traveling and begging his way through Japan. Rain, roads, mountains, loneliness, hunger, and the small things encountered during his wanderings entered his poems directly.

His haiku do not depend on the traditional 5–7–5 form. Even so, they often give us a powerful sense that something has actually been seen, experienced, and lived.

For me, that is important.

Kyoshi and Santōka followed very different paths, but both belong to the history of modern haiku. Their difference reminds us that the development of haiku after Shiki was never a straight line.

What Is the Truth of a Poem?

In the early Shōwa period, other poets began to question whether objective observation by itself was enough.

One important figure was Mizuhara Shūōshi (1892–1981). He had developed as a poet within the Hototogisu tradition but eventually separated from it.

In 1931 he published an important essay titled “The Truth of Nature and the Truth of Literature” (“Shizen no Shin” to “Bungeijō no Shin”).

I find this distinction very interesting.

Suppose I look at a flower. I can describe its color, shape, light, and the place where it is growing. That may be accurate observation.

But is accuracy alone enough to make literature?

I do not think so.

The flower passes through the eyes and mind of the poet. Memory may enter. A feeling may arise. The flower may suddenly become connected with age, love, separation, or something the poet cannot easily explain.

That is where literature begins.

At the same time, I believe that the flower must remain a flower. If the poet forces too much meaning onto it, the poem becomes explanation rather than haiku.

Finding the balance between the thing itself and what the poet feels through it is still one of the most difficult parts of writing haiku for me.

Modern Life Enters Haiku

As Japanese society changed, the subjects of haiku also changed.

Yamaguchi Seishi (1901–1994) was among the poets who brought urban life, machinery, industry, and other modern materials into haiku with a fresh sensibility. He became an important contributor to the New Haiku movement.

I think this development was natural.

A poet must live in his own time.

We still have mountains, flowers, birds, snow, and the moon. But we also have trains, hospitals, elevators, computers, apartment buildings, traffic lights, and smartphones.

These too belong to the world we actually live in.

If haiku begins with seeing, the poet cannot pretend to live only in an old landscape.

To write in a traditional form does not mean that one must write only about traditional subjects.

This is something I strongly believe.

The Human Inquiry Poets

During the Shōwa period, Nakamura Kusatao (1901–1983), Katō Shūson (1905–1993), and Ishida Hakyō (1913–1969) came to be grouped under the name Ningen Tankyū-ha, often translated as the “Human Inquiry School.”

This development is especially important to me.

These poets did not simply abandon nature, seasonal words, or traditional form. Rather, they tried to bring more of the whole human being into haiku.

Illness, family, loneliness, inner conflict, thought, faith, anxiety, and the question of how one should live could all become part of the poem.

Of course, human emotion had always existed in haiku. Bashō, Buson, and Issa were certainly not emotionless observers of nature.

But in modern haiku, the individual human being became a more conscious subject of inquiry.

The poet standing before the flower, the snow, or the autumn sky became more clearly present.

For me, this was an important development.

Nakamura Kusatao

Among these poets, Nakamura Kusatao is the one most closely connected with my own life in haiku.

Kusatao studied under Takahama Kyoshi and became a leading figure of the Human Inquiry approach. He maintained the traditional framework of seasonal words and fixed form while seeking to express what has been described as the demands of the whole human being.

In 1946, he founded the haiku journal Banryoku, which became an important presence in postwar haiku.

My own haiku belongs to this lineage, and I was fortunate to receive Kusatao’s instruction in the later years of his life.

What I learned from that tradition was not that I should imitate Kusatao.

A poet cannot live by imitation.

What I learned was the importance of seeing with my own eyes.

Kusatao did not limit haiku to beautiful seasonal scenery. He tried to make the traditional haiku form carry human experience.

That does not mean putting abstract philosophy directly into seventeen sounds.

There must still be something concrete before us: a child, a tree, snow, a bird, a road, a pair of shoes.

But through that concrete thing, another part of human life may become visible.

