Wednesday 10 January 2007


INTRODUCTION by SUSUMU TAKIGUCHI










WHF2005 IN ROMANIA: INTRODUCTION


(reproduced from the last issue of WHR)



The World Haiku Festival 2005 in Romania (WHF2005), the seventh of its kind that the World Haiku Club organised since the year 2000, was a resounding success.

It was a long, seven-day event from 14 to 20 June 2005, roughly divided into two parts. Part One was a three-day world haiku conference, which took place in a beautiful resort, Mamaia Spa, located by the Black Sea in the city of Constantza.

Part Two was a series of gigantic ginko in the shape of a boat journey to the Danube Delta, a vast nature reserve at the mouth of this celebrated river, and a coach journey to the Carpathian Mountain range with the destination of Bran which is famous for legendary residence of Count Dracula, Bran Castle.


The main theme of the WHF2005 was 'Haiku and Education'. In addition, there were many other topics covered such as renku, translation of haiku and urban haiku; as many as 30 papers were presented. More than 20 overseas participants and over 70 Romanian participants enjoyed workshops, demonstration of renku, haiku readings, haiga exhibitions, Romanian dancing and Japanese calligraphy.

Romania has been blessed with excellent international haiku poets and haiku magazines, and because of the great efforts of the organisers, press coverage and national TV broadcasting of the event, WHF2005 put haiku on the map of Romania, establishing Romania on the world haiku map.

The four-day ginko journeys were an audacious but exhilarating event. Completely unspoilt for tourism, the Danube Delta still is a haven, not only for protected birds, animals and plants, but for the participants who could leave the hurly-burly of their worldly lives behind to probably become, as the haiku dream goes, 'one with nature'.

Pelicans, dragonflies, wild flowers, donkeys, butterflies, white lilies, summer clouds, willow trees, herons, thunderstorm, torrential rain and flooding water were their only companions. The journey into the mountains was of a totally different nature, especially the visit to Bran Castle. To and from the mountains, the escapade was thrilling with its changing scenery of agricultural Romania.

According to the Japanese Ambassador, Mr. Naotoshi Sugiuchi, who graced and celebrated the WHF2005 with his presence at the grand finale reception on the final day, nothing substantial happened during the first decade after the fall of Communist dictatorship, but from the year 2000 the changes and progress in Romania have really been remarkable.

Perhaps, the first ten years may have been a period of shock, dismay and loss of direction. Now, Romania is building a new nation. People are hopeful. Internationalisation is a national goal.

Romania aspires to be part of European Union.[And the application was successful and she joined EU on 1 January 2007] Anglo-Romanian relationship is becoming closer, as is seen in the container harbour in Constantza, which was built with the Japanese help. Haiku is not only a worthy literary pursuit, but is also a symbol of international friendship for Romania.


PAPER BY BRUCE ROSS, USA













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A WORLD OUT OF BALANCE AND IN BALANCE:

URBAN AND NATURE HAIKU




by Bruce Ross







How can I construct my humble hut right here in the midst of Oxford Circus? How can I do that in the confusion of cars and buses? How can I listen to the singing of birds and also to the leaping of fish? How can one turn all the showings of the shop window displays into the freshness of green leaves swayed by the morning breeze? How am I to find the naturalness, artlessness, utter self-abandonment of nature in the utmost artificiality of human works? This is the great problem set before us these days.



D. T. Suzuki, addressing a conference of world religions in London, 1936





To find perfect composure in the midst of change is to find nirvana.



Shunryu Suzuki



Meditation is not an escape from life . . . but preparation for really being in life.



Thich Nhat Hanh





Haiku developed in an agrarian culture with spiritual roots deeply embedded in the natural seasons and their many facets. A visit to contemporary Tokyo might set one wondering amidst the skyscrapers and high tech apparatus where that culture has gone to. This is what the Japanese cultural historian D. T. Suzuki is

wondering too as he considers modern London in the 1930’s.



