Fuyoh Observations:
Seven Lessons on the Nature and Scale
of Haiku in Japan

Many Western haiku writers consider themselves well-read when it comes to the great haiku masters from Japan’s rich literary history. They know the poetry and biographical details of Bashō, Buson, Issa, Shiki, and Chiyo-ni, and perhaps some of their disciples—or a few more 20th century haiku luminaries such as Santōka Taneda or Kyoshi Takahama. However, Westerners sometimes have little insight into the world of contemporary haiku in Japan. They may have read occasional translations by some of today’s leading poets but have little feeling for what it’s like to be a haiku poet in Japan, to attend a kukai (haiku meeting), be part of a kessha (haiku group), or to publish one’s haiku in its journal. Abigail Friedman’s 2006 book from Stone Bridge Press, The Haiku Apprentice [see my foreword, “A Deeper Attention”], answers some of these questions, painting an especially strong picture of what meetings are like in Japanese haiku groups, and depicting the deferential relationships between its members and the sensei, or master. But what are Japanese haiku journals like, and how do they differ from haiku journals in North America and other English-speaking countries? The journal Fuyoh / Rose Mallow Haiku Quarterly may serve as one example to help answer these questions.

   Nearly all haiku journals in Japan are associated with an organization or group, the way Frogpond is associated with the Haiku Society of America, Mariposa with the Haiku Poets of Northern California, Geppo with California’s Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, Haiku Canada Review with the Haiku Canada organization, and Blithe Spirit with the British Haiku Society. In the West, however, we much more frequently have “independent” journals, such as Acorn, Bottle Rockets, The Heron’s Nest, Mayfly, Modern Haiku, Presence, and so on. In Japan, too, the journals tend to conform to a well-established credo or follow a particular master’s strong stance on aesthetics, subject matter, or other details of craft. In the West, however, both independent and group-affiliated journals tend to be more undefined regarding such matters, sometimes even deliberately seeking unpolarized variety in haiku self-expression. Western journals also seem to be subject to the changeable tastes of rotating editors, especially the journals associated with organizations.

   In Japanese haiku, however, lineage matters. For example, at a meal we had together in Tokyo, Akito Arima, sensei of the “Ten’i” group, once told me that he was a “grandson” of Kyoshi. For a moment, I thought he was being literal. It is fundamental to Japanese haiku groups that they know and understand their leader’s lineage. For example, Fuyoh magazine was edited by Yoko Sugawa, who has compared the history of haiku to a giant tree, referring to Bashō as the trunk. Sugawa, who died in October of 2011, traced her haiku lineage down from Shiki through one of his disciples, Kyoshi Takahama. Kyoshi taught Shūōshi Mizuhara who taught Shūson Katō who taught Yoko Sugawa. This history of influences and the loyalty of associations understandably manifests itself in the poetry and aesthetic stance of each group and its leader. Certainly, we too have complex connections, influences, and allegiances in North American haiku, but the idea of lineage not only clashes with our culture of wild-west independence, but some observers would argue that Western haiku has not had enough time to develop significant schools or lineages.

   One of Japan’s largest haiku journals, Hototogisu, edited by Kotaro Inahata, has perhaps the longest ongoing lineage (the journal was started in 1897, and Shiki published in the journal more than a hundred years ago). At one time, Hototogisu had 15,000 members who received the journal monthly, putting its circulation at about half of North America’s premiere mainstream poetry journal, Poetry (as of 2007), although the number of pages and especially poems in Hototogisu is massively greater than in Poetry (only about 300 poems per year). Emiko Miyashita has reported to me (along with many other statistics here) that the March 2006 issue of Hototogisu had 352 pages and presented about 10,000 haiku in just that one monthly issue. Multiply that by twelve and members get inundated with 120,000 haiku every year—and that’s just a thin selection of all the poems considered for publication just in this one journal, albeit Japan’s largest. As a further comparison, each monthly issue of the journal published by Akito Arima’s Ten’i group (of which Miyashita is a dōjin, or senior member [until the group ended when Arima died at the end of 2020]) is smaller but still daunting by North American standards. The February 2006 issue of Ten’i contained 146 pages and about 3,500 haiku (that’s 42,000 haiku a year). Some of these organizations have branch groups that hold separate kukai meetings every month, and their journals mostly represent the selection of poems made at these meetings (each monthly issue of Ten’i, for example, publishes reports from fifty different kukai meetings). Even the monthly cadence of many Japanese journals eclipses the quarterly or triquarterly appearance of many North American haiku journals.

   As any reader of Western haiku journals can see from these introductory facts, the scale of haiku in Japan is far larger than it is in the West—indeed, it has been estimated that every year some seven to ten million people (or even more) are actively engaged with haiku composition in Japan. It’s a bona fide industry. Numbers have decreased in recent years, but some of the most prominent Japanese haiku leaders used to be able to make a healthy living at haiku in ways that are impossible in the West, even appearing on television shows and other mainstream media. Emiko Miyashita has told me [in March of 2025] that “In [Shugyō] Takaha’s day, I heard that if one has more than 3,000 members in a group, the master can live as a professional haiku master, but that was more than thirty to twenty years ago.” She added that, “The prime time of haiku masters like Takaha is gone. Even the Takahama Haiku Empire had to move their headquarters from Marunouchi (the busy district on the west side of Tokyo Station) to somewhere else [less expensive].” Despite this downward trend, the scale and finances of Japanese haiku organizations greatly eclipses Western groups, which also tend to be institutional and not focused around a single individual. According to the 2006 Kadokawa Haiku Almanac, Japan had 835 established haiku groups (just counting the ones that were the most formally organized), and it can be overwhelming to keep up with the activities and published poems of just one of their average-sized groups, let alone the larger ones or more than two or three of them. The Western haiku pond, in comparison with Japan, is strikingly tiny.

