Okinawa, haiku of Hasegawa Kai

Description

Shortlisted for the Touchstone Distinguished Books Award 2018 by The Haiku Foundation!

Winner of a Haiku Society of America Merit Book Award 2019 (HM) for Best Book of Haiku!

Hasegawa Kai is best known to us in the West as a scholar and critic, especially insightful into the poetry and ethos of Basho. But in Japan he is also one of the most renowned of current haiku poets. Okinawa, his first book of haiku in English, considers the “sacred ground of Okinawa,” the remote Japanese island that has been witness to some of the most significant interactions between East and West in the past century. This is an introduction — the only one available in English — to one of the most powerful voices writing today.

“Like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Okinawa is a special place for us Japanese. Through Kai Hasegawa’s haiku, I time-travelled to the islands dotted with tragic history. I can also visualize the calm blue ocean and the vast sky that never change. Through David Burleigh’s powerful and informative notes, I hope the reader comes to feel, together with the poet, the importance of ‘peace’.”

— Fay Aoyagi

          ある夜夢にいづこの空の雲の峰

          aru yo yume ni izuko no sora no kumo no mine

                    one night in a dream
                    a column of cloud
                    somewhere in the sky


          アメリカを父日本を母大夕焼

          amerika o chichi nippon o haha ōyuyake

                    America as father
                    Japan as mother —
                    a blazing sunset



          何の神老いさらばへて大夏木

          nan no kami oi sarabaete ōnatsuki

                    what gods?
                    decrepit and ugly with age —
                    great summer trees

ISBN: 978-1-947271-22-7
Pages: 104
Size: 5" x 7.5"
Binding: perfect softbound

This reprinted edition may vary slightly in format, but contains all the content of the original Red Moon Press edition.