A number of years ago a prominent Canadian haiku poet suggested that no one makes a distinction between haiku and senryu anymore. If haiku, as I believe, is essentially a nature poem, what will happen to the haiku poem if, as Suzuki noted, nature is shut out in the clamor of the modern urban setting? Although the modern technological world has fascinated many and even become a desired object of aesthetics at its beginning as in Futurism, the commercialism of that desire has transformed the very presence of nature, as Suzuki understood it, in our collective lives.



The problematic for haiku is: Has some connection with nature that helps define haiku been lost? There is even a serious contemporary culture study entitled The End of Nature. In many places around the world nature and our awareness of nature has been eclipsed by the lingua franca of commercialism, technology, and so-called natural resources. More and more haiku has reflected this new consciousness and haiku has elided into senryu, with even literary haiku relating to the wit and conciseness of TV commercials and the emotional subject matter of soap operas. There is an excitement in the consumerist explosion in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century West that is reminiscent of the middle class explosion in seventeenth-century Japan. The liveliness and easy cleverness of some contemporary world haiku is also reminiscent of similar values in the poetry of seventeenth-century Japan, values Basho, the first major Japanese haiku poet, worked against. In much of the contemporary world haiku nature has become a contrivance or a clever artifice.



Granted such changes reflect a new kind of consciousness wrought by the profusion of technological culture, whether right or wrong. A theorist of this culture, Marshall McLuhan, famously declared : “The media is the message.” The influence of that media is undeniable. Nature becomes more real and more desirable in its enhanced representation in such media than nature in itself. No longer the Japanese ideal of improving nature, media is now replacing nature.



D. T. Suzuki was witnessing the inception of this change, but he was also aware that the aesthetic challenges of this change were connected to the very nature of consciousness. Buddhism, with its focus on achieving pure consciousness, and Shinto, with its focus on the sacredness of nature, define the Japanese culture and support traditional haiku. The new Western cityscape that fascinated the cultural historian Walter Benjamin would rightly disorient the traditionalist Suzuki. As he wrote somewhere, the trick is not to maintain higher consciousness in a mountain monastery but at a cocktail party. The modern Zen Buddhist master Shunryu Suzuki further conceptualizes this issue in one of the epigraphs: the issue is to maintain mindful consciousness under any circumstance. The well-known Vietnamese Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh reiterates in the third epigraph the relation of mindfulness to every life experience. The goal is to “really be in life.”



A recent film The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill documents the life of a more-or-less street person musician who is house sitting on a tree covered hill in San Francisco, one of the largest cities in the United States. He feels aimless and thinks that connecting with nature might be solution. At some point he reads a book by the poet Gary Snyder in which Snyder says that if you are looking for nature, start where you are. The subject of the documentary basically follows Snyder’s advice and adopts a flock of wild parrots. The film follows his transformation, as he names the individual parrots and develops a unique relationship with each one of them. Humans worldwide desire to be connected to nature, the source of food, aesthetic pleasure, and our very bodies. One thinks of companion animals and house plants as well as formal and informal gardens and parks proliferating the most densely populated cities on earth. One thinks of holidays linked to ancient seasonal activities, such as May Day, or new ones, like Earth Day.



Traditional Japanese haiku is defined by its connection with nature, with a mandatory season word or phrase, a kigo, in each haiku. Therefore traditional Japanese haiku collections are organized according to the four seasons and New Year’s. New Year’s, The Festival of the Dead, Obon, and the Golden Week, three unrelated festivals, are the biggest holidays in Japan, with many others relating to agriculture and nature spirits. The Golden Week has in the modern period added, as have many cultures, Green or Environment Day, to reflect a worldwide correction of the exploitation of nature. In essence the nature connection in haiku is an aesthetic reflection of the beauty found in nature. The pressures of the modern and particularly postmodern world have helped undermine not only the basic connection with nature in nature but also the aesthetic sense of beauty in nature. Under such pressures, the kigo can seem to be anachronistic and basically old fashioned, lacking the deconstructive sense that informs so much postmodern art. Therefore, to paraphrase a witticism read on a haiku online list, to produce a haiku you need only write what you want and add a weather report. The nature connection here is reduced to an empty convention. I have used the phrase “absolute metaphor” as a positive assertion of the organic necessity of the nature connection in haiku. The aesthetic appreciation of nature is even claimed to exist in non-human animals. One of the major themes of lyric poetry worldwide has been this very same appreciation.