   Furthermore, unless one reads the Japanese language or visits Japan for a significant time, it may never be possible for Westerners to get a feeling for Japanese haiku journals and the nature of the haiku community in today’s Japan. Some Japanese journals, such as Kōko Katō’s Kō magazine, publish English and Japanese versions. This choice not only helps make at least a limited amount of content accessible to Westerners but honours Western appreciation for this Japanese genre of poetry. However, because Kō offers different content in its English and Japanese versions, the English edition may still be somewhat removed from the typical Japanese journal, except perhaps for a similar aesthetic taste. Similarly, the Haiku International Association’s HI journal does not represent a typical Japanese group, because this organization is supported by a coalition of groups, and presents poems submitted for this international publication rather than for is parent groups. Perhaps Ban’ya Natsuishi’s Ginyu comes closer (both HI and Ginyu have extensive content in English). Journals such as Hototogisu, which have full-time paid staff and national bookstore and newsstand distribution, are too large to offer much of an informative comparison with Western haiku journals.

   Consequently, a better example that reveals what haiku is like in a typical “small” or “average” Japanese journal is Fuyoh / Rose Mallow Haiku Quarterly. The magazine was first published in September of 1989, and appeared quarterly, in rhythm with the seasons, until issue #120 in summer of 2019 (it is now on what is most likely a permanent hiatus). It included haiku in English, and translations into English, from 1991 to 2014 (issues 10 through 101). The magazine was published by the “Fuyoh” group, led by sensei Yoko Sugawa. Sugawa received significant assistance (especially in translation and commentary) from Dhugal J. Lindsay, who served as an editor until the winter of 2014. Dhugal is an Australian poet resident in Japan who distinguished himself in 2002 with the prestigious Nakaniida Grand Haiku Award for Mutsugoro (“The Mudskipper”), his first book of haiku, written in Japanese (his award was the first time this prize had ever been won by a non-native speaker of Japanese—perhaps equivalent to the rarity of a non-Japanese wrestler becoming sumo champion). In 2017, Dhugal also became the editor of the “Haiku in English” column for The Mainichi, an English-language website for one of Japan’s largest newspapers. In this context, a review of the poetry and commentary occurring in Fuyoh may serve as a window, albeit still a partial one, into the world of the everyday haiku poet in Japan, and how Japanese haiku journals differ from those published in the English language.

   Indeed, it has been my pleasure, in a concentrated effort over several weeks, to read the English content from a decade’s worth of issues of Fuyoh, from issue #23 published in 1995 through to issue #60 published in 2004. You can read an extensive selection of poems from these issues at “Selected Poems from Fuyoh / Rose Mallow.” Near the beginning of this decade of issues, the magazine expanded from about 28 pages to regularly offering about 60 pages of poems and commentary (with more variable numbers per poet, also including English). The last issue to include English-language haiku was #101 in the autumn of 2014, with Mariko Teruya as the sensei and chief editor. The journal’s final issue was #120 in the summer of 2019. Though a relatively small journal by Japanese standards (according to Dhugal J. Lindsay, about 160 copies were printed each quarter during this time, and the group had about 80 to 100 members), it offered a sustained presentation of haiku by its members, and gives a taste of the nature of an average or typical haiku journal in Japan. And while the number of members is small, the activity represented in the group’s quarterly journal far exceeds the activity in the journals of the Haiku Society of America’s Frogpond or Haiku Canada’s Haiku Canada Review (currently [as of 2019] with about 850 and 300 members each, respectively). While the majority of each issue of Fuyoh appeared in Japanese (about two thirds of each issue I reviewed), and while I had to confine myself mostly to reading the limited parts in English, the journey has been pleasant and informative, and has prompted the following seven observations, followed by selected commentary from the journal.

Observation #1

Japanese haiku journals tend to focus more on poets than on individual poems.

American haiku journals tend to focus primarily on individual poems rather than on poets. Japanese journals, in contrast, often feature poets with a larger set of haiku. For example, the first issue of Fuyoh, in Japanese only, featured 27 poets with ten poems each. The pages of Fuyoh are just one example of this, but my experience is that the journal is reasonably representative of haiku publications in Japan, certainly those published by most of the many hundreds of haiku groups led by an individual sensei. Kō magazine arranges sets of poems by poets also. In the West, Chris Gordon’s occasional journal ant ant ant ant ant switched for a while to this poet-focused format, giving greater depth to the selection of poems by a few individual poets in a single issue (before moving online with more ad hoc postings, sometimes just by the editor). Gordon’s example is a limited exception, but perhaps more journals might emerge to follow this practice [starting in 2024, a rare example is Confluence, although its stance is more extreme, focusing an entire issue usually on just  single poet, and showcasing mainly previously published work]. The motive need not be to imitate Japan; rather, it would simply seem better or perhaps a point of growth or maturity in the haiku community to focus more on the poets—poets who, of necessity, would need to be able to produce haiku of sufficient quality to sustain reader interest over a larger number of poems. This, it would seem, would make the writing of haiku even more difficult, requiring Western haiku writers to reach and sustain a higher and more consistent level of quality. I remember when San Francisco haiku poet Fay Aoyagi first joined the Ten’i group and was trying to enter the Ten’i annual contest. She told me that she had to submit not just a few good haiku, but thirty excellent haiku, all new, in which all thirty poems are selected as a group, meaning that they all had to be truly excellent (she won). It is one thing to write a decent haiku and have it published in a reputable English-language haiku journal. It is quite another accomplishment to have, say, ten strong haiku published in the same journal—and then to do it again and again in issue after issue over many years (as is often the case in Japan). In many Japanese haiku journals, the poets appear in every quarterly (or even monthly) issue with ten solid poems, and they sustain that quality for years on end. It is a much tougher discipline and commitment than many Western haiku writers are used to.

Observation #2

Haiku in Japan tends to be broader in subject matter, and sometimes more subjective, projecting more of the poet’s character into the poem.

