Frogpond 34.3 • Autumn 2011 (pdf) - Haiku Society of America

Ito Isao (trans.& ed.). 100 Selected Haiku of Kato Ikuya,
Edo-style Aestheticism. Tokyo: CHUSEKI-SHA, 2011, 104 pp.,
hardbound, 6 x 9. ISBN 978-4-8060-4752-0, ¥3500.
by Bruce Ross, Bangor, Maine
Iki Dukkah: Kato Ikuya’s Poetics of Furyu
This handsomely put together (the slipcase has paintings of
the Wind God and Thunder God), but modest, collection of
haiku by a major figure in the modern (gendai) post-Shiki
haiku movement offers a good insight into the poetics of Kato
Ikuya. The translator Ito Isao (the English versions are nicely
clear and reflective of the Japanese) who wrote the introduction
and introductory comments, as well as extensive notes
to the haiku based in part on interviews with Ito Ikuya, is the
author of a study on this poet. Isao is also the author of studies
on Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde, figures in aestheticism, and
his comments on Ikuya and his poetics are probably derived
from this focus on aestheticism.
Briefly, Western aestheticism, loosely connected to the epicurean,
and the cultivation of taste, privileges the sensibility
of the felt moment (Pater) and “art for art’s sake” (Wilde). To
quote Pater:
Only be sure it is a passion—that does yield you this fruit of
a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of such wisdom, the
poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own
sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to
give nothing but the highest quality to your moments, as they
pass, and simply for those moments’ sake. 1
The Modern Haiku Association of Japan places Ikuya in the
avant-garde movement of the 1960’s and specifically the “artistic”
school, which sought for aesthetics of expression in
haiku.” 2 Two aspects of Ikuya’s haiku are found in two of the
three haiku chosen for the Association’s anthology of modern
Japanese haiku: 3
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