Unlike the wonderfully emotive metaphors constructed in such poetry, haiku provides a more objective connection with nature in and of itself. Fools Crow, a modern Sioux holy man, has offered some insight into what such a connection might be: “People, other creatures, and the rest of creation are linked together. Thinking in dimensions like this . . . stretches and expands the mind” (Fools Crow, Wisdom and Power, 62). He describes this special nature of communing with the world “becoming.” In this act one literally holds an object in their hands or, if it is too big, in their heart (64). One, for example, would hold a rock and talk to it, then listen to its response. Fools Crow claims they would become friends and, as a result, he would gain insight into the rock (64), which is reminiscent of Basho’s suggestion that “to learn about the pine, go to the pine.” Fools Crow and Basho may not be so apparently foolish, interacting with nature. Dr. Masaru Emoto has done experiments with ice crystals in which Japanese words with differing emotional meanings are taped to the containers of developing crystals and corresponding thoughts are projected onto them. Positive words and thoughts produced harmonious crystals. Negative words and thoughts produced unharmonious crystals. Fools Crow says that in such exchanges with nonhuman things his “mind grows” and the more he has such exchanges “the wiser [he] . . . becomes about everything” (64). An essay by Shigeru Awagi, Sakura and the Japanese Mind, examines the development of the aesthetic appreciation of cherry blossoms. The author suggests that this perhaps most used symbol of beauty in Japanese haiku is related from an early period to rice blossoms and mountain gods among the cherry blossoms (Simply Haiku, July-August 2004). I have expanded this idea of sympathetic magic to this equation: sakura mind = Japanese mind as it applies to haiku and the aesthetic appreciation of nature.



A Japanese professor of literature once said that a haiku should close tightly like a box, not one word could be added or taken away. In the poetic sutra, The Sandokai, by Sekito Kisen, a student of the 6th patriarch Hui-Neng, the relationship between the relative and absolute are explored. One phrase suggests that the “absolute and relative fit like a box and its lid.” In a way, Fools Crow’s “becoming” might be an experience in which the absolute and relative perfectly commingle as in a “haiku moment.” In such a haiku there is an aesthetic “rightness” that belies the postmodern deconstructive tendencies. In other words such haiku “open up” into an emotive whole of the relative and absolute that seems perfectly formulated and sound. Another professor of Japanese literature, Ian Hideo Levy, has pointed out somewhere in his Hitomoro and the Birth of Japanese Lyricism that the two-part traditional tanka structure was composed of a nature component and a human component. This tanka structure might be found in the two-part organization of traditional haiku: a connection with nature in general and a connection with a particular aspect or action in nature, both separated by a kireji or “cutting word.” We might see the initial nature connection in tanka or haiku as representing the universal and the secondary connection with human nature or a specific aspect or action in nature in tanka or haiku as representing the particular. This universal/particular specifically adds the enigmatic depth to the haiku form.



However, such a form supportive of the interconnectedness of all things has in our contemporary situation come up against a world decidedly out of balance. The director Godfrey Reggio has documented this catastrophe in three films whose titles are based on Hopi Indian concepts: Life Out of Balance; Life in Transformation; and Life as War. This trilogy is basically a critique of contemporary life with its frenzied pace, overpopulation, technological dependency, and destructiveness. Without dialogue, images of this life are contrasted with images of the tranquility and mystery of nature. The last section, Life as War, ends with a fireworks-like display of nuclear weaponry. In a less aggressive way through a lyrical cinematic style of innocence, wonder, and nostalgia the Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki has explored in films like My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away the receding claims of a nature full of gods, spirits, and wonder. In the award-winning Spirited Away with its contemporary frame of reference there is even a river god covered in sludge to symbolize the very real destruction of nature on our planet. In the film the river is cleaned up, but in real life matters are not so simple.



