{"id":9545,"date":"2017-08-15T00:58:15","date_gmt":"2017-08-15T04:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/asian\/?p=9545"},"modified":"2017-10-16T09:16:32","modified_gmt":"2017-10-16T13:16:32","slug":"haikulitearature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/asian\/2017\/08\/15\/haikulitearature\/","title":{"rendered":"Haiku as World Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Haiku-Poster\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

BUCSA Asian Cultural Heritage Series Part I: The Art of Letters<\/p>\n

Haiku as World Literature:
\n<\/span>A Celebration of the 150th Birthday of Haiku Poet Masaoka Shiki
\n<\/span>October 12 & 13, 2017<\/span><\/h4>\n
\n
\n

<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Haiku is perhaps the best travelled of all world literary genres. Since the seventeenth century, when Matsuo Bash\u014d wrote his masterpiece,\u00a0The Narrow Road to the Deep North,<\/em>\u00a0haiku poets have embarked on countless figural and literal journeys, and they have taken the\u00a0genre with them. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, dense social networks of haiku poets crisscrossed the whole\u00a0of Japan, and by the early twentieth century, haiku in its modern form had spread across the globe through the work of poets including Ezra Pound, Rabindrath Tagore, Frederico Garcia Lorca, and Yu Ping Bo. Today millions of people write haiku in Japanese and dozens of other languages.<\/span><\/p>\n

This symposium marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of the haiku poet\u00a0Masaoka Shiki<\/a>\u00a0(1867-1902). Despite spending the last seven years of his short life immobilized by tuberculosis, Shiki contributed more than any other poet to the genre\u2019s emergence as a globe-trotting\u00a0literary form. Scholars and poets working on haiku in Japanese, English, Persian, Chinese, and Spanish will share their work on Shiki and on the poetics of haiku in its global dimensions.\u00a0We will also celebrate the recent digitization on the \u201cOpen BU\u201d archive of 145 back issues of the\u00a0<\/span>Shiki kaishi<\/span><\/i><\/a>: the journal of the Matsuyama Shiki Society, a treasure trove of original research on Shiki and his circle written by the Society\u2019s members.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n


\nThe Symposium will take place on October 12, 2017 at:
\n<\/span><\/strong>(9:00am to 5:00pm) BU Law School Barristers Hall \/ 765 Commonwealth Avenue<\/span><\/p>\n

The\u00a0Haiku Circle will take place on October 13, 2017 at:
\n<\/span><\/strong>(11:00<\/span>am to 1:00pm) BU Pardee School, 121 Bay State Road
\nRegister for the event here<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n


\nSchedule<\/span><\/h4>\n

(8:30-8:45)
\n<\/b>Breakfast Reception<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

(8:45-9:00)\u00a0Welcome:<\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/b>Catherine Yeh, Director of the BU Center for the Study of Asia<\/span>
\nJ. Keith Vincent, Chair WLL<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

(9:00-9:30) KEYNOTE: Janine Beichman (Professor Emerita, Daito Bunka University)
\n<\/b><\/span><\/span>

The Pleasures of Haiku: from Bash\u014d to Shiki and Beyond <\/paragraph>
<\/span><\/p>\n

Haiku is a \u201cglobe-trotting\u201d form now, as the website for this symposium says, but a little more than a century ago it was moribund and about to die out. Masaoka Shiki and his group of dedicated fellow poets revived it, as we know. The how of haiku\u2019s rebirth is pretty well mapped out\u2014Shiki\u2019s brilliant essays in defense of the form, which argued so compellingly for its right to be called literature in the modern sense, and the poetry of Shiki and his friends, which demonstrated persuasively that haiku could express the thoughts and feelings of modern people. In contrast, the why is not so clear. That is, why was haiku able to inspire the solicitude and the loyalty of Shiki and his friends?\u00a0 What is it about the form and its traditions that fired them with such passion? Whatever it was, it is still there today. One of the things that reading haiku teaches us is that\u00a0there are many ways,\u00a0to borrow from Wallace Stevens,\u00a0to look at a blackbird, or, in this case, haiku\u2014not just a particular poem, but the form itself. In preparing this keynote, I knew the twenty or so haiku I wanted to talk about but I was not sure of the most effective order to arrange them in. As I played around with that, I began to see them in a new way, through the prism of two sets of complementary qualities: mindfulness and imagination on the one hand, \u00a0lightness and stickiness on the other. Both have to do with the generosity of haiku and I think it may be this quality, a kind of generosity in the form itself, that spells the why.<\/p>\n

Janine Beichman<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>is Professor Emerita of Daito Bunka University. She is the author of\u00a0<\/span>Masaoka Shiki<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(G.K.Hall, 1982), the first biography of Shiki in English; the augmented edition is\u00a0<\/span>Masaoka Shiki: His Life and Works\u00a0<\/span><\/em>(Cheng & Tsui, 2002). She is also the author of\u00a0<\/span>Embracing the Firebird: Yosano Akiko and the Birth of the Female Voice in Modern Japanese Poetry\u00a0<\/span><\/em>(Hawaii UP, 2002). Recent essays include \u201cThe Prophet and the Poet: Leo Tolstoy and Yosano Akiko\u201d(Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan<\/em>, Fifth Series, 5:2013), \u201cPortrait of a Marriage: Yosano Akiko\u2019s Paris Foray\u201d (Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan<\/em>, Fifth Series, 8:2016) and \u201cYosano Akiko, Symbolist\u201d (Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan<\/em>, Fifth Series, 9: 2017). Current projects include the second volume of her biography of Yosano Akiko, and new and expanded editions of her translations of the poet and critic \u014coka Makoto\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Beneath the Sleepless Tossing of the Planets<\/em>and\u00a0<\/span>Poems for All Seasons.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/span>
\n(scroll down for panel paper abstracts and speaker bios)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

