Dark secret about haiku poetry

well, i`ll try to be coherent

Thank you, Unjapanese for an interesting information and links, i`ll spend
some time on studying them lately.

I won`t bring any objections yet about haiku, since got to learn more about it.

haiku poets and their readers should, and cannot but, assume everyone
shares a same train of association/response when he/she encounters
the word tomato.

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But as i said any piece of poetry is written for some auditory (and not only poetry). There were various discussions in this forum about how close related culture and language. And if poet finds new metaphor he certainly shares it with the hope that someone will appreciate it.
Looks like outside Japan haiku and senryu are being mixed up by profanes with incline toward 2nd type. Personally, i am not greatly fond of haiku, it`s just a form to express onself, as good as any other. But i don`t find that rules diminish the creativeness. It is what makes form, form is no less important than the content. But again, it is my own opinion

if it appeared in 17th century, as you`ve said, then maybe, just maybe, this economy of words turned into form of art could be due to the mmmm... how`s better say? ... to the "samurai`s mentality". In many cultures true warrior is not supposed to be wordy, but laconic and precise. Besides as two swords would detach a noble from the crowd, un-wordiness would also raise him above the babbling and complaining crowd. But, this is just my wild guess? which has a right to be born and to fade as well if you should bring any objections...

There is an almost unbridgeable chasm. (...)
These people, who aren't courageous enough to face up to the chasm,
tend to think, just like their parents and grandparents, that they
can promote cross-cultural understanding just by socializing very
nicely with gaijin while sweeping all the dirty things under the carpet.

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Recently, just no more than a week ago some events made a strange idea to cross my mind. The east and the west, are we really that differen as we try to claim? Even railroad metals share same cross-ties, and, according to Lobachevskiyi, they have a chance to meet and cross in some dimensions. It could be that all these "unreachable", "unbridgeable", "impossible", "hopeless" and such are just convinient excuse to the lack of due effort.
Sorry, but i`ll elaborate this idea a bit lately, because i am not yet sure to what thread or section it belongs, and can`t figure out how to bind various thought wandering in my head back and forth

I am aware that the history of japanese is a great mixture. But still it IS JAPANESE history and only this alone makes the culture unique.

We were Russians till the 988 when the nation was baptised (partly willingly
and partly by the sword)
We were Russians till we faced th Great Horde
We were Russians till Peter the Great decided to bring some european luster
over eastern savages
We were Russians till the 1917 when some people decided that socialism marching toward communism would be much better for the country
We were Russians till 90ies when ideals of democratic world (some ideals are
hardly worth of being called so, but still...) invaded our country
We are still Russians, we live in vast country with various ethnic groups, with
different religions, with weird history, with f**ing damn government

before i`ll go on let me show you one picture and ask, what do you see on it?

pic

my haiku

I wrote a haiku once... one night after we saw a speaker about the US sending lots of military aid to Colombia under the guise of the 'drug war'. Called "Plan Colombia". Colombia had a civil war going on for some 37 years (at that time) and Occidental oil Co (which Al Gore owned stock. if that means anything?) wanted the petro under the indigenous U'wa's land.

I'll see if I can remember it. Something like this:


It is not our oil
It is not our resources
We do not live there.


True story btw.

Manyoshu

pipokun said:

Who's your favorite artist in the Manyoshu?
Which one do you think is the best poem in the collection?

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Manyoshu (万葉集 - Anthology of Ten-thousand Leaves) actually consists of much smaller number of tanka (短歌 - short poems), choka (長歌 - long poems) and sedouka (旋頭歌 - combination of tanka and choka). When I was a kid my favorite manyo poets included Nukata-no Okimi (額田王), Otomo-no Yakamochi (大伴家持), etc. Although I never failed to get an "A" in the Manyoshu classes when I was in my mid-teens, I've long forgotten all these verses now.

