Thursday, June 30, 2011

Important document

Reading Max Verhart's article in the recent ed. of Modern Haiku (42.2 summer) I searched the web for "The Matsuyama Declaration". This is very important and upfifting reading if you're - as I am - a bit annoyed and fed up with the eternal discussion of the rules of haiku.

There seems to be, as in most convert's circles, a tendency to be more Japanese than the Japanese themselves. This is an akward "movement" in that respect, that "they" seem to adhere to haiku rules long abandoned - or reformed - by the Japanese haijin themselves. In broad terms.

Of course there are the same disagreements around haiku in Japan as there are in the West - more or less. But, from what I can sense, there is a broader sense of how all the (sub-)genres of haiku taken together is haiku. Haiku is a many-branched river, but all of the water is part of the overall stream ...

Read this document and learn how (some) Japanese think about haiku in the West in the 21. Century.

Read The Matsuyama Declaration here

1 comment:

  1. Johannes, so much more effort is wasted on discussing haiku than on capturing that elusive 'mono no aware'. May I invite you to submit six haiku to 'the zen space'? http://thezenspace.wordpress.com

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