(9:30-11:00) <\/b><\/span><\/span>Masaoka Shiki and the Birth of the Modern Haiku<\/span><\/b><\/span><\/span>
\n
\nDiscussant: Yoon Sun Yang (Boston University, WLL Korean)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Nanae Tamura (Matsuyama Shiki Society)<\/span>
\n\u201c”<\/span>On the 150th anniversary of their Birth: Shiki, S\u014dseki, Kyokud\u014d & Matsuyama”
\n<\/span><\/span>
\nRobert Tuck (University of Montana)<\/span>
\n\u201cHaiku Gets Political: Shiki, Nippon, and Meiji \u2018Newspaper Literature\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Reiko Abe Auestad (University of Oslo)<\/span>
\n\u201cAbe Yoshishige on \u2018Masaoka Shiki as a Person\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

(11:00-12:30)\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/span>Shiki\u2019s Poetics
\n<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Discussant: Anna Elliot\u00a0(Boston University, WLL Japanese)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Rebekah Machemer (Boston University WLL Alumna)<\/span>
\n “Shiki’s Haiku in a Comic Panel: Exercises in Composition and Contextualization”<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Lorenzo Marinucci (<\/span>Sapenzia University of Rome)<\/span>
\nShiki’s Bash\u014d: Malady and Modernity of a poetic Meeting<\/i><\/span>.
\n<\/span><\/span>
\nJ . Keith Vincent (Boston University, WLL)<\/span>
\n\u201cBetter than Sex? Shiki\u2019s Food Haiku\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

(12:30-1:30)\u00a0<\/b>Break for Lunch<\/strong><\/span><\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

(1:30-3:00)\u00a0<\/b><\/span>Haiku Before and After Shiki:<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Discussant:\u00a0Peter Schwartz\u00a0(Boston University, WLL German)
\n<\/strong><\/span>
\n<\/b>Cheryl Crowley (Emory University)<\/span>
\n\u201cDoes Good Haiku have a Gender?\u00a0 Tagami Kikusha O(1753-1826) and the Mino School\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Sarah Frederick (Boston University, WLL)<\/span>
\n “Mountains and Rivers on her Desk: \u00a0Novelist Yoshiya Nobuko’s Haiku Diary (1944-1973)”<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Anita Patterson (Boston University, English)<\/span>
\n“‘Projections in the Haiku Manner’: Richard Wright and Transpacific Modernism”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

(3:00-3:30)\u00a0<\/span><\/b>Coffee Break<\/strong><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

(3:30-5:00)\u00a0<\/b><\/span>Haiku in the World:<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Discussant: Wiebke Denecke (Boston University, WLL)<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Faryaneh Fadaeiresketi (Heidelberg University)<\/span>
\n\u201cJapanese Haiku in a Persian Dress\u201d (tentative)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Christopher Maurer (Boston University, Romance Studies)<\/span>
\n “\u2019This Lyrical Box of Chocolates”: \u00a0Lorca Discovers Haiku<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Catherine Yeh (Boston University, WLL)<\/span>
\n \u201cJapanese Haiku and the Formation of the Chinese Short Poetry\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Because the best way to appreciate haiku is to write one yourself, we will reconvene on Friday, October 13 for a Haiku Circle, led by Nanae Tamura of the Matsuyama Shiki Society. \u00a0We will meet at the Pardee School 121 Bay State Road, from 11:00-1:00.\u00a0Register for the event here<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n


