Where do you go when you compose your poems? To your study? To your living room?
I sometimes write in my house, but I usually go to a coffee shop. There, I scatter pens and narrow pieces of paper for haiku and a saijiki (kigo book) on the small table. The waitress looks curious to know what is going on and casts a peculiar glance at me.
I might also have a kukai with my haiku friends. A few topics are proposed, and participants make poems in a limited time. We make anonymous copies of the written haiku so the authors' identities are not known. Then we exchange comments on the spot.
When I was younger I once had a kukai with my friends in a corner of a bar. Some men sitting next to us were surprised, and they asked us, "What you are doing?"
"We are writing haiku."
"Haiku!? You young men are making haiku in a bar?" They were as dumbfounded as if they had happened upon a group of pandas or koalas.
People writing haiku are a little bit humorous for the general public. While ordinary people are obsessed with money-making, love affairs, or recreation, haikuists stare into the air with twisted expressions on their faces or hunch over little pieces of paper and scrawl strange phrases.
Odd behavior notwithstanding, I am always very serious when I compose haiku. When inspiration won’t come, I feel a pain akin to starvation, but when I am flooded with poetic ideas, I shake with joy. I may look funny, but I have no intention of making others laugh.
Kusatao Nakamura (1901–1983) was one of the most important poets in modern haiku and left some humorous haiku.
In the former haiku, when the poet comes near the tea hedge by his mom's house, he is delighted. He feels as if he has returned to his childhood when his mother took care of his bodily needs. The bowel movement is, for him, a symbolic phenomenon that connects him to her. An adult who talks joyfully about his physiological needs seems quite humorous.
In the latter, a sign in the middle of the tax office's flower bed reminds us that the flowers were paid for by taxes and that taxpayers should not damage them. It is a moral matter to guard flowers, but the officers treat it as a fiscal issue. How vulgar they are! Kusatao jots down exactly the words he sees and the irony in his poem makes us laugh.
Kusatao was an earnest poet and most of his haiku had serious themes. But being serious often resembles being humorous.
"I think I can show a sense of humor as much as I want, but I’m reluctant to make comical verse for humor's sake alone," said Kusatao. "Bon Shinohara [another poet] considers those haiku I created in all seriousness to be quite comical, though humor is not really part of my method."
These words suggest a key point. Intended humor yields no humor. By contrast, when a poet is honest and earnest, his poems sometimes become humorous. As the children who said "the king is naked!" were able to wake up the adults, so a frank and honest expression by a poet can make others smile.
Kusatao said, "When I have left off from poem-making for quite a while, I begin to fear that I have lost the knack; I cannot ride on the tide of poetry anymore. Then, by chance, an inspiration occurs to me and suddenly a haiku comes into existence. In such a case, I am delighted. Then I come to know that I haven't lost the knack, I am in the tide. I feel as if I got a new baby. How happy I am! At that time, I don't care about what the public thinks of the newborn haiku. The overflowing inspiration inside me is satisfaction enough."
Kusatao's comments move me deeply. He was always modest in his talent and tried to listen carefully to his inner voice.
Of course humor is a very important element for haiku, but its effect cannot be calculated in advance. All we can do is concentrate our attention on the inspiration and write it down accurately. If we can do that, the Muse will pour the light of humor on it.
The two haiku are included in one of Kusatao Nakamura's collections (kushu) Ginga Izen (The Milky Way as Ever), published in 1953.
Kusatao's remarks about humor and inspiration are found in a discussion record published in Gendai Haiku (Conetmporary Haiku), January, 1950.
