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

Oh elm tree! My destiny is
how you show the shape to grow old with poetry—
of noble feeling the autumn nightfall
The elm tree haiku reverberates with Shinto-like appreciation
of a tree’s natural form that in some cases might be inhabited
by higher spirit energy. The autumn nightfall haiku reverberates
with Buddhist feeling and the idea of transience of reality
(autumn is one of Ikuya’s favored words in the collection).
Isao discusses in his notes such allusions in some of Ikuya’s
haiku within particularly the Zen tradition.
Isao suggests, in fact, that Ikuya is “one of the comparatively
few [post-World War II] artists who have secured the continuity
of the long-held tradition of Japan and its beauty.” 4 Further
he identifies the presiding haikai poetics of Ikuya as based on
Edo-furyu. He delineates the characteristics of furyu in Ikuya:
. . . being always loyal to one’s own nature beyond advantages
and disadvantages and seeing oneself and reality so
objectively, staying aloof, on any occasion, even if one is
in the state of the greatest excitement, or faced with one’s
death, as to admire beauty of life and nature, rising above
the world . . . 5
Two haiku reflect the furyu connection as a kind of nostalgia
for the Edo roots of a festival imposed on the present by the
poet and as the cultivation of beauty:
one, knowing not aloof from the world
the festival of Hukagawa beauty is in the haze—
talks about Edo (81) chrysanthemums in the drizzle (83)
Ikuya’s poetics are also language based. Isao points out that
Edo dialect is a “clear and crisp way of speaking.” 6 This direct
speech is evident in this haiku:
absent-minded
just grating
a yam (18)
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96 Haiku Society of America