\nPaper Abstracts and Speaker Bios
\n<\/span><\/h4>\n

Reiko Abe Auestad<\/paragraph>

\n\u201cAbe Yoshishige on \u2018Masaoka Shiki as a Person\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In his essay on Masaoka Shiki on the fiftieth anniversary of his death, Abe Yoshishige discusses his view of Shiki \u201cas a person,\u201d based on the anecdotes he has heard from his friends, relatives, and the novelist Natsume S\u014dseki, as well as on his own reading of some of Shiki\u2019s works (sixteen years his junior, Abe\u2019s first-hand experience with Shiki was rather limited). \u00a0Abe\u2019s father, Abe Yoshit\u014d, studied the Chinese classics\u00a0under Shiki\u2019s maternal grandfather, \u014chara Kanzan, and his family closely associated with Shiki\u2019s mother, uncles and cousins. \u00a0Yoshit\u014d the doctor even saved Shiki\u2019s life when he suffered from cholera as a fourteen-year-old. \u00a0Abe also talks about S\u014dseki\u2019s jestful description of Shiki as a \u201cnikui otoko,\u201d (hateful, or headstrong person) which, together with other comparative observations of them which Abe makes, adds color to his characterization of Shiki. \u00a0Beneath the tone of characteristic Confucian austerity, we get glimpses of Abe\u2019s warm feelings and pride about Shiki\u2019s achievement as a native of Matsuyama. Through a reading of this very personal, meandering essay, and S\u014dseki\u2019s short piece titled \u201cMasaoka Shiki,\u201d this paper tries to take stock of the figure of Shiki as he appeared to Abe and others, as well as of the homosocial cultural milieu of which Shiki, S\u014dseki, and Abe Yoshishige were a part in the late nineteenth century.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Reiko Abe Auestad<\/b>\u00a0is Professor at the University of Oslo. She is the author of\u00a0<\/span>Rereading Soseki: Three Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Novels<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(1998) which was republished in a digital form from\u00a0<\/span>CEAS Reprint Series for Rare and Out of Print Publications at Yale University<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(2016)<\/span>.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0\u00a0Her recent essays include\u00a0<\/span>\u201cInvoking Affect in Kawakami Mieko\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Chichi to ran<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(Breasts and Eggs 2008),\u201d\u00a0<\/span>Japan Forum<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(2016) and \u201cIbuse Masuji\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Kuroi Ame<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(Black Rain 1965) and Imamura Sh<\/span>\u014d<\/span>hei\u2019s Film Adaptation (1989),\u201d\u00a0<\/span>Bunron<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(2017). \u00a0\u201cThe Affect that Disorients Kokoro\u201d in\u00a0<\/span>The Review of Japanese Culture and Society<\/span><\/i>\u00a0and \u201cColliding Forms in Literary History: A Reading of Natsume S<\/span>\u014d<\/span>seki\u2019s Light and Dark\u201d in the\u00a0<\/span>Routledge Companion to World Literature and World History<\/span><\/i>\u00a0are forthcoming.\u00a0<\/span>Together with Alan Tansman and Keith J. Vincent, she is also co-editing two collections of essays on the novelist Natsume S\u014dseki.<\/span>
\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Janine Beichman<\/paragraph>
<\/p>\n

KEYNOTE: The Pleasures of Haiku: from Bash\u014d to Shiki and Beyond<\/strong><\/p>\n

Haiku is a \u201cglobe-trotting\u201d form now, as the website for this symposium says, but a little more than a century ago it was moribund and about to die out. Masaoka Shiki and his group of dedicated fellow poets revived it, as we know. The how of haiku\u2019s rebirth is pretty well mapped out\u2014Shiki\u2019s brilliant essays in defense of the form, which argued so compellingly for its right to be called literature in the modern sense, and the poetry of Shiki and his friends, which demonstrated persuasively that haiku could express the thoughts and feelings of modern people. In contrast, the why is not so clear. That is, why was haiku able to inspire the solicitude and the loyalty of Shiki and his friends?\u00a0 What is it about the form and its traditions that fired them with such passion? Whatever it was, it is still there today. One of the things that reading haiku teaches us is that\u00a0there are many ways,\u00a0to borrow from Wallace Stevens,\u00a0to look at a blackbird, or, in this case, haiku\u2014not just a particular poem, but the form itself. In preparing this keynote, I knew the twenty or so haiku I wanted to talk about but I was not sure of the most effective order to arrange them in. As I played around with that, I began to see them in a new way, through the prism of two sets of complementary qualities: mindfulness and imagination on the one hand, \u00a0lightness and stickiness on the other. Both have to do with the generosity of haiku and I think it may be this quality, a kind of generosity in the form itself, that spells the why.<\/p>\n

Janine Beichman<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>is Professor Emerita of Daito Bunka University. She is the author of\u00a0<\/span>Masaoka Shiki<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(G.K.Hall, 1982), the first biography of Shiki in English; the augmented edition is\u00a0<\/span>Masaoka Shiki: His Life and Works\u00a0<\/span><\/em>(Cheng & Tsui, 2002). She is also the author of\u00a0<\/span>Embracing the Firebird: Yosano Akiko and the Birth of the Female Voice in Modern Japanese Poetry\u00a0<\/span><\/em>(Hawaii UP, 2002). Recent essays include \u201cThe Prophet and the Poet: Leo Tolstoy and Yosano Akiko\u201d(Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan<\/em>, Fifth Series, 5:2013), \u201cPortrait of a Marriage: Yosano Akiko\u2019s Paris Foray\u201d (Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan<\/em>, Fifth Series, 8:2016) and \u201cYosano Akiko, Symbolist\u201d (Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan<\/em>, Fifth Series, 9: 2017). Current projects include the second volume of her biography of Yosano Akiko, and new and expanded editions of her translations of the poet and critic \u014coka Makoto\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Beneath the Sleepless Tossing of the Planets<\/em>and\u00a0<\/span>Poems for All Seasons.
\n<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Cheryl Crowley<\/paragraph>
<\/p>\n

\u201cDoes Good Haiku have a Gender? Tagami Kikusha (1753\u20131826) and the Min\u00f4\u00a0<\/span>School\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In \u00a0contemporary \u00a0Japan, \u00a0membership \u00a0in haiku \u00a0groups \u00a0is overwhelmingly female. \u00a0However, \u00a0in the \u00a0early part of \u00a0the \u00a0Edo \u00a0period \u00a0(1603-1868), \u00a0only 2-5% \u00a0of \u00a0poets \u00a0writing \u00a0haikai \u00a0(the premodern \u00a0name \u00a0for haiku) \u00a0were women. \u00a0One \u00a0of \u00a0the \u00a0most \u00a0prominent \u00a0of \u00a0these \u00a0early female \u00a0haikai \u00a0poets was Tagami Kikusha, whose life of incessant travel was inspired by \u00a0that of \u00a0Matsuo \u00a0Bash\u00f4 \u00a0(1644-1694).
\n<\/span>
\nKikusha was a member of the Min\u00f4 School of haikai, whose founder, Kagami Shik\u00f4, came to be called the \u201cHaikai Demon\u201d to contrast him from \u00a0Bash\u00f4, the \u201cHaikai Saint.\u201d The \u00a0style that Shik\u00f4 promoted \u00a0was simple, straightforward, and \u00a0appealed to provincials, whose \u00a0ranks at the turn of the 18th into the 19th century increasingly included women. Min\u00f4 School verse was exactly the kind that Masaoka Shiki deplored as \u201c<\/span>tsukinami<\/span><\/i>\u201d (hackneyed). In my paper, I will consider the hokku of Kikusha as exemplifying the Min\u00f4 School style. Does it fall under that category of\u00a0<\/span>tsukinami\u00a0<\/span><\/i>haiku, and if so, can this be attributed to its author\u2019s gender, or her allegiance to a populist school of haikai?<\/span><\/p>\n

