First published on the Japan Fair website on 25 June 2026. Commentary originally written in mid June 2026. I also announced the winners from the Japan Fair main stage at Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Washington on 28 June 2026. See my photos below of the winning haiku display and other images.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Japan Fair, a free two-day public event held at Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Washington, attracting tens of thousands of visitors each year. This is also the sixth year of these annual haiku contests, which have attracted an increasing number of submissions from around the world. It has been my honour to judge all the English-language submissions since I proposed this contest in 2021. The 2026 contest received 403 poems, with 356 adult submissions and 47 from youth. This year’s winners show an engaging variety of subjects and tones. In choosing poems I sought surefootedness in craft and composition, freshness in images and implied emotions, and an ability to not say everything—that is, to withhold enough information so the reader can be engaged by inhabiting the poem. Seasonal references, a two-part structure, and primarily objective sensory images are keys to most successful haiku, and you will see these traits in the following poems. Please enjoy these expressions of personal experience.
—Michael Dylan Welch, judge
wintering . . .
a nail in the wall
without a painting
Brad Bennett
Arlington, Massachusetts
The image of a nail without a painting generates a melancholy feeling. We may wonder if someone is moving to a new home, having just taken down a painting. But the first word tells us that the person is wintering, hunkering down for the cold season. So perhaps they are spending time on indoor tasks, such as replacing artwork on a wall. But we don’t really know, and not knowing gives us space to engage with this poem, to speculate on possible feelings and meanings. Another possibility is that the nail has just been added to the wall, awaiting its first painting, and for the moment we are experiencing an in-between pause. What do you feel when you receive this poem?
fireflies
the first time
we kissed
Jeff Hoagland
Hopewell, New Jersey
The joy of a first kiss finds an echo in the delight of fireflies. We all know the feeling of having butterflies in your stomach, but how about fireflies? This kiss is at night, and even the fireflies seem to celebrate young love. This poem may seem deceptively simple, but it carries much pleasure, tied to a vivid seasonal reference.
daymoon a silence that asks for nothing
Damir Damir
Beograd, Serbia
This enigmatic one-line haiku mirrors the one-line vertical presentation of haiku in Japanese. Daytime moons are typically faint and do indeed ask for nothing, but this poem is about its accompanying silence. Nature silently asks us for nothing, but we can still choose to admire and respect all the beauty around us, even when it’s faint.
cherry blossoms—
I call an apple tree
by the wrong name
Ana Drobot
Bucharest, Romania
Many different trees blossom in the spring. In this poem, the poet is aware of mixing up cherry and apple trees. Perhaps they are so enamored by any kind of blossoms that they don’t realize that they are seeing apples rather than cherries. And yet now they know, and the joy of blossoms is tempered with a bit of learning and self-consciousness.
the rush
of wind through the trees
—last rites
Nancy Brady
Huron, Ohio
At the moment of someone receiving last rites, the wind blows through the trees. It seems fortuitous or perhaps foreboding. The rush of that wind matches a rush of feeling that accompanies the ritual of last rites.
evening returns . . .
the fishermen’s voices
over the waves
Paula Sears
Exeter, New Hampshire
As nightfall darkens the shore, perhaps fishermen are returning to the harbor, their voices preceding them as their boats get closer. But are these fishermen in boats? Perhaps they’re by a lake, fishing from shore, and maybe it’s easier to hear them as the day’s light wanes. Either way, it seems that they’ve had a fulfilling day.
moving day
a toy soldier left to guard
the tree house
Florin Maica (15)
Botosani, Romania
This is indeed a moving day. Youthfulness seems to be left behind with that tree house, where many childhood memories were formed. Will a new child discover the tree house and take over the command of that toy soldier?
a girl thickens
the hopscotch lines
indian summer
Antonia Chersan (15)
Botosani, Romania
Perhaps autumn rains threaten to wash away these hopscotch lines. The girl wants to continue playing, so she thickens the lines in the hope of delaying the inevitable passing of the season, perhaps also hoping to stave off growing older.
cherry blossoms—
wet hair gathers
on the barbershop floor
Sanya Tarique (16)
Jericho, New York
Spring is a good time for a haircut. Just as cut hair gathers on the barbershop floor, the seasonal change of cherry blossoms happens outside. Surely the blossoms are gathering on the grass around the trees, and perhaps the person receiving the haircut is entering a new season too.
Michael Dylan Welch is the founder of National Haiku Writing Month (www.nahaiwrimo.com) and cofounder of the Seabeck Haiku Getaway, the Haiku North America conference, and the American Haiku Archives, webmaster for Haiku Northwest (www.haikunorthwest.org), and president of the Redmond Association of Spokenword. He was keynote speaker for the 2013 Haiku International Association conference in Tokyo and has been teaching haiku for thirty years. His haiku have won numerous prizes and have been translated into at least twenty languages, and he has published 75 books. Michael’s website, devoted mostly to haiku, is www.graceguts.com.
Winning haiku in both Japanese and English were displayed at the 2026 Japan Fair at Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Washington, 27–28 June 2026.
Also displayed were 24 Japanese poems on shikishi, featuring leading Japanese haiku poets, with translations by Emiko Miyashita and Michael Dylan Welch.