Haiku in Japan tends to be broader in subject matter, and sometimes more subjective. It is not experience that matters so much in haiku as one’s relationship to experience, and I’ve heard more than one Japanese haiku leader refer to the need for each poem to exhibit “heart”—the heart and character of the poet. As haiku wild man and translator Nanao Sakaki once said, “We think we are the slave of experience, but not so, we are more free! Yeah, we can be more separated from our own experience. Most people think experience, experience, but it’s not true! We can jump over experience!” (from Inch by Inch: 45 Haiku by Issa translated by Nanao Sakaki, Albuquerque, New Mexico: La Alameda Press, 1999, page 65). Where we might jump is to meld experience with our interaction with it, our interpretation or response to it, letting readers into our attitudes and values. Many Western haiku writers are sponges for experiences and can record them well in their poems, often with polished objectivity that effectively lets the reader have the same experience. But this is sometimes not enough. Haiku does not necessarily end with the description of experience but starts there. Fresh writing comes from the uniqueness of our own individual perspective on common events. As a result, Japanese haiku admits more subjectivity and personal uniqueness than we have typically been used to in English. We may all witness falling cherry blossoms, for example, but it’s our own personal stamp of perspective that can make such a common and attractive experience truly fresh. Counter to the Modernist dictum of “make it new,” Jane Hirshfield has said “make it yours.” The poems in Fuyoh, especially those translated from Japanese, frequently provide an originality (a quirkiness, even) that eludes many Western writers. In The Art of Reading Poetry, critic Harold Bloom talks of “strangeness” in Western poetry being a sign that it is taking us outside our comfort zone, which he sees as a good thing, and an opportunity for poetic growth in both readers and writers. This same “strangeness” can have a positive effect in haiku, too, if we recognize and embrace its value. Some of our more experienced poets have written haiku that may seem strange, and what they are doing is expanding their comfort zones, giving themselves—and us as readers—an opportunity for growth. Fay Aoyagi, too, in her embrace of gendai haiku, admits her personality and her subjective psychological stance that may challenge some readers. The online journal Roadrunner also routinely challenged the objective realism approach to haiku with its support of subjectivity. It seems that the freshness in Fuyoh comes not from the experiences themselves, nor from clever depiction of those experiences, but the careful control of the poet’s subjective perspective in relationship to experience. Here are four examples (all translations by Dhugal J. Lindsay):

   insects emerging . . .

   fwoop—my head comes free

   from the shirt collar

     —Kuniko Shindoh (#24, 1995, p. 23)

   with my hand still raised

   from waving off a cloud of gnats

   we part

     —Kyuuichi Okamoto (#26, 1995, p. 43)

   quick short bursts

   long tall arcs

   motion in the shadows where the fireworks are set

     —Yoko Sugawa (#44, 2000, p. 50)

   into the second week

   of rainy season, a map of Japan

   sags on the wall

     —Toshihiko Nakamura (#54, 2002, p. 50)

These poems are essentially objective, but each one succeeds by revealing the self, the poet’s own character, whether through his or her emotions, such as in the depressed feeling of Nakamura’s poem, or through the poet’s sensitivities, such as Shindoh’s identification with emerging insects or Sugawa’s appreciation not only for the grand spectacle of fireworks but the humble field from which the fireworks are launched.

Observation #3

Japanese haiku journals put much greater emphasis on season words, typically including a list of relevant season words in each issue.

Each quarterly issue of Fuyoh, as with many Japanese haiku journals, includes a list of relevant season words. The purpose is many-sided. The topics could guide subscribers to write about subjects they hadn’t considered before or had neglected for a while. Or the topics could be entirely familiar, and the list serves merely as a reminder of favourite topics. The topics may directly inspire the writing of haiku to fit the list, or the list may serve as a reference point to confirm the seasonality of poems that the poet happens to write for the next issue. At the very least, especially if poets read the season words at the start of that list’s season, the list may help the poet “get into the mood” of the season, and prompt greater awareness of the natural phenomena and other events relevant to that season. For example, not much happens to the barren branches of a deciduous tree in the winter, but come spring, its buds begin to swell, and a season-word list may well alert us to notice this subtle change before we miss it. In William J. Higginson’s Haiku World (Kodansha International, 1996), the entry for “tree buds” notes that “spring warmth and moisture bring swelling and visibility, especially as buds crack to reveal hints of color” (page 94). Thus, we might go out of our way to check a few trees for buds and be rewarded by seeing those first hints of colour. For years, the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society in California also included a list of season words with each of its quarterly Geppo journals, but to my knowledge no other North American haiku publications follow this practice. The Southern California Haiku Study Group used to email relevant season words to its members before each monthly meeting, and although the group has more recently fallen out of this habit, perhaps a few other groups similarly emphasize season words, although most groups do not.

   To clarify, being conscious of the seasons is not the same as being conscious of season words. As Emiko Miyashita has said, we have to “feel the word”—meaning to deeply feel and understand each season word as it inspires us to write, to let it enter our hearts, and for our hearts to become manifest in the poems we write. We in the West vastly underestimate the importance of season words in Japanese haiku, it seems to me. Indeed, some Western haiku writers chafe against season-word lists, thinking that they should write only from experience, and not be prompted to write merely from a list of seasonal phenomena (though the Japanese seemingly have no similar problem, writing from both memory and imagination). This raises questions of inspiration and authenticity, because poets in Japan frequently write from lists—even coming to meetings with a poem prepared on just a single prescribed topic each time (I’ve done that myself, for example, for occasional Evergreen haiku meetings led by Ikuyo Yoshimura that I’ve attended at Gifu University in Japan). It seems clear, not just from the pages of Fuyoh but from other Japanese journals and from conversations I’ve had with numerous Japanese haiku writers, that they are much more relaxed about the origin or source of each poem than some Westerner haiku writers. The poem could be inspired by television, by memory, by something heard or seen, even vicariously, or prompted by a list of season words or writing prompts—or any number of other sources, including imagination. To be sure, the finished poem typically dwells in an accessible, believable, often autobiographical experience, whether recalled from memory or entered into deeply by the poet in some manner (employing what James Hackett has called “interpenetration”), but how the poem began seems to be less important. Thus, writing from lists of season words is not only common but encouraged, and can also bring the poet closer to nature, because many (though far from all) season words relate to the natural world.

