6/12/2023 0 Comments Basho Haiku AnalysisInstead of punctuation marks, Japanese haiku include kireji, words that serve as a kind of stage direction regarding emphasis and rhythm to be read aloud without adding meaning to the text. Which often get added in translation to make them acceptable to ears used to hearing English. Henderson points out, there aren’t any articles (a, an, the), pronouns (he, she, they), distinctions between singular and plural, or marks of punctuation. It’s tricky translating haiku from the Japanese, not only because the syntax differs from English (with verbs coming at the end of a sentence), but as Harold G. I mean haiku as even grownups put their hearts and souls into them as a worthy means of capturing particular insights in a medium that lasts about as long as the insight itself.Īs Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) wrote them in Japan, haiku were a forerunner of tweets in being a means of capturing impressions while away from home, getting just enough down on paper to kindle memories that could later be shared with others. I don’t mean the formulaic, 5-7-5 kind we teach kids in grade school to make them into little poets. The idea being that I can’t imagine a more succinct expression of what’s going on in someone’s mind on a particular occasion than what they jot down in those few syllables. It’s been a while since I’ve looked at haiku as tokens of human consciousness, so I thought I’d revisit them now that I’ve finished my book.
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