Cheryl Crowley\u00a0<\/span><\/b>teaches courses on premodern Japanese literature and\u00a0<\/span>visual culture at Emory University. She completed her masters degree\u00a0<\/span>at the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. at Columbia University. Her book,<\/span>\u00a0Lightening into Dawn: Haikai Poet Yosa Buson and the Bash\u00f4 Revival\u00a0<\/span><\/i>, was published by Brill in 2007. She is working on a book about women haikai poets in early modern Japan.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n

Faryaneh Fadaeiresketi<\/paragraph>
\n

\u201cHaiku in Iran and the \u2018Haiku Effect\u2019 in Contemporary Persian Poetry\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2011, the entry on haiku in Iran was added into Encyclopedia Iranica, signaling the eventual recognition of this poetic form within the corpora of contemporary Persian poetry.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>The website of the National Library and Archive of Iran shows a record of more than sixty poetry collections in the haiku category, including both translations and original compositions. More than half of these haiku collections, written by Iranian poets, were\u00a0published between the years 2000 and 2015. The recent increasing popularity of this form in Iran could not have been imagined three decades ago when it was introduced\u00a0<\/span>as an example of \u201cEastern\u201d culture in the second half of\u00a0<\/span>the 20<\/span>th<\/span>\u00a0century. The first translators and commentators of haiku in Iran were Sohrab Sepehri (1928-1980), Ahmad Shamlou (1925-2000) and Mehdi Akhavan Sales (1929-1990), the most celebrated figures of modern Persian poetry. They played a significant role in this cultural encounter, both in the text selection and the literary transmission process. Considering the insufficient information and sources available in Persian about Japanese culture and literature,\u00a0<\/span>the\u00a0<\/span>intense struggle of these Iranian poet-translators and poet-critics to understand the haiku aesthetic is highly evident. This study aims to analyze the reception process of haiku in Iran during the 20<\/span>th<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0and 21<\/span>st<\/span>\u00a0centuries\u2014from translation to composition and impacts\u2014and delineate the dialectic of cultural persistence and change in contemporary Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n

Faryaneh Fadaeiresketi<\/strong>\u00a0is a Ph.D. candidate in Transcultural Studies at Heidelberg University. She completed her Master\u2019s degree at the University of Amsterdam and Middle Eastern Studies at Leiden University. Her research focuses on the reception of haiku in Iran through analyzing the dialectical relation between this literary reception and the image of Japan in Iran during the 20<\/span>th<\/span>and 21st centuries. She also examines the \u201chaiku effect\u201d in the formation of contemporary Persian poetry.
\n<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Sarah Frederick<\/paragraph>
<\/p>\n

\u201cMountains and Rivers on her Desk: \u00a0Novelist Yoshiya Nobuko\u2019s Haiku Diary (1944-1973)\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Well known as a writer of popular serialized novels, little known is Yoshiya Nobuko (1896-1973)\u2019s deep engagement with haiku, particularly during the Pacific War. Takahama Kyoshi, mentored by Shiki in Matsuyama took over the haiku journal\u00a0<\/span>Hototogisu\u00a0<\/span><\/em>after his death,\u00a0<\/span><\/em>later moving to Kamakura south of Tokyo. Yoshiya too moved to Kamakura during the war and she came to participate in Kyoshi\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>ku-kai<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>gatherings there. Once misunderstanding that the meeting was canceled, she showed up in her\u00a0<\/span>monpe\u00a0<\/span><\/em>pantaloons and fire raid safety hat, only to realize she would be a haiku \u201cgroup\u201d of one that day. By her own account, she found it difficult to write novels near the end of the war and focused on\u00a0<\/span>haiku\u00a0<\/span><\/em>instead, an experience she turned into the novel\u00a0<\/span>Kacho\u00a0<\/span><\/em>(Flowers and Birds, 1948) and a number of biographical sketches of women haiku poets. She also filled many small datebooks with haiku, which I have looked at in her archive and many of which find their way into a posthumous collection edited by her partner. The presentation will discuss materials from Yoshiya\u2019s wartime \u201chaiku diary\u201d and relationships among her haiku, novels, and wartime experiences.<\/p>\n

Sarah Frederick<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>is Associate Professor of Japanese Literature and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Boston University. She is the author of\u00a0<\/span>Turning Pages: Reading and Writing Women\u2019s Magazines in Interwar Japan\u00a0<\/span><\/em>(Univ. of Hawaii), and author of books and chapters on Japanese literature, media, and feminism. She is writing a book on Yoshiya Nobuko (1896-1973) and has published a translation and scholarly introduction of her work\u00a0<\/span>Yellow Rose\u00a0<\/span><\/em>(Expanded Editions). She is also working on GIS (Geographic Information Systems) digital mapping of Japanese literature with a focus on Natsume S\u014dseki and Kyoto.
\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/span>

