20 YEARS OF THE HAILSTONE HAIKU CIRCLE (KANSAI, JAPAN)

 20 YEARS OF THE HAILSTONE HAIKU CIRCLE (KANSAI, JAPAN)

Yesterday I received the latest collection of haiku by the Kansai-based haiku circle, "Hailstone". This anthology is for 2020, its twentieth year! Congratulations on a significant jubilee, which throws a light on the unique and important phenomenon of "international haiku". Like any significant jubilee, this poetic anniversary calls for an in-depth review.

Two questions arise: the first relates to the "Hailstone" circle itself, and the second to "international haiku."

Hailstone Haiku Circle was founded twenty years ago in Kansai, the Kyoto-Nara-Osaka historical center of Japanese culture, and includes a large number of Japanese there who write haiku in English, which means that they want to take their cultural experience outside ("soto") the framework of traditional culture. In a new era of cultural change at the beginning of the 20th century, Ogiwara Seisensui created a well-known haiku movement, the Jiyuritsu, which radically separated their haiku from Japanese tradition, merging Japanese culture with Western ideas, and to which new masters of Japanese haiku, such as Taneda Santoka and Ozaki Hosai belong today. Hailstone Haiku Circle was established and has been led for twenty years by the British poet and Japanese scholar Stephen Henry Gill. Its membership is dynamic, and many foreigners living in this historical and cultural heart of Japan participate.

The issue of "international haiku" is particularly interesting. As a pioneer of this genre, which was established in 2000 in my then-hometown of Tolmin, Slovenia, together with about a hundred haiku poets from Japan, America, France, Britain, Russia, Belgium, the Netherlands and the entire post-war Balkans, I watched the movement, soon after its establishment, split into the American concept of "global haiku" and the Japanese concept of “international haiku”. What is the difference between these poetic tendencies? The main difference is that only "international haiku" takes multiculturalism as its basis, while in "world" or "global" haiku we have a dominant culture that assimilates associated cultures.

Seven years later, together with the translator and Japanese scholar, Richard Gilbert, one of the few Americans who remained committed to the concept of "international haiku", we tried to define the principles of this genre and movement. On the island of Yakushima, I wrote a poetic declaration and Richard, a translation thereof. Both of these documents were published in 2012 in Kamesan’s World Haiku Anthology on War, Violence and Human Rights Violations:

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YAKUSHIMA DECLARATION

Our basis for an international haiku genre

(September, 2007, Kumamoto-Yakushima)

- The genre of international haiku is about crossing cultural borders.

- Friendship must be considered the foundation stone of international haiku.

- The genre of international haiku has the qualities of soto (‘outside’).

- Free form (organic form) is more essential for international haiku then any closed or specific form.

- The Japanese poets of “soto” ( jiyuritsu - “free rhythm” poets) are pioneers of the international haiku genre.

- Poets and translators are the two legs upon which the genre of international haiku stands.

- In the genre of international haiku, personal mythology may replace the role of collective stereotypes.

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In the unfavorable international conditions of aggressive globalism, and with the growth of international conflicts and pandemics, the work of the poetic circle Hailstone looks like a real oasis of international haiku and Stephen Gill (Tito) is one of the founders of this genre, although he may not have thought about it. What distinguishes this poet from other actors in the world of haiku is his love for Japanese culture and a sense of established, poet-worthy democracy. While other actors from the world of haiku have embarked on a path of national, imperial or personal egoism, Gill has built a multicultural platform in the heart of Japanese culture that grows out of the Japanese tradition. Therefore, the twentieth anniversary of the Hailstone Haiku Circle is a significant event and good news for all lovers of the international haiku genre.

In the collection of 2020 entitled "I Wish," Hailstone presents 57 poets. A total of 217 haiku were published in individual sections, including as several rensaku (haiku sequences). As with their earlier anthologies, reading this collection is a poetic holiday. There is no compulsion to be a poet, as we often see in the West. All the poems are like "kisses of the song of life".

To illustrate, here are just a few haiku:

All night for love?

On the eve of rice-planting

frogs cheer

- Takashi Itani

Early spring morning;

the moon sets, its pallid face

that of a drinker

- Sosui

In an old town, Ouda

a September shower brings forth

a pleasant chat

- Akishige Ida

Among violets

shrine for the god of

first spring frost

- Robert McLean

Sensing the weight

of water in the sky above ...

the poet on his bench

- Tito

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