   One can even write out of season, as is commonly done with renku, too. The danger, as always, is to ensure that the finished poem does not feel contrived—but of course, the depiction of even “real” experience also faces this danger. In any event, lists of season words could be of wider service to Western haiku writers if they appeared in our journals more frequently and if Western poets did not fear, dismiss, avoid, or ignore them. Such lists would also help make Western writers more conscious of incorporating a seasonal element into each haiku, a component that deepens the reverberations of each poem and relates it to other poems with the same seasonal sensitivity. The addition of such lists should not be a replacement for any existing means of inspiration, of course, but a supplement to it—a supplement that provides the benefit of increasing seasonal awareness. It is best, perhaps, to think of these season-word lists as helpful prompts. This emphasis on season words, too, would help remind us that haiku is best thought of as a seasonal poem, not strictly a “nature” poem.

Observation #4

Japanese haiku journals publish a far greater number of poems than we do in the West.

As already indicated by the example of Hototogisu, Japanese haiku journals publish a far greater number of poems than we do in the West. Yet even a small journal such as Fuyoh greatly eclipses the largest Western haiku journals. Fuyoh #60 (2004), for example, has nearly 500 new haiku in Japanese and about 40 in English (each poet, usually depending on rank, has ten, nine, or seven poems in each issue). Although Fuyoh is a relatively small haiku journal in Japan, it contains double or triple the number of poems typical of even the largest English-language haiku journals such as Modern Haiku or Frogpond. Specifically, Vol. XXVII, No. 3 (2004) of Frogpond contains 130 new haiku and senryu plus 32 additional poems that appear in sequences, haibun, or contest results, for a total of 162 poems. In the same issue, editor Jim Kacian stated that in his seven years of editing Frogpond he published 3,200 poems, averaging about 152 poems per issue. By comparison, my quarterly haiku journal Woodnotes, over the course of its 31 issues in eight years from 1989 to 1997, published a total of 2,511 haiku and senryu (plus 255 tanka, 31 haibun, and 16 rengay). That averages out to just 81 haiku and senryu per issue, a far cry from the productivity in Fuyoh, which, again, is just a small journal in Japan. What’s more, Fuyoh was published quarterly, and because Modern Haiku and Frogpond appear only three times a year, the volume of poems in Fuyoh is even greater on an annual basis. Indeed, in less than two years during its heyday, Fuyoh published more new poems than Frogpond did in seven years or Woodnotes did in eight years. Further, too, Fuyoh focused on haiku and generally did not include senryu, sequences, or haibun, so if we deduct the number of senryu, sequences, and poems within haibun from Frogpond or Woodnotes, the numbers are even more lopsided.

   To further illustrate differences of scale, the Ito-en haiku contest received nearly two million entries in 2019, with winners receiving cash prizes and having their haiku printed on thousands of tea products sold around the world. Smaller contests than Ito-en, in just one single year, probably receive more entries than all adult English-language haiku contests put together, not just for a single year, but all English-language haiku contests put together over the past thirty years. Even Japanese contests for children or students greatly eclipse our adult contests. In On the Wings of Words: Haiku Anthology by Children in Japan (JAL Foundation, 2008), Akira Mizuno, general secretary of the Japanese Students Haiku Association, discusses the “Japanese Students Haiku Contest” that has been running since 1970. He says that “About 180,000 works have been submitted in each of the past several years” (page 9). In contrast, the Haiku Society of America’s annual Virgilio Haiku Contest for high school students has in the past received an embarrassingly low number of entries—the 2008 contest received only 85 entries (https://www.hsa-haiku.org/virgilioawards/2008-virgilio.htm).That number has greatly increased in subsequent years. For example, in 2019, this student haiku award received 2,835 poems by 1,033 poets (https://www.hsa-haiku.org/virgilioawards/2019-virgilio.htm), a number greatly higher than the number of the adult contest entries—“nearly 800” for the HSA’s Henderson contest in 2019 (https://www.hsa-haiku.org/haikuawards/2019-henderson-judges.htm). For a later comparison, the JAL Foundation’s usually biennial children’s haiku contest has received a total of 720,000 entries over 16 contests, an average of 45,000 entries per contest (https://www.jal-foundation.or.jp/commonY20/project-report/pdf/projectreport_2020.pdf). These are entries from around the world, so not strictly a Japanese contest, but still run by a Japanese organization. While the number of entries to the Virgilio contest has greatly increased, it is still small compared to Japanese contests for youth and adults. Obviously, the scale of haiku in Japan, even among children, far outstrips the activity of adults in the West.

   If North American haiku journals published more haiku per person, focusing more on poets than on poems, one wonders if the quality would be sufficient. Or might we wonder if the quality is lesser in the Japanese journals because of publishing more poems per person? If we assume that the quality remains high in the Japanese journals despite higher numbers of poems per person (at the least because the competition to be included is greater), can we conclude that our haiku are not of sufficient quality to match the volume of work published per person in a typical Japanese journal? Of course, other factors influence the community, quality, and output of haiku in Japanese journals that we can seldom match in North America because of the vast distances across our continent and the lack of a master system. In Japan, as already mentioned, journals are mostly organized around groups, unlike most English-language haiku publications. Also, in Japan, most group members attend their group’s monthly or quarterly kukai, a meeting at which the best haiku are selected by the master, by the many dōjin (leading members; the term is both singular and plural), as well as by members at large (where, as Emiko Miyashita has explained, a poem is said to be “born” only when someone else selects it). The Fuyoh journal itself is a sort of kukai, with up to one or two poems by each contributor being honoured with an asterisk to indicate that the master selected the poem for special merit. The group’s sensei, Yoko Sugawa, routinely edited and corrected the poems, too, and revised poems appear in the journal without input or approval from the poets (it is considered an honour to have one’s poem “corrected,” sometimes extensively, in this manner, a process called tensaku). On the other hand, in Japan the majority of a poet’s new work appears in the journal of his or her main group, whereas in North America, poets spread their best work around to multiple publications and contests. Consequently, if a single person’s work for a given season were concentrated into a single publication, perhaps the quality would be equivalent for the same amount of quantity typical of Japanese haiku journals, but perhaps the diversity of voices in most Western journals would suffer as a tradeoff.