Rebekah Machemer<\/paragraph>
<\/p>\n

\u201cShiki\u2019s Haiku in a Comic Panel: Exercises in Composition and Contextualization\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Haiku and comics share an important characteristic: both have been referred to as \u201cfilms on paper.\u201d In the case of haiku,\u00a0Sergei Eisenstein and Roland Barthes have likened certain verses to cinematic montage, and Shiki\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>shasei<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>poetry in particular is famous for presenting carefully-curated snapshots of real life in order to evoke a certain response from the reader. The same technique is used in film and comics to convey information to readers in concise, beautiful, and interesting ways. Noting this similarity, earlier this year I attempted to \u201ctranslate\u201d three of Shiki\u2019s haiku into one-page comic illustrations, which have gone on to be featured in the\u00a0<\/span>Shiki kaishi<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>and in local Matsuyama newspapers. In my talk I would like to describe my process of creating these comics, focusing on the way that supplementing each haiku with visuals allows the deeper implications of each poem to rise to the surface.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rebekah Machemer<\/strong>\u00a0is a recent graduate of Boston University, where she earned her B.A. in Japanese Language and Literature and minored in Visual Arts. She is passionate about the way that comics, animation, and film unite people and cultures, and this enthusiasm has led her to exhibit her artwork at American and Japanese comic conventions and to found the student organization BU Comic Arts. She began studying haiku in Fall 2016 under Professor Vincent, and since then has introduced Masaoka Shiki\u2019s poetry to a wider audience through her work digitizing the\u00a0<\/span>Shiki kaishi<\/i>\u00a0and by creating haiku comics which have been featured in Japanese newspapers. Currently, Rebekah is job hunting as she continues to work on personal illustration projects.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/span><\/span>
\n

Lorenzo Marinucci<\/paragraph>
<\/p>\n

\u201cShiki\u2019s Bash\u014d: Malady and Modernity of a Poetic Meeting\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of Shiki\u2019s birth, it is fitting to remember how he himself wrote a key text of his haiku poetics,\u00a0Bash\u014d<\/i>\u00a0Z\u014ddan,\u00a0<\/i>for the 200th of Bash\u014d\u2019s death. The parallelism is a good coincidence to think how the image of a poet works sometimes in a personal way, as a \u201cmeeting\u201d more than a \u201creading.\u201d To Shiki the\u00a0Z\u014ddan\u00a0<\/i>were a contrastive meeting with a poetic person, or even an ideology, named Bash\u014d. Following them we see a peculiar mix of admiration, envy (a lot), and the ideological need to \u201ckill the Buddha\u201d, shaping their form and content.\u00a0<\/span>The confrontation with Bash\u014d also lets us see how\u00a0Shiki\u2019s illness shapes both his sense of time (giving him a modern, internal subjectivity) and his struggle with space. Bash\u014d was a man who spent the last ten years of his life traveling constantly, while Shiki passed his last five basically dying in one room: and yet both found a way to write incredible poetry out of these extreme and opposite conditions. Hence the \u201cmalady\u201d in the title, and Shiki\u2019s projection of death and vitality on Bash\u014d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lorenzo Marinucci<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>is a PhD candidate in Aesthetics at University of Rome \u2013 Tor Vergata, with a project exploring the role wind and atmosphere play as aeshtetic concepts in Japanese thought and the relations between\u00a0haikai<\/i>\u00a0and modern philosophy. He translated in Italian philosophical works by Nishitani Keiji, Kuki\u00a0Sh\u016bz\u014d and Watsuji Tetsur\u014d, and has translated and edited Akutagawa\u2019s collection of\u00a0<\/span>haiku<\/i>\u00a0and Masaoka Shiki\u2019s\u00a0Bash\u014d Z\u014ddan\u00a0<\/span><\/i>(Bash\u014d in frammenti<\/i>, 2017). He was a visiting researcher at the Italian School of East Asian Studies in Kyoto and is currently based in Berlin.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/span>
\n

Christopher Maurer<\/paragraph>
<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018This Lyrical Box of Chocolates\u2019: \u00a0Lorca Discovers Haiku\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In summer 1920 the Spanish poet Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca wrote of a longing for \u201cnew songs,\u201d without \u201clyrical flesh,\u201d poems more succinct and moving than any he had ever written. Over the next few years, at least three art forms, paragons of brevity, helped him toward that goal: the lyrics of Andalusian\u00a0<\/span>cante jondo<\/em>, the\u00a0<\/span>greguer\u00edas<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(lyrical epigrams) of Ram\u00f3n G\u00f3mez de la Serna, and haiku, recently introduced into Spanish-language poetry by the Mexican Jos\u00e9 Juan Tablada. Sensing a new moment in Spanish poetry, Lorca wrote in 1922 of his\u2013and his fellow poets\u2019\u2013responsibility to \u201cprune the overluxuriant lyrical tree left to us by Romantics and Post-Romantics.\u201d Quoting from a birthday gift from the poet to his mother\u2013a series of whimsical, affectionate poems he called a \u201cbox of lyrical chocolates\u201d\u2013this talk describes the discovery of haiku by Lorca and his friends in the early 20s, its perceived similarity to\u00a0<\/span>cante jondo<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(deep song), and its transformative effect on his early poetry.<\/p>\n

