For the relief of the disaster areas

Since March 11, when the enoumous catastrophe pragued the northeastern Japan, much help has been extended to the disaster areas. Among the help, Tenrikyo Church Disaster Relief Corp and other groups of the church members are constantly at the sites, engaging in relief activities.

Tomorrow, my son joins the Tenrikyo Church Disaster Relief Corp, will spend a week in Soma city (indicated red in the map), which is not so distant from the Fukushima Nuke Power Plants, but not within the evacuation area.

His blue T-shirt -
the color of
calm sea and mountains

Haiga 604 Martin Cohen haiku -Pepsi

Haiku by Martin G. Cohen. Artwork by myself.

This is one of my early haiga.
Martin came up with this haiku while on board a ship.
I am residing in a basin, surrounded by mountains, beautiful mountains but mountains nonetheless. What I miss is "taste of salt". And wind with a scent of sea.

I regularly go to the fitness club to swim. It is an indoor swimming pool, located at rooftop of a building, covered with glass roof. Yesterday, the water was uncomfortably warm because of something like the greenhouse effect. Plus that, chlorine (and not a taske of salt) in the water was a bit too much. Real sea experience is hard to get around here.

Mountain haijin,
his fingers fondle the sea
on a postcard

Haiga 603 Matsuo Basho haiku - wabi, sabi frog

Haiku by Matsuo Basho. Artwork by myself.

Now, here is the famous haiku by Basho. There are numerous translations for this. I just picked the one I see more often on the web. In this haiku, Basho conveyed the aesthetic of "wabi, sabi", which Wikipedia defines as "...represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent and incomplete".

There is an old Shinto shrine near where I work. Its founding dates back to more than 1000 years. Within the shrine ground is a nice old pond surrounded by Momiji trees. I love this pond, and whenever I am there, I always remember this Basho haiku.

Haiga 602 Matsuo Basho haiku - Hiraizumi

Haiku by Matsuo Basho. Artwork by myself.

Here is a latest new from Kyodo:
"TOKYO, June 26, Kyodo

The Buddhist temples and landscape in the ancient town of Hiraizumi, Iwate Prefecture, in northeastern Japan, have won approval as a World Heritage cultural site at an ongoing UNESCO meeting in Paris, Japanese government officials said Sunday.

Hiraizumi becomes Japan's 12th World Heritage cultural site, according to the decision by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's World Heritage Committee, and follows endorsement of the Ogasawara island chain in the Pacific south of Tokyo as the country's fourth natural heritage site.

The registration of Hiraizumi on the World Heritage List, the first in the country's northeastern Tohoku region, would be a boon for the region devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami disaster, as it is expected to boost tourism."

This Kondo, Hall of Gold, is an important part of Chusonji Temple, Hiraizumi. To commemorate the official registration to World Heritage, we will make a postcard from this haiga and make it available at our coming haiga exhibition.
Congratulation, Hiraizumi.

Haiga exhibition -planning

I joined my friends at the coming exhbition site. The site, as you can see, is sided by two tall grey concrete walls. On one side, where the direct sun light does not hit, we will exhibit a long scroll. We decided to add some vivid color there. The green cloth covered table will be extended to as long as the width of the wall, and the scroll will be exhibited on it. The red cloth is for the exhibition of traditional musical instruments used for reading of Basho's story.

On the other side, we will exhibit a half of "Narrow Road to the Deep North" haiga (the exhibition period is almost a month and a half long. We had decided to divide 52 haiga into two groups).

We also tested the BGM system. The whole story was read by one of the friends (the guy holding the red cloth), and was recorded. We ran the recording and it sounded good.

We will come back on 14th of the next month to set up the exhibition.

Haiga 601 Linda Robeck haiku - breath

Haiku by Linda Robeck. Artwork by myself.

Linda san is a rocket scientist at NASA. For a web haiku project "haijinx", she worked with the rest of us. This was many years ago, and I wonder how she is doing now. I hope she is still writing haiku.

When I was making this haiga, a seascape in Palau islands was in my mind. Some part of the island looked like Matsushima, calm water like a pane of glass, small round islands floating on it. The sea water so clear that once you are in it, you feel as if you were floaiting in the air. At one place, you get to see a clear view of a Japanese war plane "Zero" deep down at the bottom, almost intact after so many years.