Observation #5

Many Japanese journals engage in “tensaku,” where the editor or the group’s sensei (master) corrects and publishes submitted poems.

A fifth lesson we can learn from Japan is the role of tensaku in the publication process. As just mentioned, Yoko Sugawa edited and corrected Fuyoh submissions until her death in October of 2011. “In Japan,” she said, “one of the tools for haiku study is having your haiku ‘fixed’ by a mentor” (Fuyoh #28, 1996, page 57), and advises English-language readers that permission for changes would not be sought. Indeed, nearly all Japanese journals correct and revise submissions without permission. Or rather, permission is granted when you submit work—the tacit understanding is that you submit poems because you want correction or revision, if needed. As a result, a poem that appears in print will not necessarily be what the poet submitted, and the poet typically has no say in approving a revision. Because of the reverence each poet has for his or her sensei, any correction the master offers is gratefully accepted. Perhaps this is a lesson we do not want to learn in the West, in that we see ourselves more as peers as we improve our haiku-writing skills together. Westerners certainly chafe against changes made without our permission because we want to feel responsible for a poem’s success, to feel that we own it. Yet in the Japanese tradition of revision, if just a simple word like “of” remains of your original, the poem is still considered to be fully yours, because everything in the revision was inspired by the original (see my essay, “Sax Riffs and the Art of Tensaku,” from Haiku Canada Review 13:1, February 2019). Perhaps we will not—and need not—adopt the Japanese practice of gratefully accepting a master’s (or editor’s) corrections without our prior approval, but we can at least be more willing to consider any proposed revisions as being ours rather than belonging to anyone else.

Observation #6

Haiku in Japanese journals appear in tight columns, with much less white space than in most Western journals.

An observation related to the number of poems published in each issue of a typical Japanese haiku journal is that the poems nearly always appear in tight columns, with seemingly minimal attention paid to white space. The closest Western equivalents are Geppo, which packs in up to twenty-two poems on a page, as did the now discontinued publications Haiku Headlines, the newspaper version of Moonset, and Raw Nervz, although the poems in Raw Nervz were not presented in any regular pattern. More accurately, though, attention is paid to the pleasing aesthetic presentation of the haiku in Japanese journals. However, the relatively larger amount of white space that Western journals use for haiku is simply not used or seemingly not needed in Japan. More prominent poets do get a bit more space in Japanese journals, or have their poems presented in a larger font, but they are still packed together on the page more densely than is usually the case for English-language haiku. This density is also more likely because of the greater number of poems in a typical Japanese journals, where printing and mailing costs necessitate the dense presentation of poems. In Japanese haiku books, however, poems are usually afforded a more spatial presentation. In both books and journals, though, it is easier to arrange scores of vertical one-line poems than the much more variable appearance of Western haiku, which may vary in line number, spatial arrangements, and in other ways—variations that almost never occur in the vastly more homogenous appearance of Japanese haiku.

   One wonders if the tighter arrangement of Japanese haiku in journals is akin to Japanese houses being closer together as an outgrowth of greater population densities. O-Young Lee has argued in Smaller Is Better: Japan’s Mastery of the Miniature (Kodansha, 1984; retitled in 1991 as The Compact Culture) that the Japanese culture itself is responsible for the smallness of things ranging from transistor radios to cars to bonsai to haiku—and even the Japanese garden itself is a miniaturization of nature. This cultural influence is surely significant, thus predisposing haiku in Japan to need less space on the page than it does in the West (in contrast, cars and roads and houses typically are bigger in the West), but I think there’s more to it than this. In the West, journals typically present far fewer poems per page, with generous amounts of white space, as if the poems needed it. The poet Charles Olson once noted that “The first fact of America is space,” and perhaps our need for space is simply a reflection of the amount of space that the country inhabits physically. In contrast, perhaps Japanese readers of haiku are more sophisticated in not needing the spatial “crutch” that might equate visual space to contemplation. Perhaps Japanese readers of haiku are more readily able to enter this contemplative or poetic space mentally rather than visually. Perhaps, too, the limited white space surrounding most haiku in Japanese journals indicates their separation of haiku from the predominantly Western association of haiku with Zen. In Japan, the single vertical line of each haiku makes them easier to publish in tight rows compared with our horizontal poems in three lines plus their horizontal names, all printed on typically vertically oriented pages. But perhaps a tighter presentation could still work for us (if English-language haiku were all one-liners, they too would be easier to present more densely on a page). White space can be pleasing aesthetically, of course, but it’s also a printing luxury that we may need to reassess. If Western journals received a sufficient number of high-quality haiku, perhaps the spacious presentation of all those poems would need to be sacrificed, as seems to have long been the case in Japanese journals.

Observation #7

Japanese haiku groups—and thus their journals—are financed differently than American ones, with senior members (dōjin) paying higher fees.