Christopher Maurer<\/strong>, Professor of Spanish in Boston University\u2019s Department of Romance Studies, translates and writes about poetry in Spanish, from the 16th century to the present. He is the editor of Garc\u00eda Lorca\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Collected Poems<\/em>, co-editor with Andrew A. Anderson of his complete letters, and translator of his prose. His books include\u00a0<\/span>Obra y vida de Francisco de Figueroa<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(an edition and biography of a sixteenth-century poet),\u00a0<\/span>Dreaming in Clay on the Coast of Mississippi: Love and Art at Shearwater Pottery<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(with Mar\u00eda Estrella Iglesias) and\u00a0<\/span>Fortune\u2019s Favorite Child: The Uneasy Life of Walter Anderson<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>(the painter and writer), which won a Eudora Welty Prize and the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Non-Fiction. He is the translator, among other books, of\u00a0<\/span>The Complete Perfectionist<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>by Juan Ram\u00f3n Jim\u00e9nez, and\u00a0<\/span>Sebastian\u2019s Arrows: Letters and Mementos of Salvador Dal\u00ed and Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca<\/em>, both published by Swan Isle Press. One of his latest projects is a study of\u00a0<\/span>Jacinta la pelirroja<\/em>, a book of poems and drawings by the Spaniard Jos\u00e9 Moreno Villa.<\/p>\n

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Anita Patterson<\/paragraph>
<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Projections in the Haiku Manner\u2019: Richard Wright and Transpacific Modernism\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In the months leading up to his death in 1960, the African American author Richard Wright composed over 4,000 poems, 817 of which he selected for\u00a0<\/span>This Other World: \u00a0Projections in the Haiku Manner<\/span><\/i>, a collection that was not published until 1998. \u00a0I hope to show how these experiments with haiku mark a significant advance in a tradition of transpacific interculturality in American literature that includes T. S. Eliot. Wright\u2019s systematic study of scholarship on Buddhism and haiku, most notably by R. H. Blyth, helps to explain why his haiku-inspired poems are best understood in light of his early, formative encounter with Eliot\u2019s transpacific modernism in\u00a0<\/span>The Waste Land<\/span><\/i>, and the abiding memory of Eliot in prose published throughout Wright\u2019s career. \u00a0As we shall see, Wright\u2019s turn to haiku and revisiting of Eliot\u2019s poetry fundamentally reshaped his style and perspective in\u00a0<\/span>This Other World<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anita Patterson<\/b>\u00a0is Professor of English at Boston University. \u00a0She is the author of\u00a0<\/span>From Emerson to King: \u00a0Democracy, Race, and the Politics of Protest<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(Oxford University Press, 1997),\u00a0<\/span>Race, American Literature and Transnational Modernisms<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(Cambridge University Press, 2008), \u201cGlobal America Revisited: \u00a0Ezra Pound, Yone Noguchi, and Modernist Japonisme\u201d (<\/span>Nanzan Review of American Studies<\/span><\/i>, 2011), and \u201cT. S. Eliot and Transpacific Modernism\u201d (<\/span>American Literary History<\/span><\/i>, 2015). \u00a0Her current project studies how the opening of Japan, and the widening popularity of Japanese culture in the latter half of the nineteenth century, had a formative effect on the emergence of American modernism. \u00a0As part of that project, she has been researching how Richard Wright\u2019s adaptations of haiku, which he called \u201cprojections in the haiku manner,\u201d marked a significant advance in a longstanding tradition of transpacific interculturality in American literature that includes Ralph Waldo Emerson, W. E. B. Du Bois, and T. S. Eliot.<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/span>Nanae Tamura<\/paragraph>

\n<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOn the 150th anniversary of their Birth: Shiki, S\u014dseki, Kyokud\u014d & Matsuyama\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This presentation will provide some background on Masaoka Shiki and his associates, and his home town of Matsuyama, Japan. Matsuyama is located on the Inland Sea on the Island of Shikoku. It is famous for its hot springs, its castle, and its literature, especially haiku and Shiki. Everyone in Matsuyama seems to love Shiki now. However, there was a time when Shiki and his achievements were almost forgotten. He left his hometown when he was 16 years old and died young in Tokyo. If Kyokud\u014d Yanagihara had not been close to him, many fewer people would know about Shiki\u2019s achievements. Kyokud\u014d started the haiku magazine\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Hototogisu\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/span>in 1897 in Matsuyama. The editorial offices were moved to Tokyo the next year, and the editorship was taken over by Shiki\u2019s disciple Takahama Kyoshi. The journal still exists today, and is run by one of the largest haiku groups in Japan, led by the great grandson of Kyoshi. Kyokud\u014d also founded the Matsuyama Shiki Society in 1943 when he was 76 years old. The Society has continuously produced journals which contain precious materials and research on Shiki until the present day. Kyokud\u014d\u2019s great energy for supporting and recognizing Shiki largely came from an incident when he heard two voices talking in Gudabutsu-an, the house that Shiki\u2019s friend the future novelist Natsume S\u014dseki rented in Matsyama in the fall of 1895: \u201cIt is time for us to create new Japanese literature.\u201d I will discuss this incident and Kyokud\u014d, Shiki, and Kyoshi\u2019s legacy, beginning with a traditional \u201cpaper theater\u201d [kami-shibai] presentation called \u2018The Life of Shiki.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Nanae Tamura<\/b>\u00a0is a haiku poet, translator, and haiku essayist\u00a0with a column in the Shiki-shimp\u014d (Shiki Newsletter). She learned haiku the most from her third teacher, Kiyoko Tsuda who was a disciple of Takako Hashimoto and Seishi Yamaguchi. She serves as a\u00a0judge for both the Matsuyama City Haiku Post (for non-Japanese haiku,) and the Haiku Koshien, a nationwide haiku competition for high school students held in Matsuyama.\u00a0<\/span>She is the co-author (with Cor van den Heuvel) of\u00a0<\/span>Baseball Haiku<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(W.W. Norton, 2007) and she contributed haiku by Basho and Shiki on each page of the picture book<\/span>\u00a0Wabi Sabi<\/span><\/i>\u00a0by Mark Reibstein and Ed Young (Little Brown 2008). Her first attempt at haiku translation from English to Japanese is found in Lidia Rozmus\u2019s haiga book<\/span>\u00a0In silence\u00a0<\/span><\/i>(Deep North Press 2017). She has produced the Shiki Haiku Calendar since 2001 and since 2007 for Ehime University where she worked as a career consultant and lecturer.<\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Robert Tuck<\/paragraph>

