by jkvincent | Dec 11, 2018 | haiku |
the snow is falling
and a white cat on the roof
is heard but not seen Yuki furi ya / mune no shiro-neko / koe bakari
雪ふりや棟の白猫声ばかり[1] This is the first haiku that Masaoka Shiki wrote. He was seventeen years old and had been living in Tokyo for two...
by jkvincent | Dec 11, 2018 | haiku |
In January of 2017 I came back from a trip to Matsuyama, Japan with a suitcase full of more than three decades’ worth of back issues of the journal of the Matsuyama Shiki Society, donated by the Society to Boston University. The journal is a treasure trove of research...
by jkvincent | Oct 29, 2018 | haiku |
As I work on a biography of Masaoka Shiki these days, I’m feeling very grateful to my friend Nanae Tamura for recommending that I buy this book at the Shiki Memorial Museum in Matsuyama last year. It’s an index of all of the haiku that appear in the standard...