Nature is truly in a state of collapse. Despite the recommendations of the Kyoto Protocol many countries have not reduced their industrial emissions, the so-called “greenhouse gasses,” thus rising world temperatures. In the Swiss Alps a ski resort has placed plastic sheets on its glacier to reduce a summer melt caused by global warming. When a cancer specialist saw a photograph of the North West United States taken from outer space he said it looked like cancer growth, a striking comment on overpopulation. Perhaps the last group of Brazil’s stone age rain forest Indians who have not been contacted by modern culture have recently fled their village at the approach of loggers. So human nature is in collapse. Its language is in collapse: the lingua franca and jargon of commercialism. There is a lack of sensitivity and values and an understated cynicism. Internal human nature is in collapse with war, genocide, and intolerance. People have begun to appreciate artificial reality more than natural reality. This is the postmodern condition.



Haiku has begun to reflect this state of collapse in challenging subjects, many of which have always existed in human culture. Marian Olson of the United States offers a hint of the displacement and homesickness felt by expatriates in a time when moving to another part of the country or to another country is more common than not:



crashing surf
expatriates
argue on the sea wall



Angelee Deodhar of India and Jean Jorgensen of Canada present through the lens of their own compassion the pathos of a lapse in humanity’s kindness that should be bestowed on those less fortunate:



winter evening
the beggar’s breath joins
smoke from the fire



blowing snow
young hooker’s face softened
by the street lamp’s glow



These two unfortunates are looking for human as well as actual warmth but that is not to be easily found. And others look for a way out of the postmodern condition through valueless compulsive behavior. Paul David Mena of the United States contemplates one such compulsion:



darkening skies¾

the sidewalks littered
with lottery tickets



We are left with our disconnect with nature and human nature in the postmodern condition, illustrated in part by these poems. Imagining that we are only experiencing the shock of the new is to seriously underestimate our condition. Just see how young people thrive on computer games. We are left with that familiar anguished phrase: What can we do? Fools Crow thinks we are the cause of our condition: “Only human beings have the power to unbalance the earth, and when they unbalance the earth they unbalance themselves” (Fools Crow, Wisdom and Power, 67). We can see what Basho did in his travel journals. When asked by courtesans to accompany them, probably for protection, to another town, Basho said he couldn’t and continued on his way in another direction. When he encountered a starving orphan boy, Basho gave him some food and continued on his way. Shunryu Suzuki and Thich Nhat Hanh would suggest that internal balance enables us to face the challenges of a changing world without losing that balance.



Such balance allows us to maintain our birthright connection with the natural world and with human nature. It allows us to experience a wholeness of being that is being constantly disrupted by the postmodern condition. In haiku it allows us to recapture a primal language of feeling in relation to nature and human nature.



That language reconnects us to natural beauty, perhaps most concretized by flower blossoms. Here Rob Scott of Australia, Richard von Sturmer of New Zealand, Etsuko Yanagibori of Japan, and Ion Codrescu of Romania encounter that balance and that language in their appreciations of such blossoms:



plum blossoms¾

the clear blue sky is

part of the scent



red red hibiscus,

its stamen casting

a purple shadow



cherry blossoms

fall in the rain

without a sound



a chrysanthemum lights

the darkened garden

all alone



The demonstrative beauty of blossoms are not the only repository of feeling. Paul Miller of the United States responds not only to the summer reeds, perhaps jostled by a breeze, but the river below the reeds:



tall summer reeds

not a word said

about the river



Even a seeming catastrophe in nature retains some of that feeling in this haiku by Patricia Neubauer of the United States:



after the storm

that broke the pine

a resin scented night



Such feeling extends even to the small things in nature. Here Zinvoy Vayman of the United States and Russia has empathy of an almost Buddhist sense for a snail:



crawl, crawl, my snail,

carry your house

until it’s empty



Cyril Childs of New Zealand returns to the primal roots of early culture to evoke the spiritual nature of humanity’s connection with nature through a perhaps Shinto priest:



mountain summit¾

a white-clad priest

releases his prayers



Many urban dwellers around the world unfortunately will never experience such a scene. Yet the intimations of our birthright relationship with nature are there in our urban centers.