\n<\/em><\/p>\n
\n
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\u201cHaiku Gets Political: Shiki,\u00a0<\/span>Nippon<\/span><\/i>, and Meiji \u2018Newspaper Literature\u2019\u201d
\n<\/span>
\nFor many poets and scholars in Japan and beyond, the idea of a \u201cpolitical haiku\u201d is almost a contradiction in terms. Haiku is, after all, conventionally thought of as being concerned primarily with the four seasons and the natural world, with commentary on human affairs reserved for haiku\u2019s bawdy cousin\u00a0<\/span>senry\u016b<\/span><\/i>. But as this paper will show, the division between haiku and\u00a0<\/span>senry\u016b<\/span><\/i>was extremely fluid during the mid to late Meiji period (1867-1912). Not only was it far from unusual to find haiku used explicitly as a form of public discourse on current affairs within Japan\u2019s daily newspapers before the turn of the century, in terms of readership, so-called \u201ctopical haiku (<\/span>jiji haiku)<\/span><\/i>\u201d may actually have been the dominant mode of the genre in the late 19th century. Though primarily interested in \u201cartistic\u201d haiku, Shiki too wrote a substantial number topical haiku (<\/span>jiji haiku<\/span><\/i>) in his early career at the newspaper\u00a0<\/span>Nippon<\/span><\/i>. Placing a number of Shiki\u2019s early works and other examples of \u201ctopical haiku\u201d in a contemporary media and political context, this paper highlights a side of haiku rarely remarked upon in conventional histories of haiku or Japanese poetry. In so doing, it further suggests that the politically charged nature of Shiki\u2019s early haiku is critical for understanding his reform movement\u2019s later activities and the history of modern haiku as a whole.<\/span><\/p>\n

Robert Tuck\u00a0<\/span><\/b>is Assistant Professor of Japanese at the University of Montana in Missoula, where he teaches Japanese language, literature, and history. His book,\u00a0<\/span>Idly Scribbling Rhymers: Poetry, Media, and Community in Nineteenth Century Japan<\/span><\/i>, received the Weatherhead East Asian Institute\u2019s First Book Prize, and is expected to appear in late 2018 from Columbia University Press. His research interests include poetry of all forms in Japan, particularly Shiki\u2019s work in haiku and the role of\u00a0<\/span>kanshibun\u00a0<\/span><\/i>(Sinitic literary genres) throughout the nineteenth century. Recent publications include \u201cPoets, Paragons, and Literary Politics: Sugawara no Michizane in Imperial Japan\u201d (<\/span>Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies<\/span><\/i>, 2014) and \u201c\u2018All Men Within the Four Seas are Brothers:\u2019 Transnational\u00a0<\/span>Kanshi\u00a0<\/span><\/i>Exchange in Meiji Japan\u201d (<\/span>Sino-Japanese Studies<\/span><\/i>, 2015). He is currently embarking on his second major research project, a monograph on and full translation of the nineteenth-century scholar and poet Rai Sany\u014d\u2019s colossal\u00a0<\/span>kanbun<\/span><\/i>\u00a0masterpiece\u00a0<\/span>An Unofficial History of Japan\u00a0<\/span><\/i>(<\/span>Nihon gaishi<\/span><\/i>, 1829).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/em>

J. Keith Vincent<\/paragraph>

\n<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cBetter than Sex? Shiki\u2019s\u00a0Food Haiku\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Bedridden for seven long years with tuberculosis of the spine, Shiki never lost the ability to enjoy a good meal. He ate huge quantities of food even after the disease\u00a0had ravaged his digestive tract to such an extent that it hurt to eat and food could pass through almost wholly undigested. Many of his best poems describe the taste and texture of food and the sensual and convivial pleasures of eating. Given that Shiki never married or had a relationship with a woman, some critics have argued that his ravenous appetite for food, and for poems about food, can be explained as a displacement of his sexual libido. In this paper, I read\u00a0a number of Shiki\u2019s best poems on food and\u00a0argue that they articulate an\u00a0erotics all their own that may constitute Shiki\u2019s\u00a0most important contribution to haiku poetics. If Shiki\u2019s famous advocacy\u00a0of the \u201csketching from life\u201d(shasei) technique in haiku has given him a reputation as a highly visual poet, he was\u00a0also an intensely \u201cgustatory\u201d one, for whom food was a powerful mediator of his connections to others and a lively nexus of material, cultural, and social values that inspired him\u00a0to imagine and inhabit novel forms of sociality and intimacy.<\/p>\n