If you let me tell you the dark secret of tanka poetry (not again?), in the wartime years, the Japanese Imperial Army opted to use old poetic formats, longer than 17-syllable stuff, to make them serve its cause. While the Imperial Army found the 31-syllable tanka format most effective for propaganda, the most typical poem sung by kamikaze pilots before leaving on their suicide missions was formatted 5-7-5-7-5-7-7. It goes like this:
In the sea, water-logged corpses,
In the mountains these corpses with grasses growing on them
But my desire to die next to our emperor unflinching.
I shall not look back.
That's how thousands of Kamikaze pilots embarked on their suicide attacks on American warships. Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit write: "The images are ancient: ritual samurai suicide, the beautiful evanescence of cherry blossoms, the divine emperor, dying on the battlefield like a 'shattering crystal ball'."

You may call it a generation gap. But I don't think that is the case here because younger generations of the Japanese haven't overcome the haiku mentality or tanka mentality yet. 5-7-5, or 5-7-5-7-7, or whatever, the ghost of the "death cult" (Ian Buruma) is still haunting them.

I loved it

Sukotto said:

I wrote a haiku once... one night after we saw a speaker about the US sending lots of military aid to Colombia under the guise of the 'drug war'. Called "Plan Colombia". Colombia had a civil war going on for some 37 years (at that time) and Occidental oil Co (which Al Gore owned stock. if that means anything?) wanted the petro under the indigenous U'wa's land.

I'll see if I can remember it. Something like this:


It is not our oil
It is not our resources
We do not live there.


True story btw.

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This is of course not a haiku because it doesn't observe the 17-syllable rule. Maybe this is not a poem of any other form because there's no distinctive feature of it such as rhymes. To me this is an aphorism. Whatever it is, I love this piece because it's straightforward, leaves nothing unsaid, and yet succeeds in economizing the word-count.

That's 17 syllables.

I think

i understand, haiku's dont encourage individualism isnt that what you are saying? its stopping people from thinking on their own and creating fresh new ideas isnt it?

Sorry I didn't notice.
Come to think of it, one of the sticking points when discussing the haiku format is the fact that you can never translate a Japanese 17-syllable poem into English and still stick to the same syllable count, or vice versa.

Hi, duff_o_josh

duff_o_josh said:

i understand, haiku's dont encourage individualism isnt that what you are saying? its stopping people from thinking on their own and creating fresh new ideas isnt it?

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You bet it is! Edamame, or boiled soybeans, are one of the few things I love about Japan. But the people's inability to become themselves is one of the many things I dislike about this nation.

haha yes thank you for noticing that. dont they teach different styles of poetry in the public education system?

duff_o_josh said:

haha yes thank you for noticing that. dont they teach different styles of poetry in the public education system?

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To duff_o_josh from talkative/unjapanese/un-PC emcee of this thread:

I'm not sure, maybe some teachers are teaching a freer poetic style to their kids. But that's far from enough to emancipate them from the obsession with sameness they inherited from their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents.

Perhaps I'll open a new thread dealing with education system in Japan, especially the system for English education, when I'm through with the hectic time I'm having right now with some other things.

In the meantime you may notice that what's really at issue here is NOT what, let alone how, school teachers teach their students, if you take a peek at my blog piece entitled "English education in Japan": http://www.tokyofreepress.com/article.php?story=20040901050703349

Unjapanese said:

Manyoshu (万葉集 - Anthology of Ten-thousand Leaves) actually consists of much smaller number of tanka (短歌 - short poems), choka (長歌 - long poems) and sedouka (旋頭歌 - combination of tanka and choka). When I was a kid my favorite manyo poets included Nukata-no Okimi (額田王), Otomo-no Yakamochi (大伴家持), etc. Although I never failed to get an "A" in the Manyoshu classes when I was in my mid-teens, I've long forgotten all these verses now.

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Thank you for your explanation, but it does not give me the clear-cut reason why you prefer Manyoshu to Haiku. It seems to me that you're talking only about the form...
You know a lot about Haiku, so I'd like to ask you about Masaoka Shiki and Takahama Kyoshi. They are said to do their great contribution to the modern Haiku after the Meiji period. What do you think about them?
And when it comes to a Haiku critic in the post WWII, how about Kuwahara Takeo?

off-topic, but what do you think about Ueda Bin?

pipokun said:

Thank you for your explanation, but it does not give me the clear-cut reason why you prefer Manyoshu to Haiku. It seems to me that you're talking only about the form...