The cycles of rice cultivation, as we’ve noticed, have been integrated with spiritual beliefs from the earliest periods of Japanese culture. The resonance of this inheritance is found in this delicate urban haiku by Eiko Yachimoto of Japan:



new coolness¾

refined rice flowing off

the store-front machine



Patricia Neubauer captures this nature and urban synthesis with perhaps a bit of wit in a haiku on the Eastern dragon and its symbolism of natural spiritual energy:



New Year’s parade¾

beneath the dancing dragon

the feet of men



New York City is one of the most populated cities in the world. Yet there is a huge park containing lakes, rock ledges, and tree-lined paths in its center. Ion Codrescu observes the stillness to be found in such a place with an urban-tinged irony:



Central Park¾

two mime artists perform

without an audience



This talk began with a problem D. T. Suzuki saw in the unnatural environment of London at the beginning of the modern world. The Canadian biology researcher Bob Kull spent a year alone on an isolated island off the coast of Chile where he meditated daily and experienced the beauty and wonder of wild nature. He could not, like Thoreau at Walden Pond, walk into town for dinner. He summed up his gained wisdom, almost as a response to Suzuki, as he prepared to leave the island: “The realization that all is sacred can be difficult to live with. It takes practice to open the heart and mind to life as it actually is wherever I am. To remember that if there is a Spirit in solitude, so, too, in a crowd; if my shelter was sacred, so, too, the city” (Canadian Geographic May/June 2004, 124).



Two last haiku, a tender one by An’ya Petrovic of the United States and a light-hearted one by Klaus-Dieter Wirth of Germany, seem to support Kull and the possibility of wholeness and balance :



scented breeze

the town’s name written

in sweet alyssum



with each step

out of the subway

more summer





Bruce Ross
Hampden, Maine
USA



The haiku are all unpublished and used by permission of the authors.


HAIKU FROM THE JAPANESE CULTURE AND CIVILIZATION CENTRE


chosen by Sonia Coman











* * *



asfintit rosu—
butoaiele cu vin
acoperite de frunze



red sunset—
the wine casks
covered by leaves



Murgulet Adrian



sat indepartat—
talpile copilului
pe poteca fierbinte



remote village—
the child’s soles
on the hot path



rasarit de luna—
fereastra apartamentului meu
pare straina



moonrise—
my apartment window seems
somebody else’s



Sanda Ion



furtuna de nisip—
urme vechi si noi
laolalta



sand storm—
old and new footprints
altogether



Baba Amalia



frunze galbene
ravasite de vant—
pasari nemiscate



yellow leaves
rummaged by the wind—
motionless birds



Vasiloaia Alexandra



strada ingusta—
primele raze se strecoara
printre zidurile grele



narrow road—
the first sunbeams slink
amidst heavy walls



greieri cantand...
fosnetul rochiei
pe alee



crickets chirping...
the swish of a dress
on the alley



Stoian Dana



lumina lunii—
pe drumul prafuit
nici un trecator



moonlight—
on the dusty road
no passenger



Istrate Nicoleta



formand numarul...
fiecare cifra ma aduce
mai aproape de tine



dialing...
every figure brings me
closer to you



Braciu Aida



parc pustiu—
un vechi cantec de dragoste
in surdina



deserted park—
an old love song
hardly heard



Ciocan Alexandra



amintiri de demult...
pe malul raului
umbra ta



old memories...
on the river bank
your shadow



Negru Iulia



THE FUTURE LOOKS GOOD:

Commentary on Haiku from the Japanese Culture and Civilization Centre, Constanza Romania
Gary Gach, US



When Sonia Coman sent a dozen haiku via the Internet, I had to blink a few times, unsure whether there was some mistake somewhere or were these really haiku by kids. So mature are these works, and so fresh, that it just goes to show you: the haiku spirit (hai i) is universal.



asfintit rosu—
butoaiele cu vin
acoperite de frunze



red sunset—
the wine casks
covered by leaves



Murgulet Adrian



Anyone wanting a little lesson in haiku as being intimate with the passage of time might do well to linger alongside this quiet gem. Right off, we're told the time of day, sunset. And the aging of wine in casks is a perfect season word (kigo), autumn in general (—the sunset of the year, one might say).