Most Japanese haiku groups—and thus their journals—are financed differently than American ones. Not only is the typical membership fee higher in Japan than it is for Western haiku groups, often with additional fees to attend meetings, but they have distinct classes of support tied to artistic achievement. If you’re experienced, you can expect to pay to have that experience recognized. While the Haiku Society of America welcomes donations from its members, and it lists donor names in categories based on how much they donate (amounting to a portion of the group’s income), such donations are voluntary and may come from members of any experience level—and are not expected of senior members. But most Japanese haiku groups differ. Each dōjin (who is typically invited by the sensei to receive the honour of such a ranking, with the vetting process in some cases requiring the submission of dozens of new haiku that must all be deemed exemplary for the granting of dōjin status) is expected not only to help run the group, organize events, or assist the sensei with research or even some personal tasks, but also usually pays a higher dues rate, sometimes substantially more. Such a fee structure might seem foreign to Western haiku organizations, where we are more likely to grant free honourary memberships to our most respected senior members. But in Japan, the typical senior member acts as a sort of benefactor to the group in return for the honour of the dōjin designation. However, it is not simply a matter of granting dōjin status to those who choose to pay more (like granting honourary doctorates to people who make large financial donations to universities, as sometimes happens). Rather, as I understand the typical practice, it is a difficult earned honour to achieve dōjin status, and if you choose to accept it, you also accept the responsibility of paying more for your dues. In March of 2006, Emiko Miyashita told me that the membership of the Hototogisu group totals about 15,000, and that they have about 900 dōjin (6 percent of the total membership). The regular membership fee is 20,400 yen (about US$215 or CDN$230 [as of December 2007]) per year (that’s an annual income of about US$3,225,000, vastly outstripping the funds that Western haiku organizations process). Unlike most other Japanese groups or journals, for Hototogisu, dōjin do not pay an additional fee (however, dōjin do have to pay a higher fee to enter Hototogisu haiku contests). Compare this to the Ten’i group, which has about 1,400 members and 255 dōjin (18 percent of membership). The regular membership fee is 14,400 yen (about US$152 / CDN$162) per year, and 26,400 yen (about US$279 / CDN$298) for dōjin [these and the following conversion rates as of August 2009]. That’s an annual gross of about US$245,185. For comparison, Dhugal J. Lindsay tells me (in an e-mail message of 20 December 2007) that the Fuyoh group has about 80 members and 28 dōjin (35 percent). The membership fee is 7,000 yen (about US$74 / CDN$79) per year, and 10,000 yen (about US$106 / CDN$113) for dōjin. That’s an annual gross of about US$8,888, but much higher on a per capita basis than fees to join the Haiku Society of America, which in 2008 had an annual gross of about US$22,077. Much of this information is summarized in the following table [optimized for viewing on PCs, not smartphones], with yen-to-dollar conversion rates as of August 2009.

Could Western haiku organizations develop a fee structure akin to Japan’s to help raise more operating capital? Would about 10 percent of the Haiku Society of America’s most accomplished or senior members, if they earned such a designation, be willing to pay higher dues for the privilege of being identified with a senior membership title akin to dōjin? And would they be willing to pay as much as they do in Japan? Imagine if HSA members were to pay US$215 per person? That would result in a gross annual income of as much as US$143,835 (at the HSA’s 2008 membership numbers). Charging a higher rate like this would be the opposite of how seniors, like children, are typically offered lower rates than other adults. Even if there were an application process, in which accomplishments could be identified, would we in the West be comfortable with “earning” such a designation, and who would determine or arbitrate such designations, and based on what criteria? Or is this whole dōjin hierarchy too uniquely Japanese? The master system has migrated to North America for martial arts, and other Japanese arts such as ikebana, but for some reason this has not happened with haiku in English. We may well ask if an experiential and thus financial hierarchy would be beneficial or not. There would seem to be practical financial benefits to such a membership structure, but Western haiku groups and journals seem to be largely entrenched in the current practice of welcoming donations from anyone—and eschewing anything akin to a merit-based dōjin system, favouring instead what William J. Higginson has called the “democracy” of haiku. In the West, I know of only the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society having any of its members identified as dōjin, but the practice does not demand higher membership fees and in its early years seemed to be applied to just a small number of its members, and not promoted in any organized or prominent way. [Starting in 2022, the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society’s process of recognizing dōjin became more formalized. In 2023 they published Luminaries, a book celebrating the society’s 13 dōjin, and a note in the book about the selection process reports that selection criteria appear on their website at https://yths.org/dojin/.] The Fuyoh group is less typical of an example here because it is such a small group, by Japanese standards, but even Fuyoh serves as an example of how Japanese and Western haiku groups differ with regard to hierarchy and the master system, not to mention finances.

Bonus Observation

We have much to learn from Japanese haiku, if we wish to make that choice. What else can we be open to observing?

We have covered seven main haiku lessons that we can learn from Japan. But I ask you now to think about your observations. Or what questions might we raise? For a bonus lesson of what we can learn from Japan, what would you suggest? Our consideration of Japanese haiku journals easily proposes additional questions and presses us with the questions already raised. Should we adopt the master system? Should we publish our journals on a quarterly basis to be in rhythm with the seasons? What else might we learn from Japanese haiku groups and journals? While some of the differences between Fuyoh and Western haiku journals may be cultural, we may still be able to learn from Fuyoh and other Japanese journals in ways that do not unnecessarily compromise our own culture. At the very least, to the extent that Fuyoh is a typical yet still somewhat small haiku journal in Japan, it indicates numerous differences in contrast to North American haiku.

Selected Commentary, with Responses

In addition to presenting poems (see “Selected Poems from Fuyoh / Rose Mallow” for copious examples), many of the earlier issues of Fuyoh also presented English translations of articles by the group’s sensei, Yoko Sugawa. Dhugal J. Lindsay and occasionally others also provided commentary on some of the best poems. The following are notable quotations, whether reminders of craft or direct conceptual necessities, or my own glosses on comments from Fuyoh. Just as the poems are independent creations, I have not attempted to weave together any of the following potpourri of comments and quotations, but do offer occasionally extensive reactions or my own commentary that a quotation happens to affirm or provoke. Some of this commentary may not resolve with a conclusion, ending with uncertainty, yet I hope these uncertainties help to show differences between Japanese and Western thinking and practice regarding haiku poetry.

• In issue #25 (1995, p. 41), Yoko Sugawa identifies a number of “common non-haiku that are often found trying to masquerade as the real thing.” Her first category of these “non-haiku” are, perhaps surprisingly, “Photographic descriptions of nature (objective shasei).” Shiki promoted shasei haiku (“sketches from life”), but it would seem that Sugawa-sensei’s group follows a different lineage, or may see itself as having progressed beyond this “beginner” stage. Shiki did not stop with just a shasei approach to haiku, of course, but to my knowledge he never dismissed shasei, either. It seems to be quite a leap to dismiss all shasei poems as “non-haiku.” Is this really what Sugawa-sensei meant? Why?

