Rainier Haiku Ginsha
Celebrates Its 90th Anniversary

Thank you for inviting me to join you today. I am pleased and honoured to offer my congratulations to the Rainier Haiku Ginsha on your 90th anniversary. It is remarkable for any organization to thrive for 90 years, especially through the adversity of World War II incarceration. That injustice was an upheaval for all the group’s members at that time, as was enduring reintegration into society in the years after the war. Surely haiku helped to save you.

I have long been involved with the Haiku Northwest English-language haiku group. Tomorrow, September 15, marks our group’s 36th anniversary. Thirty-six years is an accomplishment, but it feels inconsequential compared to the length of commitment to the traditions of haiku and group harmony shown by Rainier Ginsha members. I bring greetings and congratulations from Haiku Northwest. I am founder and president of the Tanka Society of America and bring congratulations from this organization as well.

I also bring greetings from the Haiku Society of America, for which I used to be vice president. On June 27, 2010, it was my pleasure to arrange for members of the Rainier Haiku Ginsha to read a selection of their poems for a national meeting of the Haiku Society of America at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Readers at the meeting were Teruko Chin, Kiyomi Erickson, Lily McMahan, Mitsuko Nakata, and Kyoko Tokuno. The poems they read, with English translations, have been present on the Haiku Northwest website since then, along with an essay about the group by Hisao Mogi and Kyoko Tokuno that Modern Haiku published in 2015. These poems and the essay commemorate our shared passion for haiku, for which I am grateful.

On April 17, 2016, Rainier Haiku Ginsha members were also able to join Haiku Northwest for a poetry reading at the Seattle Japanese Garden in celebration of International Haiku Writing Day (held on April 17 every year). Haiku Ginsha poems were read by Koshi Miller, Hisao Mogi, Marlie Sato, and Nobuko Thiesen. Also that year, on October 29, Hisao Mogi gave a presentation on “Photographing Haiku” at Haiku Northwest’s annual Seabeck Haiku Getaway. It has also been a pleasure to judge Bellevue’s Japan Fair haiku contests with the Rainier Haiku Ginsha. These are all examples of our collaborations together, and I look forward to more such sharing.

But today we honour the Rainier Haiku Ginsha, whose milestones you will hear about today. My congratulations to the organization and all its members on ninety remarkable years. Omedetou gozaimas!