Yet, time is felt even more generally here, in a mood of invisible mystery. Grape juice must age to become wine. It's a holy uncertainty, yet it happens, in its own good time. So I like to think of this haiku (and its hai jin) as being watched over by the spirit of time, the way the casks are covered by leaves. Linger a little longer and you can hear the wind rustling through the leaves, a few of them gently scraping the grain of the cask wood. It's all there, a deep image, resonant with hushed, warm, autumnal earthiness.



sat indepartat—
talpile copilului
pe poteca fierbinte



remote village—
the child’s soles
on the hot path



rasarit de luna—
fereastra apartamentului meu
pare straina



moonrise—
my apartment window seems
somebody else’s



Sanda Ion



Along the way, haiku are everpresent. A child can feel it in his or her very feet. Being small, and new, a child hasn't the familiar cues that adults have for measuring such things as distance. How far is the remote village? As far as the heat of the road felt through one's shoes.



Plus, there's an initiatory quality to this haiku. Anything done for the first time, initially, can be initiatory. This haiku serves to remind me, a beginning haijin, that haiku is always beginning.



Reading the Romanian, I'm struck by its music, even though I don't speak a word of it. Perhaps this is because haiku offers us language as if under a magnifying lens. Here, my ear appreciates the melting, lilting L-sounds of the second line, in between all the lipwork of the P's and F's and B's, and multiple tonguing of the T's and the D in the first line.



Ion's other haiku is worth an equal nod, even if space doesn't allow here. Indeed, he awakens the mind to the costless fact that to see the world with fresh, new eyes is akin to seeing it as a fresh, new self.



furtuna de nisip—
urme vechi si noi
laolalta



sand storm—
old and new footprints
altogether



Baba Amalia



Amalia's entry here is another one of those perfect haiku that might make you blink, wondering if it wasn't indeed written by some master from the Edo. Isn't life truly like that? Your footprints, mine, others, (of people? dogs? birds?) are mingled together, indistinguishably, blown together in the winds of time.



Isn't the Romanian original of the togetherness upon which this haiku depends such a beautiful word: laolalta. Thank you, Amalia, too, for showing me a viable, valuable instance of how the world can live as one: laolalta.



(Although the Web is infinitely elastic, I'm going to reserve the rest of my comments for after the rest of these fine haiku, each of which speaks for itself; res ipsa loquitor.)



frunze galbene
ravasite de vant—
pasari nemiscate



yellow leaves
rummaged by the wind—
motionless birds



Vasiloaia Alexandra



strada ingusta—
primele raze se strecoara
printre zidurile grele



narrow road—
the first sunbeams slink
amidst heavy walls



greieri cantand...
fosnetul rochiei
pe alee



crickets chirping...
the swish of a dress
on the alley



Stoian Dana



lumina lunii—
pe drumul prafuit
nici un trecator



moonlight—
on the dusty road
no passenger



Istrate Nicoleta



formand numarul...
fiecare cifra ma aduce
mai aproape de tine



dialing...
every figure brings me
closer to you



Braciu Aida



parc pustiu—
un vechi cantec de dragoste
in surdina



deserted park—
an old love song
hardly heard



Ciocan Alexandra



amintiri de demult...
pe malul raului
umbra ta



old memories...
on the river bank
your shadow



Negru Iulia



Not that they're at all needed, here are a few further comments in the margins of these beautiful haiku. Nothing I could say could approach their self-contained magic. Yet I'm struck with admiration for how Alexandra Vasiloaia's autumn haiku is all the more dynamic for her using an apt, heightened verb: ravasite / rummaged). It makes the longer part all the more vivid, and further contrasts the motionlessness of the birds.



