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| 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:
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
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