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Let me clarify my argument here. I didn't want to say I prefer this form to that form. I just wanted to say I love Nukata-no Okimi and Otomo-no Yakamochi. Don't assume, though, I have read all the pieces (more than 4,500 of them) of Manyoshu, let alone memorized them. It's just that I love them because their works are filled with open, free and natural spirits. Perhaps that's because they wrote these poems before Japan archipelago started being "contaminated" by letters, religions, or any other imports from China, Portugal, Holland, Germany, Britain and America (in that order.) I have nothing against these cultures. What I don't like is the way the Japanese have imported all these things in such a way that has made this nation a cultural salad. One example of our digestion problems: It's a little sickening to see the government and the media now growing more and more enthusiastic about abandoning the "pacifist" Constitution on the grounds that it was imposed by the U.S. occupation forces against their will. Unlike the proud Iraqi people, the Japanese just swallowed it down, only to throw it up 59 years later. This really reminds me of the Psalms. Psalm 26:11 goes like this: "As a dog returneth to its vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly." Am I making sense?

pipokun said:

You know a lot about Haiku, so I'd like to ask you about Masaoka Shiki and Takahama Kyoshi. They are said to do their great contribution to the modern Haiku after the Meiji period. What do you think about them?
And when it comes to a Haiku critic in the post WWII, how about Kuwahara Takeo?

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As a matter of fact I know very little about them. Actually I'm not particularly knowledgeable about poets. If I sound well-versed in Japanese poetry, that's because I constantly turn to Wikipedia so I won't misguide foreigners. But to the best of my knowledge, Masaoka Shiki was not a haiku poet. He was a tanka poet. The same is true with my knowledge about Kuwahara Takeo.

pipokun said:

off-topic, but what do you think about Ueda Bin?

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I think Ueda is known only for his translation of Carl Busse's "Ueber den Bergen" and Paul Verlaine's "Chanson d'Automne." That's all I can tell about Ueda. Sorry for my shallow knowledge.

Unjapanese said:

To duff_o_josh from talkative/unjapanese/un-PC emcee of this thread:

I'm not sure, maybe some teachers are teaching a freer poetic style to their kids. But that's far from enough to emancipate them from the obsession with sameness they inherited from their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents.

Perhaps I'll open a new thread dealing with education system in Japan, especially the system for English education, when I'm through with the hectic time I'm having right now with some other things.

In the meantime you may notice that what's really at issue here is NOT what, let alone how, school teachers teach their students, if you take a peek at my blog piece entitled "English education in Japan": http://www.tokyofreepress.com/article.php?story=20040901050703349

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thanks i will read it and i am looking forward to the upcoming thread when you have the time.

Unjapanese said:

Let me clarify my argument here. I didn't want to say I prefer this form to that form. I just wanted to say I love Nukata-no Okimi and Otomo-no Yakamochi. Don't assume, though, I have read all the pieces (more than 4,500 of them) of Manyoshu, let alone memorized them. It's just that I love them because their works are filled with open, free and natural spirits. Perhaps that's because they wrote these poems before Japan archipelago started being "contaminated" by letters, religions, or any other imports from China, Portugal, Holland, Germany, Britain and America (in that order.) I have nothing against these cultures. What I don't like is the way the Japanese have imported all these things in such a way that has made this nation a cultural salad. One example of our digestion problems: It's a little sickening to see the government and the media now growing more and more enthusiastic about abandoning the "pacifist" Constitution on the grounds that it was imposed by the U.S. occupation forces against their will. Unlike the proud Iraqi people, the Japanese just swallowed it down, only to throw it up 59 years later. This really reminds me of the Psalms. Psalm 26:11 goes like this: "As a dog returneth to its vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly." Am I making sense?As a matter of fact I know very little about them. Actually I'm not particularly knowledgeable about poets. If I sound well-versed in Japanese poetry, that's because I constantly turn to Wikipedia so I won't misguide foreigners. But to the best of my knowledge, Masaoka Shiki was not a haiku poet. He was a tanka poet. The same is true with my knowledge about Kuwahara Takeo.
I think Ueda is known only for his translation of Carl Busse's "Ueber den Bergen" and Paul Verlaine's "Chanson d'Automne." That's all I can tell about Ueda. Sorry for my shallow knowledge.