Even if Nicoleta Istrate has read Basho, even if she read the particular haiku where Basho evokes an empty autumn road, she's made the Way her own.



Interesting to note that pronouns are rarely used in these haiku. They evoke ordinary things with the objectivity of a camera, leaving up to the reader the pleasure of feeling the mood. Difficult lesson, well learned.



The only factor, overall, I might cavil over could be the matter of translation. I don't know: might Nicoleta Istrate's passenger (trecator) be equally a passer-by? (The latter seems more ordinary, but perhaps the stranger interpretation was preferred.) Might Aida Braciu's figure (cifra) also be number? (Numeral seems a little foreign and abstract, as would cipher.) And might the old love song in Alexandra Ciocan's haiku be heard faintly? "Hardly heard" could imply, to my sense of things, that no one sings that tune much anymore.



Translation can be a gnarly topic, in and of itself, and best be treated on its own, elsewhere. (We intend in a future issue to spotlight young people translating their own poetry, and that of their peers.) It's worth noting, in passing, that we also owe an additional round of applause to each of the nine contributors here for translating their own work.



It really should be no surprise that these haiku are by younger writers. When I teach haiku, I find that young people clue in to haiku like water poured into water. It's a natural. Adults take a little more coaxing to allow their innate childlike perceptions.



That these Romanian junior haijin are already well on their way is due, in no small part, to their expert training at the Japanese Culture and Civilization Centre (JCCC) They've completed a two-year haiku course, and now study introductory Japanese as they continue to learn more about haiku-related genres.



JCCC founder Sonia Coman deserves the last word here. While students' work may often eclipse the importance of their teacher, we must acknowledge that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. She writes:



Children and teenagers get easily to the haiku spirit, because they always try to discover the surrounding world and live every moment intensely. Most students come to the haiku optional course by sheer curiosity but stay because of the freedom of expression that it offers them. I think that haiku helps young people to preserve the qualities of their age and to lead happier lives.





MAKING ORIGAMI IN ROMANIA
Photos from the Japanese Civilization and Cultural Centre
Sonia Coman, RO







Miss Eriko Kawaguchi is a Japanese volunteer now working in Constantza. She will collaborate with the Japanese Culture and Civilization Centre, helping our students to improve their knowledge of Japanese culture and literature. In the photo above, Miss Kawaguchi was teaching origami to high school students.







Sonia Cristina Coman and Miss Eriko Kawaguchi, talking about origami. At our next meetings, we will introduce ikebana and tea ceremony to the students.







Some of the students, folding paper cranes.


TRAVELOGUE BY SUSUMU TAKIGUCHI













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Up and Down the Blue Danube and the Black Sea


BY SUSUMU TAKIGUCHI




Episode One: A Short Flight Across Europe



The word Europe is popularly held to have meant “the land of the setting sun”. However, more prosaically it also meant “broad”, namely a region narrow from north to south, wide from east to west. Little wonder, then, that many countries behind the old Iron Curtain are now returning to the fold to restore the correct shape of this continent.

One such nation is Romania. Of all her characteristics (language, race, religion, culture, people’s features etc.) the new name of the country itself after the Ottoman Turk's rule is the most eloquent testimony to her claim and desire to be part of Europe. On a sunny day in June 2005 I flew from London to Bucharest. Weaving through Brussels, Antwerp, Cologne, Frankfurt, Prague, Vienna, Zagreb, Budapest and Belgrade, my plane crossed the Mtii Carpatii Meridionali (Transylvanian Alps) to reach the capital of Romania, Bucharest. Just over three hours to cover the distance of 1,298 miles (2089 kilometres).

