The second history is of the increase of centralising kigo despite Japan‘s different climates from the South to the North of its islands. Bureaucracy decreed that kigo became regimented, and pre-eminence given to those that related to the environs of the old capital of Kyoto, and the newly emerging capital of Edo aka current day Tokyo.
Is kigo really the Japanese people‘s collective consciousness, and so all non-Japanese people must be excluded? Or the secured preserve of a few?
We know that hokku and haiku began to be readily available under two American actions, the mid 19th Century arrival of US black ships brokering an end to isolation for Japan and opening up of world trade; and the 1945-1952 Occupation of Japan after WWII. Japanese artists welcomed these actions and embraced Western art, which influenced haiku poetry, and of course the West were introduced to Japanese art including poetry.
Why the resistance regarding haiku‘s most potent tool, namely kigo, when haiku already started to absorb some Western techniques under Shiki? Would we, should we, insist that Japanese writers desist from writing Italian (or English) sonnets if they so desired? Of course not, and at least sonnets in English have been done.
I wonder if the mystification of the Japanese people by Westerners is bordering on not only mistaken beliefs, as if the Japanese people were separate from all other cultures and races, but encompasses patronising characteristics which are disingenuous, and precariously close to an odd form of inverted racism.
Michael Schmidt OBE FRSL is the founder and editorial and managing director of Carcanet Press Limited, the general editor ofP
e
Department of English, University of Glasgow: Europ
en p tr a nd (a t s rvi s ontnue to i orm ou
a oe y ta s ike ts bea ng f s i u ve) c i
ri From his book Te Frs oe Txa nd Jmacn, al il n a snge p m.''
Homeric diction…''a c e n a
a ia c mi ant vi aets.
Sh dt pi s a vi d p at of butli dilc ''
ortri nf
rom a brilalint c telti r w ti
ri ng a
ons la on of cascl w te , wos i s (lgnd or fc nd redi .
lsia ri rs h e lve ee a ng h i t P tspub.Weidenfeld & Nicolson (2004)
ompste of difrefe nt dilc trnd i l oe
oi lxa ri i aet s a s . . . a s ng Ae nd a wth i s th g ouh a p t w oe ts ''rail mica
'The First Poets': Starting With Orpheus New York Times book review, Camille Paglia (August 28, 2005)
The West is a larger group of poets than ever before, and joined by those in other nations, who look to Japan‘s haiku as one kind of inspiration or another. The one great strength of Japanese haikai tradition is to share, and the non-Japanese nations also share by reading each other‘s work unless there is censorship imposed on them.
And certainly poets since Milton have strived to read widely, and absorb widely the many methods of other poets, of anything that could inform their work. I am often reminded of Bill Manhire‘s poem On O
http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/authors/manhire/originality.asp
gnai
These last two verses sum up my own approach to poetry, where I long ago left my early misinformed isolationist stance, and fear of contamination, so common amongst many poets first starting out; where we avoid the influence by others, of whatever nation or race.
rii lty: x'' a rote i cn Sots, S th Af cn,ria ou nd ''ms es of lngae nd a ugs a N Reviw, and Professor of Poetry and convener of the Creative Writing programme in the at)
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