I was there in Palau with my father to check on a stone monument built before WW2. The monument, which now stands next to small city hall building, is to commemorate the achievement of a missionary, and it was in very bad state then. About a year later, I returned to the island with a group of mason to repair the monument.

And many years later, we went to check on the monument again. This time my father was weak so my mother (died last year) and I accompanied him.

My father was forgetful then. He had requested this trip, but he did not know why we were there. I had to take him to the monument again and again during the day, and in the evening he finally became aware that he was indeed back to Palau and facing the monument.

Tropical shower -
dry moss on the rock
comes alive again

My report on WHA Japan Conference

The 6th WHA Japan Conference April 29, 2011, Tokyo
by Kuniharu Shimizu

A terrible thing does happen. The disaster that happened in the north eastern region of Japan on March 11 was in such an enormous magnitude that it would be written with bold letters in the history of this small island nation.

They say there is nothing that occurs suddenly, be it good or bad. Even the earthquake, which is usually viewed as sudden occurrence, is no exception. According to the scientists, the earth accumulates so called stress daily from the push and pull of the ground plates, and at one point, the stress is released, hence the earthquake. The nuke power plant accident, too, seems accidental, but various information reveals the accumulation of unwise decisions and half measures done over the years, and these led to the disaster.

What happened this time seems to reflect the daily steps that this nation has taken over the years, during which time we all have become less conscious of the fact that this land actually sits on a huge but shaky tofu (bean curd). The tofu has no mind, thus it never minds the people living on it, when it releases the stress. On the other hand, we human have mind, thus we should use it wisely, never forgetting the tofu land, learning well from this disaster, and make this country a better and safer place to live.

Despite the gloomy atmosphere in the society, The 6th WHA Japan Conference was held successfully. More than 20 members participated. Though the society in general is unsettle yet, WHA will hold its bi-annual conference (WHAC6) this September. Also, the 2nd Tokyo Poetry Festival (TPF2) will be held jointly with WHAC6. We members need to concentrate in carrying out this joint event.

At the Japan Conference, the vice directors of TPF, Chuei Yagi and Masayuki Tamura were introduced to us. After that, each participating members did self introduction, and shared thoughts and news, which eventually became quite substantial discussion on present day haiku. As for the World Haiku Anthology 2011, it was noted that better translation of haiku was evident throughout the volume. Better translation is indeed essential in conveying the poetic core of the haiku. Such translation does not appear suddenly, it only appears as the result of many trials, of accumulated effort such as World Haiku Anthology series.

It was requested that the monthly haiga contest would hold a special contest to commemorate the WHAC6. I am in charge of the contest, and my plan is to hold the special contest only online. I will not consider exhibiting the submissions in printout form.

WHA dispatched its representatives to haiku related events world over. Toshio Kimura made a report on “World Haiku Festival, Pecs 2010”., and Ban’ya Natsuishi on “International Conference, Soul University” and “Sha’ar Poetry Festival”. In this July, Natsuishi is scheduled to attend “Medellin Poetry Festival ”, Colombia, and will promote the joint event of TPF and WHAC.
Reports on domestic haiku events: “Evening of Haiku Reading and Strings” (at Yona, reported by Tange), “Solo Haiku Live 17” (at Shinjyuku, reported by Natsuishi), “Haiku Reading, Harp and Shakuhachi flute” (at Fujimi, reported by Nomura).

The last subject of the conference was about TPF2, and details of the event was explained by Hideki Ishikura, the secretary-general. He emphasized the importance of TPF as a rare opportunity in Japan to have the literal exchange among the poets from around the world.
In the end, Sayumi Kamakura, the treasurer of WHA, made a financial report.

The conference was followed by haiku readings by members. We were all affected by the disaster one way or another so many haiku read were about it. Especially notable was many haiku submitted from world over. These haiku were read by Natsuishi, Kimura, and Hotta in various languages. One of the attendees, Masanori Matsuda was from the affected area, and he presented his haiku written on flip boards, showing them one by one as he read them. I thought that was a good presentation. One of his haiku:

「春岬いつまで待っても帰らない」
A cape in spring
waiting, waiting but
no sign of return (translated by Kuniharu Shimizua)

I made a haiga for this haiku. Together with seven other haiga I made, this one will be published on the autumn issue of “Jelly Bucket”, a literary magazine published by East Kentucky University.
Other haiku that I noticed:

「手のひらのこの水が国を壊すとは」 by Sayumi Kamakura
This water in my palm -
what is the water
destroying my country?