• In a brief biographical note, Fuyoh member and university enzymology researcher Takashi Yoshida says that “the mental attitude needed for writing haiku is very similar to that for writing a scientific paper” (#26, 1995, p. 40). Indeed, to write a haiku, it helps to learn the difference between observation and inference. The scientist must be ever vigilant against inference so that his or her observations are true representations of his or her surroundings, whether of nature or human nature. To infer in the poem itself typically deflates the poem for the reader, preventing the reader from making his or her own inferences, which is an engagement of the reader that lies at the heart of successful haiku. The writer must guard against making inferences so that the reader may make them based on the experience itself, carefully portrayed. This way, the reader can feel what the poet felt or thought, without being told or having anything explained. This is how haiku is an experience rather than merely describing one, and it begins with the mental attitude that is like that of the scientific researcher. On the other hand, this distinction between observation and inference could be at odds with the greater subjectivity present in Japanese haiku, which may allow a bit more inference in haiku than has been customary for Western literary haiku.

• Is haiku after a reference to nature, or a reference to the season, which frequently but incidentally refers to nature? Yoko Sugawa says that “Fuyoh’s philosophy is ‘to search for truths of human existence in nature’” (#24, 1995, p. 26). Elsewhere, she states that this is not just Fuyoh’s aim but haiku’s aim: “The aim of haiku is to explore our humanity through the Truths found in the natural world” (#29, 1996, p. 51). In another issue, she writes, “Kigo need not necessarily place a haiku in any particular season but could rather be included simply to relate the haiku to the natural world” (#26, 1995, p. 48). (This seems an odd thing to say, though, when the word “kigo” itself means “season word,” not “nature word.”) In the subsequent issue, Sugawa-sensei says that “The act of finding one’s relationship or connection to some seasonal manifestation and writing of it is that of making haiku. In doing so we bring ourselves closer to nature” (#27, 1996, p. 53). Earlier, she wrote this: “It is important to include a kigo in haiku to express one’s interrelationship with nature” (#23, 1995, p. 26), and that “when one is overcome with the interrelatedness, the interbeing of things, this is when a haiku reveals itself” (#35, 1998, p. 44). Nature, then, is the source for this state of interbeing, the place where the haiku poet goes to find it. In contrast, as David Cobb has written, haiku seeks to refer to the season, and not specifically to nature, which is why a significant portion of the entries in a saijiki (season word almanac) are seasonal without being about nature at all (such as the Obon or Tanabata festivals, equivalent to mentioning Christmas or the Fourth of July for Americans). And how, too, is nature defined differently in the East and West? Does it include or exclude human nature? Just as a bird builds a nest, which is considered “natural,” why is it “unnatural” for a human to build a house of bricks or wood? These are not easy questions.

• In Fuyoh #28 (1996, p. 57), a note from Yoko Sugawa indicates that, until that point, poets writing in English were contacted for permission to have their poems altered for publication, but that henceforth this permission would not be sought. As mentioned in Observation #5, “In Japan,” Sugawa says, “one of the tools for haiku study is having your haiku ‘fixed’ by a mentor,” and that, “in the Japanese style,” permission for changes would no longer be sought. This approach, referred to as tensaku, rubs against the Western tradition of ownership and individuality, but is an example of how the Japanese poetic mind is perhaps more collaborative and deferential than the Western mind. [See my 2019 essay, “Sax Riffs and the Art of Tensaku,” mentioned earlier.]

• Harold G. Henderson wrote about the notion of “internal comparison,” where the haiku’s common two-part juxtapositional structure, if done conscientiously, creates a larger wholeness rather that an arbitrary juxtaposition does not. Yoko Sugawa quotes Bashō on this topic by saying he taught, among other things, that “a haiku is formed through combination” (#31, 1997, p. 40). She adds that “the great majority of haiku [in Japan] exist through this bonding and resulting resonance” and writes at greater length on the topic:

Some combinations such as bush warbler–plum, blossoms–storm and moon–clouds are classical and somewhat jaded and trite. Novel combinations are those that exhibit some kind of resonance on the impressionistic plane and cause feelings of natural inevitability regarding their combination. This resonance is not gained through similarities in meaning or in the emotions stirred up by each element but rather through some intrinsic nucleus of being, a parallel between the two that exists on some higher plane.

Some Western haiku poets, it seems, seldom understand the notion of the two-part juxtapositional structure, let alone the transcendent “inevitability” (yet nonobviousness) of certain juxtapositions, whether seen in haiku they read, or not even attempted in haiku they write. Speaking of a freshly effective combination of images (in reference to a specific poem by Bashō), Sugawa writes that “The two elements seem entirely unrelated on the cognitive, surface level but something brings them together and resonates in the depth of our psyche, hinting at the existence of an as yet unseen Truth” (p. 40). The greatest art of haiku may indeed be this searching for an intrinsic nucleus of being.

• Typically a haiku will have just one season word, and that for two seasonal references to appear, one must clearly dominate. Those who insist that haiku must have just a single season word may want to consider the following poem, by one of Japan’s greatest recent haiku masters, quoted in Fuyoh (#35, 1998, p. 43; Dhugal J. Lindsay, trans.). It serves as just one example of many where two season words appear in an effective haiku.

oh how deep, the frost
no-one here beside me now
oh how red, plum blossoms

    —Shūson Katō

• One should do well to appreciate a reminder that Dhugal J. Lindsay offers in his commentary on one particular haiku. After describing a primary interpretation, he offers a secondary one, but cautions that “when reading haiku one should always interpret in favour of the more powerful scene” (#57, 2003, p. 48). This reminder is equivalent to the scientific and philosophical notion of what is called Ockham’s Razor, named after fourteenth-century philosopher William of Ockham. This notion, also known as the “law of parsimony,” asserts that, of two or more competing theories, the simplest is preferable (or more likely to be correct). For the reader of haiku, an interpretation of the poem should begin with the simplest interpretation, even while other perspectives may offer reverberations, focusing on the literal level first, with metaphorical interpretations coming only secondarily. The reader, as Lindsay notes, should be cautious against asserting a secondary interpretation as a primary one. As another way of putting it, we should remember that words denotate before they connotate. Lindsay’s observation also raises the issue of ambiguity for writers of haiku. While some Western haiku poets (not necessarily the majority) seek ambiguity in their haiku, and try not to have too much “intent” to their work (thus, allowing their subconscious minds free reign, letting readers interpret each poem how they will), I think it’s important to control that ambiguity so that at least misreadings are minimized (controlling ambiguity does not mean to eliminate it entirely, please note). If a poem is excessively ambiguous, it begins to fail, as readers are left with too many doubts as to what they were supposed to feel, if anything, or the poem may feel too vague. If the poem is too obvious, that also is a failure, providing no latitude for reverberation or perhaps two oscillating meanings. The art of haiku, to a great degree, lies in finding a balance between the two pitfalls of too much and too little ambiguity.