toyo no hajimaru kiwa ya natsu no sora

flying to the edge
where the Orient begins…
the summer sky

*

At Otopeni airport I joined Sonia Cristina Coman, Director of the World Haiku Festival 2005 in Romania who organised this unforgettable event in the capacity of World Haiku Ambassador and WHChaikujunior Associate Director of the World Haiku Club, to greet some of the registered participants who were arriving on the same day. In different flights and at different times, they came from different parts of the world. This allowed us to introduce ourselves at leasure and even start discussing haiku issues. After the evening of renewing old friendship and creating new ones over Romanian cuisine and wine, we set off the following day for Constantza, the ancient city on the Black Sea, where the first three days of world haiku conference was to take place.

aoki kisha mie-gakure suru natsu-no kana

a blue train…
appearing and disappearing among
summer fields

*

Romania is more or less the same size as the UK (i.e. the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island). Her physical shape reminds the Japanese of a blow fish, the Chinese of a peony flower and the French of a fat oyster. Like the ying-yang sign, mountainous areas roughly form the north-western half while the flatland forms the south-eastern half. The River Danube plays vital roles in the country’s economy, transport, landscape and culture and runs all along her southern side, until it flows into the Black Sea, forming national boundaries with Bulgaria and Serbia & Montenegro. Crossing seven countries, the Danube is a quintessentially European river indeed.

umi ni kite mittsu ni nari-shi natsu no kawa

nearing the sea
it divides itself into three…
the summer river



Episode Two: Long Days of Speeches and Debates


A haiku conference is a busy place with all these conflicting demands to be met. Like Polonius, every speaker says, “…[since brevity is the soul of wit,] … I will be brief.” However, many overrun their allotted time, often twice as long. Translation is demanded as if it were free. The cost of hiring a professional interpreter would more than wipe out the whole budget of the conference. No one wishes to foot the bill. Besides, translation makes a speech more than twice as long but no time is allocated or allowed for it. As many speeches by as many speakers are also demanded notwithstanding.

However, at the same time all kinds of breaks are also demanded: tea breaks, coffee breaks, toilet breaks, shopping breaks…, all eating up the precious time for speeches and all ending up twice as long as allotted. This is because private conversations and making and renewing friendship, in addition to gossipping, during these breaks are just as important for the participants as the papers. There is no time allotted for speakers to collect their papers and get down from the rostrum, to stand up and walk up to the rostrum, adjust the microphone, drink some water, clear the throat or prepare the OHP, but they do all of them nevertheless.

In Constantza in spite of all these difficulties, good papers were read, friendship flourished, gossips were exchanged, showers used, dinner eaten, jokes were cracked, drinking sessions never abandoned and people managed to go to bed before midnight, all the days procedures having completed, well, nearly all. Magic must have been played.

hai-go yori mimi ni iri-kemu suzume kana

haiku speeches…
my ear tuned to
sparrows’ chirps

[to be continued]

HAIKU SELECTION FROM THE DANUBE GINKO


SELECTED BY SUSUMU TAKIGUCHI















GINKO HAIKU




* * *


reflected on the water

wild willow trees…

dragonflies flatter



downs of willow

falling into

evening calmness



Hideo Ebihara, Japan



*



fune yore ba uki-ha ni shiroki hana sakeri





getting closer by boat,

to the floating leaves

a little white flower





takumashiki donau yanagi no kuroki miki



how robust

the black trunk

of the DUNAREA willow



Shinya Ogata, Japan



*



scattering clouds –

into wind-whipped ripples

a white feather vanishes



so close to the roots

of this old willow tree –

the delta at twilight



Sonia Cristina Coman, Romania



*



wata tobi-te donau deruta no wakaki iki



flying willow fluffs

from young breath

of the Danube Delta



water lilies in bloom

in the Danube Delta,

inviting me to dreams



wako, Japan



*



take me with you,

white bird – deep shadows

over the waters



Visnja McMaster, Croatia



*



June tempest in Danube Delta

a gray heron tries to keep its stillness



Ion Codrescu, Romania



*



pelican was yama mo ugoke to habataki-nu



as if to move

even mountains, a pelican

takes off



Yoshifumi Aga, Japan





*



shades of green

fill the water…

the Danube Delta



Takashi Ikari, Japan