「自在に春を操り桜咲かせたのはだれ」by Tadashi Nakatsuka
Who’s done it,
manipulating spring
and let flowers bloom? (translated by Kuniharu Shimizu)

All readings can be viewed on YouTube, which can be accessed via WHA website, Movie link.
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Me, singing at the party after the conference.
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This report is written for the summer issue of "Ginyu", an international haiku magazine.

Haiga 600 Garry Gay haiku - bandaid

Haiku by Garry Gay. Artwork by myself.

When I was making this haiga, I needed a photo of a small girl. Then I remembered my wife's photo, and this drawing was made from it. Now, my granddaughter is coming to about the same age, and to my surprise, she resembles this drawing quite a bit. It is interesting to see how DNA runs though a family.

I inherited narrow and small eyes from my mother. I married a woman with big eyes. My son has nice looking eyes, and he married a woman with big eyes. Now, all my grandchildren have nice big eyes. And thus, remodling of DNA continues.

Class reunion after 46 years

I attended a class reunion of my junior high school today. According to the brochure distributed at the event, it's been 46 years since we graduated from junior high school. Long time has passed. The substantial part of our life time has passed.

The photo here shows what we all looked like when we posed in front of the Emperor's Palace in Tokyo. We were there during our final school excursion. As you can see, there are more boys than girls, hence rather severe competition were there among us boys, and excursion was a good oppotunity to make some impression on girls.

Almost within a year after, I left for Hawaii. There in this photo a girl I had a crush on. After I left for Hawaii, we exchanged letters for a while. At this reunion, she did not show up, nor did I hear about her. Hope she is doing OK.

June drizzle,
scent of young leaves
lingers in the air

Another Flyer -TPF2 and WHAC6

I designed another flyer. It is for the 2nd.Tokyo Poetry Festival & the 6th. World Haiku Association Conference.

The theme of this joint event is "With or Without Mythology". The illustration included was made by me some time ago for someone's haiku, but I thought this would fit perfectly with the theme. Everybody concerned felt the same so this is how the final flyer will look like, more or less.

The bottom part is the concept of the theme, but this will be changed to a list of participating international poets. There will be more minor changes, too. That is how the flyer design always goes, changes here and there again and again.

Ban'ya Natsuishi will attend a poetry festival to be held in Medellín, Colombia end of this month. I am not aware but the Medellin festival is the biggest one in South America. He plans to promote this joint event there. The flyer will be shown there, along with a video clip.

Haiga 599 Andres Duhaim haiku - Birthday

Haiku by Andres Duhaim. Artwork by myself.

Yesterday was my grandson's 6th birthday. He had the cake like this, but for the dinner, we all had "roll-it-youself" type sushi, in which you take a piece of thin black seaweed, lay some sushi rice on it; add your choice of ingredients like fishes, vegetables, egg, avocado slices; and finally you roll the whole thing into a roll. Kids love this procesure, ended up eating more than usual, and in my grandson's case, he could not finish his share of the birthday cake.

In any case, we all have a ball.

Exhibition Flyer

My friends and I met up yesterday in Osaka, and finalized the flyer design. I did the designing of it. There are other things to discuss, like how we will install the long, long scroll, who will attend the exhibit during the long long period (almost a month and a half), how we prepare and distribute audio CD of reading and singing, and such.

Haiga 598 Alexis Rotella haiku - mosque

Haiku by Alexis Rotella. Artwork by myself.

Alexis and I were tweeting yesterday, and there was something about mosque. I then remembered a haiga I made some years ago for her mosque haiku. Alexis san is known for her witty senryu, but she also writes quite poetic haiku, and this is one of them.

I always like the contrast of blue and white. In the beginning that was what I was going to do about the haiga. But I noticed the word "softening". To include it visually in the haiga took a little thinking, and here is my solution.

Rainy days are about to be over here in Japan. Soon we will be able to enjoy blue sky this this.
Today, I go to Osaka again to discuss the up-coming haiga exhibition. In a way, this event is like a blue sky to me.