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Is it correct to say you think the Japanese culture, at least the literature, underwent complete change before/after the Manyoshu?
Before: Filled with open, free and natural spirits
After: Lost the above after the contamination
If so, how do you interpret the influence of Buddhism and Chinese character before Manyoshu? And what do you think of the Heian culture, esp. the culture known as "kokufu" culture from the late 9th century?

I'd really love to update millions of stubs related to the Japanese culture/history in the Wikipedia, but due to my lack of my English skill and time, I am not qualified to translate them. If time allows, could you translate them incl. the article on Masaoka Shiki and Kuwahara Takeo into English?

pipokun said:

Is it correct to say you think the Japanese culture, at least the literature, underwent complete change before/after the Manyoshu?
Before: Filled with open, free and natural spirits
After: Lost the above after the contamination

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I wouldn't say, and haven't said, "complete." Neither do I think Japan has gone through a "linear" history of "contamination" in the last "2665 years".

pipokun said:

If so, how do you interpret the influence of Buddhism and Chinese character before Manyoshu?[/UNQUOTE]Buddhism is believed to have arrived in Japan in the mid-6th century. My guesswork is that the Chinese characters were also imported around that time.

On the other hand, Manyoshu is believed to have been compiled by someone in the mid-8th century.

But two things should be noted here;
1) The oldest pieces in Mayoshu dated back to the early- to mid-7th century.
2) As we in the business world often do, we should use the "dog year" scale when measuring the elapse of time, i.e., today's one (dog) year translates into approx. 6 years some decades ago. If we compare a dog year to the speed at which time elapsed in the Manyo era, I don't know, but perhaps it's equivalent to a century.

What I am saying here is Manyo poets were under the influence of the Chinese culture and religions only to a minimal extent. That's why some (or most?) of the Manyo poets used what now we call "Manyo Gana." (窶毒凪?杯窶ｰﾂｼ窶督ｼ).

PS: Wikipedia says it's not "some", not even "most." ALL the Manyo pieces were incorporated into the anthology in Manyo Gana. BTW: Manyo Gana used the Chinese ideogram as Japanese phonogram.

pipokun said:

And what do you think of the Heian culture, esp. the culture known as "kokufu" culture from the late 9th century?

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Now it seems to me you are much better off than I to answer your own questions because my area of expertise, and interest, is corporate finance and business administration. I'm not a historian. But if I am to answer your questions here, I would say the Heian culture was more "contaminated." That's for sure. In fact I am not interested, or knowledgeable, in the pre-modern history of Japan at all.

pipokun said:

I'd really love to update millions of stubs related to the Japanese culture/history in the Wikipedia, but due to my lack of my English skill and time, I am not qualified to translate them. If time allows, could you translate them incl. the article on Masaoka Shiki and Kuwahara Takeo into English?

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I couldn't afford the time, either. If I may ask you: Is Japanese your mother tongue? But no matter whether, you don't have to think about translating posts on Wikipidia from J to E, or vice versa, because these days the online encyclopedia is highly bilingual.

You don't have to translate the Masaoka Shiki entry into English: Masaoka Shiki - Wikipedia

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What if the Hello Kitty would turn to be 70 or 80yrs old? Many people, young or old, Japanese or non-Japanese will share the cat. It is a small world, isn't it? This is one of the reason I don't have any negative image against manga/anime/J-pop, even though I don't read or watch them now.
I think Haiku is nothing but a form. It is the same as the cat. It is nice, I think, that many people share the form. According to my friend from the state, Haiku is the worst invention in the world after she had a hard time to create ones at her class.

I still don't know why you're criticizing Haiku.

