ChanomiTalk

shape flashes
foot falls ring out
shoes vanish

Runners move forward one step at a time. If they are fast, you barely see them as they move past. Maybe, all you see is the color of their yellow shirt. Then, all you see is the back of their shoes as they disappear before you.





目にさやか靴音高く駆け抜ける

め に さやか　くつおと たかく　かけぬける



走者は、一度に一歩、前進します。走者が速ければ、その人が追い越す時、少ししか姿を見ることが出来ません。たぶん、見えるものは、黄色いシャツの色だけです。そして、次に見えるものは、前の方に消えていく靴の後ろだけです。


– Ben Clark
– Japanese by Nakamura Michiko

For all of the respect it receives, the haiku form is perhaps one of the most poorly understood here in America.

Step into a high school English classroom and you may chance upon a poetry lesson in which various styles are introduced according to their structure. You will find the limerick, the sonnet, the ballad, and of course the haiku, all dissected by a textbook for proper analysis according to the number of beats, syllables, iambs, lines, and so on. You will also see seats filled with students learning their own definition of poetry: something boring that no one writes and no one reads. The value behind the structure has been hidden by the structure itself.

On asking an adult, who was at one time such a student, what a haiku is, you will hear a response such as: “Oh, that’s the Japanese 5-7-5 poem”. Even this simplistic definition may be more than they remember about the great works of our western culture’s master poets. To Americans, things from Japan are mysterious and therefore interesting, and short things are easy to read and therefore not boring. What a lofty seat the Haiku has carved for itself in the hearts and minds of our people!

The full mechanics of the haiku, a form remembered so well by so many, are perhaps the least dwelt upon during our ubiquitous poetry lesson. Some lessons may stretch as far as to explain that traditional haiku are composed on topics of nature and avoid commentary or human interposition. Very few will also mention that they have seventeen Japanese morae (a measure of length similar to a syllable), they include a seasonal word called a kigo, often chosen from a list, that evokes certain feelings, and that they contain exactly one cutting word (“kireji”) that stands two images in contrast with each other. Not many outside of Japan know all of these rules. So much the better, for if they did, perhaps their passing appreciation for haiku would be marred by the burden of poetic structure.

Actual haiku poets, the only ones who use those rules, understand that the soul of a haiku has nothing to do with them. The haiku is about minimalism. It is about what is left unsaid just as much as it is about what is written down. Above all else, it is about understanding life. Skillful poets take the kigo and kireji and morae, inhabit them, and then immediately move away from them, for they are ultimately unimportant. They are but a starting point. This was the view of the father of the modern haiku himself, Matsuo Bashou.

Poets who wrote English language Haiku such as Jack Kerouac and Ezra Pound understood the form quite well, and their poems are held in high regard even though they do not follow many conventions that had been established in Japan. Notably, they seldom wrote poems that had lines in a structure of 5-7-5. They recognized the uselessness of this convention as it applied to the English language. Even in Japan, a “modern haiku” has emerged, perhaps influenced by the English haiku movement, that pays less regard to tradition while not abandoning it entirely.

To understand a haiku, try this: stop whatever you are doing for a moment and simply experience everything around you. Let the world flow into your mind. Then, reach into it and pluck from it two or three fine details that speak to each other in a language made of the words of all that you see and hear at that moment. Take your exquisite revelation and cast it back into the world on the seat of a human breath, and you will have a haiku.

until the end
I return every day
to see his face


I have a terminal patient for whom further medical intervention has become unrealistic. We have stopped all treatment for him, and he is entering his final days. When I and the other rehabilitation staff were stricken with this reality, it brought tears to our eyes.

At this point, he cannot speak, and is merely waiting for death to arrive. Even though we’re through with medical treatment, I decided I would still come every day to speak to him and provide physical comfort. Because he doesn’t have any relatives, he doesn’t get visitors. Even though he’s now unconscious at all times, he surely doesn’t want to die in solitude.

I will watch over him.

– Fujisaki Yukiyo
– English by Chay Schiller









最期まで毎日顔を見に行きます

さいご まで　まいにち かお を　み に いきます



これ以上治療はせずに、最期の時を迎えようとしている方がいます。
本人への負担が大きく、もう治療はしない。
事実を突き付けられ、私たちリハビリスタッフは涙しました。
ただ死を待つ物言わぬ患者さん。
治療はしなくても、毎日顔を見に行って声をかけたり、体に触れたりしようと決めました。
身寄りもないため、お見舞いの人もほとんどありません。
意識は無くても、孤独にしたくありません。
見守ります。