Haiga 597 Bruce Ross haiku -shoes

Haiku by Bruce Ross. Artwork by myself.

This drawing is my shoes. They worn out long time ago and not my possession any more. But I remember I loved them, so fitting, comfortable, and light.

There's an expression "be in someone's shoes". Just as our faces differ, our feet also differ. Someone's shoes are never as comfortable as, say, my old shoes. Putting yourself in someone's position helps better human relationship.

The process of haiga making somewhat resembles this expression, at least it is so in my case. When I make haiga for someone's haiku, I try to be in that someone's shoes or the haiku. The more you explore someone's haiku, the deeper you will be able to appreciate it. Once you get appreciation, then you digest it so proper visual elements begin to assemble in your mind.

Waka+artwork - Saigyo

Having read something about Saigyo, I remembered a artwork I did some time ago for Saigyo's waka. Saigyo wrote this wake to express his wavering thought when he became a priest, leaving behind all his secular life.

Waka has more words than haiku, and that makes it rather difficult to add artwork like I do to haiku. More words means that waka more or less says all. Adding artwork often become redundant, making it difficult to maintain equality between poem and artwork.
Nevertheless, I tried, and here it is.

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Returned from Tokyo last night. During to and from Tokyo, I read an ebook titled "The Paris Wife" by Paula Mclain. It is a story about Hemingway and his wife, seen from the wife's point of view. Interesting reading, and I felt the four-hour trip one way much shorter.

Waterproof book - Saigyo

Ever since I visited poet Saigyo's grave the other day, I got interested in him, mostly in his life so I went to city library to borrow a book on him. I picked the one that says "waterproof". It meant to be read even in the bath tub or in a hot spring somewhere way in the mountain. The entire book is made with synthetic material, inside pages feel kind of sleek.

So, I experimented its "waterproof" aspect, read it in the bath tub last night. It was really good, I could just float it on the water while I wash my body. There are series of books in this format, even one about Basho.

Basho was born about 450 year after Saigyo passed. Before Saigyo there was a monk poet named Nonin, who traveled the north-easten Japan. Saigyo followed the path, and many years laster Basho followed suit, which resulted in his "Narrow Road to the Deep North".

The grave of Saigyo I visited was found 540 year after his death. that is after more than 100 years after Basho passed. If the grave had been found while Basho was alive, he would have definitely visited the grave and payed respect, wrote a haku or two there.

That I will hold a haiga exhibit of Basho's journey so near the Saigyo's grave seems to me more than a coincidence.

From a rice patch
to another and then another,
June water flows

Haiga Scroll

The Japanese calligraphies I used for my Basho haiga had been assembled in the form of a scroll. It is about 15m(16.4yds.)long. The scroll was prepared by a friend of mine, who plans to sing the haiku and the story of Oku in Japanese style, accompanied by traditional Japanese musical instruments.



He wanted me to add paintings on the scroll. It was already in scroll format and is of rice paper so no re-doing was possible. I painted carefully, and sometime boldly.
We need to be inventive as to how we exhibit this long long thing at the museum exhibition.

Haiga Exhibition

Yesterday, I visited a museum in Osaka, an archaeology institution located at an old area of Osaka where a lot of tombs and remains exist. The modern museum designed by Tadao Ando mingles well with the sounding trees and mountain. Huge campus of Osaka University of Art is on top the hill nearby.

There is a space open for art exhibition in the museum (see the photo above). Painting exhibition by a professor at Osaka Univ. of Art is going on now. I received an offer to exhibit my haiga on Basho's "Narrow Road to the Deep North" there next month. Also to be included is a 15m long scroll ( someone did calligraphy of Basoh's haiku and I added watercolor images on it). My friend made a sound and voice recording of "Narrow Road" and that will be used as background music all through the exhibition.

The exhibition will last to the beginning of September.



After we discussed about the exhibition at a cafe in the museum, we visited a temple nearby, where Saigyo's study hut and his grave situates.

Old children's picture book

After the March earthquake and subsequent tsunami, many people in Japan remembered an very old story about burning rice field to warn the coming of deadly tsunami.
I happened to find a children’s picture book in English based on this story.