• Westerners often assume (or, rightly or wrongly, have been taught) that haiku are to be “pretty,” or are to confine themselves to subjects of “value.” Just as James W. Hackett has said that “lifefulness, not beauty, is the real quality of haiku,” Shūson Katō offers the following poem (#58, 2003, p. 46; Dhugal J. Lindsay, trans.):

the anglerfish frozen
right down to its very bones
is hacked to pieces

This poem may shock because of its violence, yet shock is surely not the intent here. Rather, it seeks to depict the event accurately, relying on the reader’s natural emotional reaction to supply the unfinished remainder of the poem (whatever we bring to it). Just as we might react with shock at this poem’s bluntness, we might well react with joy or surprise or wonder at other subjects in haiku. But haiku seeks the honest emotional reaction, whatever that intuition might be, and need not limit itself purely to “beautiful” or “positive” subjects.

To conclude this assessment of Fuyoh / Rose Mallow Haiku Quarterly, and how it indicates differences—and similarities—between Japanese and Western haiku and haiku journals, let’s give Bashō the last word (translation by Emiko Miyashita):

枝ぶりの日ごとに変る芙蓉かな

edaburi no higoto ni kawaru fuyō kana

the shape of its branches

changes day by day

the rose mallow

Postscript #1

The 16 August 2009 “Vieil Etang” (Old Pond) blog post by Jessica Tremblay summarizes my presentation of “Fuyoh Observations” at the 2009 Haiku North America conference in Ottawa. I don’t remember saying it myself, but she quotes me or someone else as saying during my presentation that “Kigo is the shared air between haiku poets,” which is a wonderful way of understanding the value of season words. A comment in French at the end, by MoHe, says “I am not sure that I want to take all these observations as ‘lessons to learn.’ I agree with lessons 2 and 3, but it would be worth discussing the others.” It is true that I offer observations more than lessons, but perhaps we can still find lessons amid these observations.

Postscript #2

The following text (slightly edited) is excerpted from an email dated 23 November 2019, written by Dhugal J. Lindsay. In July of 2017, Dhugal started his tenure as selector for the “Haiku in English” column for the Mainichi, Japan’s oldest newspaper (and I was honoured to serve as a guest editor, at Dhugal’s request, for December of 2021 and January of 2022). [See “Four Classic Haiku,” which includes a poem by Dhugal that I selected and commented on.] Here, Dhugal supplies some interesting facts about the Fuyoh journal and its evolution, in direct response to questions I asked.

From: リンズィードゥーグル
To: Michael Dylan Welch
Sent: Sat, Nov 23, 2019 2:11 am
Subject: Re: Haiku Statistics / Fuyoh

G’day Michael,

Good to hear from you.

Fuyoh was first published on 1 September 1989 and was a quarterly journal. The first issue included 27 poets and each had 10 haiku published [all in Japanese].

The first English translations of haiku were seven of my haiku that appeared in the Winter 1991 issue (Issue 10). 30 haiku poets were published in that issue.

Spring 1994 (issue 19) contained the first translations of poets other than myself—Muneo Inoue and Yoko Sugawa—the two sensei. Issue 20 had other poets’ translations.

Spring 1995 (issue 23) was the first issue to include the name “Rose Mallow” and also to include other haiku poets publishing in English (with Japanese translations included)—Paul David Mena, Ed Cordero, and myself as full members. Also included were selections from the Shiki haiku salon, a page on spring kigo, Fuyoh blossoms (translation of best haiku from each monthly kukai), and an English translation of haiku by Yoko Sugawa. 33 haiku poets were included as members.

The last issue of Fuyoh to include English was issue 101 (Autumn 2014). I retired from being an editor in the winter of 2014. Mariko Teruya was the sensei at that time.

Autumn 2011 (issue 89) was the last issue in which Sugawa-sensei had new haiku or essays included.

17 October 2011 was Yoko Sugawa’s date of death.

The last issue of Fuyoh was Issue 120 (summer 2019) and it is now officially on hiatus but not actually closed/finished. Reason being Mariko Teruya’s health. I don’t believe it will start being published again.

The 100th issue (25th anniversary issue) of Fuyoh included 40 haiku poets, all dojin. Issues sold for 700 yen at that time. The fee was 10,000 yen for an annual membership for first-tier members (granting ten haiku on a full page) and 7,000 yen for second-tier membership (granting nine haiku on a half page [I suspect in a smaller point size]).

The Kadokawa Haiku Almanac is still being published, I believe.

Best,

Dhugal

Postscript #3

The following note, dated 23 December 2021, is quoted from The Japan News, an English-language newspaper and website run by the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, regarding the publication of the 1,500th issue of the haiku journal, Hototogisu.

Launched in 1897, Hototogisu continues to enjoy a loyal readership after nearly 125 years in print, as the nation’s longest-running periodical source of haiku in the spirit of foundational poets Shiki Masaoka and Kyoshi Takahama. . . . When the magazine published its 1,100th issue in 1988, circulation stood at around 10,000 copies. Although monthly circulation now hovers closer to 2,500 copies, readers can still submit their own haiku poems for publication, using a form bound into the back of the magazine. As incumbent director, Kotaro Inahata said he peruses nearly 6,000 original poems sent to the Chidoya Ward, Tokyo offices of Hototogisu Co. each month for publication in the magazine. Hototogisu continues to evolve in the digital age through new initiatives, including online haiku events.