ChanomiTalk

丘の街木にも屋根にも雪は降る

おか の まち　き にも やね にも　ゆき は ふる


a hill town
so many trees and roofs
the snow falls



– Nakamura Michiko

白梅や三日あとには雪も咲く

はくばい や　みっか あと には　ゆき も さく


new white plum,
and three days later:
blooming snow



– Nakamura Michiko

水仙の咲く日溜まりに今日の雪

すいせん の　さく ひだまり に　きょう の ゆき


fresh fallen snow
greets a daffodil patch
coated by sun



– Nakamura Michiko

through the gaps
and around my heart
a light of hope



the mist thins
my heart can see
dazzling white





I love Chopin’s first piano concerto. I especially love the second movement because it cleanses my heart. When I listen to it, I have the feeling of stepping slowly out into a world overflowing with hope and shining with dazzling white light.

– Fujisaki Yukiyo
– English by Chay Schiller









透きとおる希望の光心を包む

すきとおる　きぼう の ひかり　こころ を つつむ


心の目白くまばゆくかすみ細まる

こころ の め　しろく まばゆく　かすみ ほそまる



ショパンのピアノ協奏曲第一番が大好きです。
特に第二楽章は私の心を洗濯してくれます。
白く眩しい光がさして、希望に満ち溢れる世界へ
ゆっくり踏み出して行くようなイメージです。

gifts from the sea
masterfully designed
appear on the sand



海からの貝殻アート砂の上
うみ から の　かいがらアート　すな の うえ




– Sarah Kobayashi
– Japanese by Nakamura Michiko

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.