I highly appreciate if you post a thread/article upon the dankai generation, esp. your first-hand experience in 60's and 70's in the economy sub forum here or your forum, though you're not necessarily the one in the generation. It is quite interesting to know how the radical, economically and politically, generation create the present young Japanese.

pipokun said:

What if the Hello Kitty would turn to be 70 or 80yrs old? Many people, young or old, Japanese or non-Japanese will share the cat. It is a small world, isn't it? This is one of the reason I don't have any negative image against manga/anime/J-pop, even though I don't read or watch them now.
I think Haiku is nothing but a form. It is the same as the cat. It is nice, I think, that many people share the form. According to my friend from the state, Haiku is the worst invention in the world after she had a hard time to create ones at her class.

I still don't know why you're criticizing Haiku.

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As I've said over and over, I have nothing, whatsoever, against haiku as such, let alone its 5-7-5 format. This reminds me of a French writer. He once wrote: "I have nothing against dogs and cats. Those who really turn me off are pet lovers."

But now it's really gladdened me to get to know each of you haiku lovers, or those who appreciate Japanese culture more than I do. I've learned a lot from all of you.

Once again, what I don't like is haiku M-E-N-T-A-L-I-T-Y. I know everything has its downside. Haiku is no exception. When I opened this thread, I just thought: "It must be fun to play devil's advocate every once in a while with my JREF buddies." Don't misunderstand me as if I am one of those trollers. A troller is a negativist. One who likes to play devil's advocate, such as myself, is not. He just flips over the carpet to reveal whatever is hidden underneath it. Although he does this just out of good will, ordinary Japanese people almost always hate him as if he were a weasel or something because they find his behavior extremely insulting and totally unacceptable.

pipokun said:

I highly appreciate if you post a thread/article upon the dankai generation, esp. your first-hand experience in 60's and 70's in the economy sub forum here or your forum, though you're not necessarily the one in the generation. It is quite interesting to know how the radical, economically and politically, generation create the present young Japanese.

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My biological age is 69. Perhaps because of that, I've had no first-hand experience mixing with that generation. I belong in the same generation as Shigeo Nagashima, Yujiro Ishihara, etc. But I've never been able to relate to these guys, not because they are Japanese but because they just stink. The only Japanese of my age who I can relate to is Maestro Seiji Ozawa, former conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was one of my classmates when we were high schoolers. When NHK Symphony Orchestra kicked out the young nonconformist, Time Magazine (or News Week?) wrote that Ozawa was a nail that had stuck out and gotten hammered down at home. As soon as he landed the podium of the BSO, NHK sought a reconciliation with him. As usual his exceptional talent had to be "reimported." Biological age doesn't really matter, as Ozawa has proved. (I mean it, really.) As his compatriot, I'm always proud of him. But he is one of the few exceptions.

I don't see what you mean by your last sentence.

Tsuyoiko said:

I just read Flowers for Algernon. It was OK - a bit too cynical for me. Have you read Philip K Dick? I thought Flowers for Algernon was similar to his stuff, if a bit more sentimental.

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No, I haven't read P. K. Dick. Could you name your favorite work by him?

As for Daniel Keyes, my recommendation would be "The Minds of Billy Milligan" and "Until Death Do Us Part".

I read the first one 5 years ago just because my then live-in GF recommended it. She was a DID sufferer. DID stands for Dissociative Personality Disorder, the mental illness better known as MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder.)

BTW: Have you ever posted to the thread "PLZ recommends a book" - one of the most frequently visited threads around here. I recommended there Ryu Murakami's "Leaving the Peninsula Behind" (村上龍 "半島を出よ"). This nonfiction was the first Japanese book I'd read in 40 years and I was really overwhelmed. But these guys who are killing their time just exchanging their favorite book titles ("This book is cool," "Is that so? But I prefer that book," etc.) totally ignored my lengthy (as usual) input. I wonder what the hell they are doing that for, all the time. Are they jobless or something?

Hi Unjapanese-san

Probably the most famous Philip K Dick book is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - the film Blade Runner was based (loosely) on it. I'll look for those Keyes books in the library - intriguing titles!

I don't think I've posted in the 'PLZ recommend a book' section - as it's in the Japanese literature section, and I haven't read many Japanese books. I saw your lengthy recommendation though - interesting about the guy not wanting it translated, but it'll be a long time before I can read it!