This way of thinking has deeply influenced my own haiku.

What I Try to Do

When I write haiku now, I still begin with what I see.

But I do not want merely to record it.

I ask myself why that particular thing stopped me. Why did I notice it? Why did it remain in my mind?

Sometimes the answer may involve age. Sometimes memory, family, death, separation, or humor. Sometimes it may be something very ordinary.

But I do not want to explain all of this directly in the poem.

If I explain too much, the haiku closes itself. The reader has no room to enter.

That is one reason I value kigo and the cut so highly.

A seasonal word can carry memories and associations that the poet does not need to explain. A cut can create a small silence inside the poem.

Sometimes that silence says more than another sentence could.

Seventeen Sounds

I remain committed to the traditional 5–7–5 form.

There are many kinds of haiku today, including free-form haiku, and I do not deny their value. Santōka is a fine example of the power that free-form haiku can possess.

But for myself, I choose to work mainly within the traditional form.

I like its difficulty.

Seventeen Japanese sound units are very few. Every word must have a reason to be there.

Sometimes I want to say too much. Then the form requires me to remove something.

And quite often, after I remove it, the poem becomes stronger.

For me, 5–7–5 is not simply a rule.

It is a discipline.

It forces me to decide what is truly necessary.

Tradition and Change

When I look at the history of modern haiku after Shiki, I do not see a history in which one poet was right and another was wrong.

Shiki renewed the importance of direct observation.

Kyoshi defended the power of traditional form and seasonal poetry.

Hekigotō and Seisensui opened the way toward freer forms, and Santōka showed how much could be expressed outside the conventional 5–7–5 structure.

Shūōshi and Seishi expanded the possibilities of modern subject matter and poetic expression.

Kusatao, Shūson, Hakyō, and others asked how deeply human life could enter haiku.

I believe we still live with all of these questions.

Each time I write a poem, I must make my own choices.

Am I really seeing what is before me?

Am I only repeating a familiar poetic expression?

Does the seasonal word deepen the poem?

Am I saying too much?

Is the feeling arising naturally from the scene, or am I forcing meaning onto it?

Does 5–7–5 sharpen the language, or am I forcing the language merely to fit the form?

These are not only historical questions.

They are questions I face now.

The Human Voice

For me, the most important thing is that a haiku should contain life.

A beautifully constructed poem can sometimes feel empty. On the other hand, a technically imperfect poem may contain something that cannot easily be forgotten.

As a poet and as someone who teaches and selects haiku, I care greatly about form, language, rhythm, kigo, the cut, and technique.

But technique itself is not the final purpose.

A poem must come from a real encounter between the poet and the world.

That world may be nature.

It may be a city, a hospital room, a railway station, an old photograph, or the scent of a flower that suddenly brings someone back to mind.

The subject may be very small.

But behind it, an entire human life may sometimes be felt.

That is what I continue to seek in haiku.

Shiki taught modern haiku to look carefully at the world. The poets who followed him explored many different ways of continuing that work. Some remained close to traditional form. Some moved away from it. Others turned more deeply toward human life and the inner self.

I stand within one of those lines, but I believe we can continue to learn from the others.

At seventy-two, I am still writing haiku.

And every time I begin a new poem, I return to the same simple questions:

What did I really see?

What did I really feel?

And how little can I say while still allowing the poem to live?

---

About the Author

Takayuki Mori (森 高幸) was born on October 8, 1954, in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. He graduated from Waseda University in 1978 and joined Mitsubishi Logistics Corporation that year. He retired in 2014.

He joined the haiku society and journal Banryoku in 1983. In 1991, he became a dōjin (senior member) of Banryoku and joined the Haiku Poets Association. He became a dōjin of Mori no Za, the successor journal to Banryoku, in 2017.

Since 2023, he has served as the representative of the haiku society Gunsei. He joined the management committee of Mori no Za in 2024. His published work includes the haiku collection 30's.

---

Published on World Literature 24 by Dr. Ashraful Musaddeq