J. Keith Vincent<\/b>\u00a0is Chair of World Languages & Literatures at Boston University. He is the author of\u00a0<\/span>Two-Timing Modernity: Homosocial Narrative in Modern Japanese Fiction\u00a0<\/span><\/i>(Harvard Asia Center, 2012). Recent essays include \u201cTakemura Kazuko: On Friendship and The Queering of American and Japanese Studies\u201d in\u00a0<\/span>Rethinking Japanese Feminism\u00a0<\/span><\/i>(Hawaii UP, 2017)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>and \u201cQueer Reading in Japanese Literature,\u201d in the\u00a0<\/span>Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature\u00a0<\/span><\/i>(2016). His translation of Okamoto Kanoko\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>A Riot of Goldfish\u00a0<\/span><\/i>won the 2011 U.S. Japan Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature and New Directions published his translation of Tanizaki Jun\u2019ichir\u014d\u2019s novel\u00a0<\/span>Devils in Daylight\u00a0<\/span><\/i>in 2017. Together with Alan Tansman and Reiko Abe Auestad, he is currently co-editing two collections of essays on the novelist Natsume S\u014dseki. He is also writing a book on the literary friendship between S\u014dseki and Masaoka Shiki.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Catherine V. Yeh<\/paragraph>

\n<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cJapanese Haiku and the Formation of the Chinese Short Poetry\u201d<\/p>\n

The birth of the Chinese short poetry (xiaoshi \u5c0f\u8a69) in 1921, is attributed to the efforts by Zhou Zuoren \u5468\u4f5c\u4eba to introduce\u00a0<\/span>haiku<\/em>. Zhou had studied in Japan between 1906-1911together with his brother Lu Xun \u9b6f\u8fc5. Both became leading lights in the New Culture movement since 1915, Zhou\u2019s explicit aim was to shake-up and stimulate the \u201cdepressed\u201d Chinese new poetry (xinshi \u65b0\u8a69) scene. For him, Haiku poetry represented Japan\u2019s literary modernization; it linked the past to the present. Some Chinese writers responded to his call, which resulted in so-called \u201cshort poetry movement\u201d of the1920s. Yet by the 1930\u2019s this genre had all about vanished from the literary scene. It was not until the 1980s that the genre, which now had the name of \u201cChinese haiku\u201d (Han pai \u6f22\u4ff3), was revived. This revival can also be cleared dated since it began with the first visit to China of the Japanese Haiku Society when the Chinese poet Zhao Puchu \u8d99\u6a38\u521d, who was also one of the directors of the \u201cChinese and Japanese Friendship Association\u201d, composed haiku poems at a banquet welcoming the Japanese guests. Thus began China\u2019s contemporary haiku fad.<\/p>\n

It is obvious that both the 1921 and 1980 efforts, which brought about the writing of haiku poetry in China, were ideologically motivated. Because of these beginnings, haiku poetry in China was thus linked to cultural reform ideals and international diplomacy. Both factors also accounted to the demise of this new poetic genre during the 1930s and its revitalization after 1980s.<\/p>\n

In this paper, I will explore the birth of haiku poetry in China as both a literary as well as a political product. The issues I will focus on are: in what way did the Chinese New Culture movement with its anti-traditional bias presage the demise of the \u201cshort poetry movement\u201d of the 1920s? What impact did the conflict about whether a future Chinese modern poetry should emulate Western modern poetry or Japanese modern haiku have on the fate of Chinese short poetry? Can a political decision made by the Chinese authorities in the 1980s to go for \u201chaiku diplomacy\u201d secure a future for Chinese haiku?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Catherine Yeh\u00a0<\/strong>is Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature and Director of the Boston University Center for the Study of Asia. Her teaching and research interests include 19th and 20th century Chinese literary, media, and visual culture. Her work has focused on the social and political implications of Chinese entertainment culture and literature, and its impact on social change in late imperial and Republican era China. She is the author, most recently, of\u00a0<\/span>The Chinese Political Novel: Migration of a World Genre<\/i><\/b>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b>(Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Press, 2015).\u00a0She is currently completing the project:\u00a0The Rise of the Chinese Actor to National Stardom: The Female Impersonator and the Cultural Transformation of Modern China (<\/i><\/b>1910s-1930s).<\/span><\/p>\n


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<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

With thanks for the generosity of the following sponsors:<\/span><\/p>\n

The Boston University Center for the Humanities
\nBoston University Center for the Study of Asia
\nNational Endowment for the Humanities Professorship
\nBU Department of World Languages & Literatures
\nBU Department of Romance Studies<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BUCSA Asian Cultural Heritage Series Part I: The Art of Letters Haiku as World Literature: A Celebration of the 150th Birthday of Haiku Poet Masaoka Shiki October 12 & 13, 2017 \u00a0Haiku is perhaps the best travelled of all world literary genres. Since the seventeenth century, when Matsuo Bash\u014d wrote his masterpiece,\u00a0The Narrow Road to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7613,7617,4210],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/asian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9545"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/asian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/asian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/asian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/asian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9545"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/asian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9843,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/asian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9545\/revisions\/9843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/asian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/asian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/asian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}