------------------------
"The Buring Rice Fields"
By Sara Cone Bryant
With pictures by Mamoru Funai

Long ago in Japan, an old man and his grandson care for some fields of rice that grew on the top of mountain where the land was flat and rich. The rice belong to the fishermen who lived in a village at the foot of the mountain.

The sea came up so close to the village that there was no room for anything but houses at the foot of the mountain; so the fishermen planted their fields of rice higher up on the mountaintop and asked the old man and his grandson to care for the precious grain.

One day as the old man was looking out sea, he saw something that made him cry out in fear. He passed his hand across his eyes, and looked again. Then he shouted at his grandson, “Run! Run to the houses and get me a fire brand!”

The boy never before had heard his grandfather speak so sharply, and he was greatly frightened. Nevertheless, he ran to the house as he had been commanded and pulled a flaming brand from the hearth. When he returned, the old man grabbed the brand and ran off through the rice field, thrusting the flame into the ripe, dry rice.

Within moments the fields of rice were ablaze. The crackling flames ran up the dray stalks, and fierce dark smoke poured from the side of the mountain.
“Grandfather! Grandfather!” sobbed the little boy. !What are you doing? Stop, Grandfather! Please stop!”

When the villagers looked, up they saw their precious rice fields afire. Ah! How they ran. Men, women and children scrambled up the mountainside to fight the fire. Not a single person in the village stayed behind.

And when they came to the mountain fields and saw the rice-crops all in flames, they cried bitterly, “How did it happen? How did it happen?”
“I set fire” said the old man solemnly.
“Yes,” said the little boy, “Grandfather set fire.”
Hearing this, the villagers became very angry. They crowed fiercely around the old man, shouting, “Why? Why?”

The old man remained calm. “Look” he said, pointing to the sea.
The villagers turned and looked. There, when an hour before the waves had played so quietly, now a mighty wall of water was rolling in. The sight was so terrifying that no one spoke.

The water rolled in over the village, lifting the houses and tossing them into the air. Wave after wave crashed against the mountainside. Then it was over. All was still. The village had disappeared under the sea.

When the people realized what the old man had done, they honored him above all others.

Haiga 596 Christopher Herold haiku - shadow

Haiku by Christopher Herold. Artwork by myself.

This haiga has gone through several changes; in initial stages it showed a bird shadow, and in final, I omitted the bird shadow all together. My intention is to let the viewers decide where the bird shadow is, I leave it to your imagination.

Shadows are interesting. They appear only when there is a light, they only exist when there are actual things. They are not substantial, almost like dreams. In this haiga, I emhasized its unsubstantial aspect by placing a broken piece of a fence post, a substantial thing, a bit of reality.

Christopher is a lay Zen monk. His haiku often contains Zen-like awareness.
Here is my haiku in similar theme:

Leaping from my shadow
only to meet it again

Haiga 595 Christopher Herold haiku - river

Haiku by Christopher Herold. Artwork by myself.

When I started writing haiku, I regularly submitted them to Heron's Nest, where Christopher was my judge. I received several awards during the time. I also collaborated with quite a few haijin whoese haiku appeared on the website. I was then visiting many haiku websites to find haiku that I could work and produce haiga. Heron's Next was one of my favorite website.

Japan has moved into the rainy months of June and a part of July. It rained a lot in my area for the past few days, and a river that runs though my town threatened to overflow. In the end, it was oK, though, but it reminded me of this haiga. It also reminded me of the Natori River that runs through Sendai Plain, which had went down by 70cm by the March earthquake and flooded by sea water from the subsequent tsunami. I saw the photo of the flood and there was no river to be seen.

The 2nd. Tokyo Poetry Festival - cover spread

Tokyo Poetry Festival will be held for the second time this September, from 9th through 11th. World Haiku Association envolved heavily in this festival from the beginning, this time again the same. Being a WHA member, I did various design works for its first festival and being asked to play the similar role this second time, too.

Among other design works, I made this cover spread of the commemorative anthology for the festival. I designed the logo mark, too, which takes a shape of kanji for "To (meaning east, 東, Kyo means capital city. To-kyo means east capital.）". Also, it kind of looks like a fertility figure of the primitive era.
I am also running a website for the festival, TPF.

The 6th WHA Conference will be held along with TPF.