On the reverse side of his business card, Traveling Man Tree had carefully listed his interests and affiliations:
Hiroshima A-bomb Survivors Association. My husband and I had lived in Hiroshima for nearly two years shortly after we were married. It was our first experience living in Japan. My husband, an English teacher, had grown up in a Navy family reading books on World War II, watching samurai movies, and dreaming of Japan. When he was offered a job in Hiroshima, it was a chance for him to see with his own eyes a place that for years had lived in his imagination. As for me, Japan held no special meaning, but neither did my job as a lawyer in Washington, D.C. Within a month of his job offer, I closed my fledgling solo practice, said goodbye to family and friends, and left with him for the land of the rising sun. I was one month pregnant.
Eight months later I was in labor on the third floor of Dr. Takahara’s Lady Clinic, desperately trying to convey in broken Japanese, May I now have the honorable injection please? (The injection never came and this is when I first learned the importance of speaking the language of the country where I live.)
I looked at Traveling Man Tree’s card again. I could have met Traveling Man Tree at the time I was living in Hiroshima, without even realizing it, but back then he would have been just another faceless, middle-aged businessman to me. My Japanese was so poor that it would have been impossible for me to strike up a conversation with a stranger anyway. It was only some months after settling in Hiroshima that I began studying Japanese. My husband and I were living in a tiny Japanese-style apartment. Each day as he left for work, I would hear the frosted-glass sliding door rattle shut and wonder how I was going to find a job in a country where I did not speak the language, where my American law degree meant nothing, and where no one would hire a visibly pregnant woman. To pass the time, I signed up for Japanese classes at the local YWCA. This is how I started learning Japanese, and for the next fifteen years I never stopped.
Hiroshima A-bomb Survivors Association. I had never met an A-bomb survivor face-to-face. I wanted to ask Traveling Man Tree about his experience, but I did not dare. How does one begin such a conversation? I hesitated, then decided that perhaps haiku would be a better conversation opener.
After all, it had never occurred to me while reading Japanese haiku in bed at night that I might meet someone in Japan who actually wrote haiku. In my mind, Japanese haiku poets were either long dead or living somewhere hidden away in the hills, practicing Zen in a Buddhist monastery. I had imagined haiku poets in long, flowing robes, writing haiku with an ink brush on an elegant scroll. I looked at Traveling Man Tree, in his polyester pants and polo shirt. He nodded to me kindly, unaware of my thoughts.
I would love to hear more about your hobby, I said in my best Japanese.
Golf! It’s a wonderful hobby, I’ve been enjoying it for more than forty years, he answered. I was confused. If golf was his hobby, then what role did haiku play in his life? Could it be his profession?
Excuse me. I thought haiku was your hobby.
Oh no. Golf is my hobby. I do haiku, he answered, with no apparent intention to confuse.
I considered dropping the subject entirely, but decided to make one last run at it. Well, how would you compare haiku to golf?
This question made sense to Traveling Man Tree and he answered:
When I was working at Nikko Securities, before I retired, my hours were very long. Often I had to leave for the office at seven in the morning, and I would not get back home until eleven at night. That was what it was like in those days in Japan, in the 1970s and 1980s—working all the time. Even when I was that busy though, I still had the energy to go out on Sundays and play golf. Lots of people were surprised that I could golf as well as I did after working so hard during the week. Most people, you know, just took pills and slept all weekend to recover. But I played golf—and when I did, I forgot about work, I forgot about my troubles.
I’m not saying that playing golf is an escape, mind you. Golf isn’t about running away from work. It’s just that golf can change my mood. It’s also a matter of concentration. If you don’t concentrate when you play golf, your game won’t go very well. With both work and golf, concentration is important.
Haiku is different. For me, haiku is a question of feeling, of sensibility. I can’t just work sixteen-hour days and then say to myself, “Okay, if I concentrate hard, if I work at finding just the right word, I will compose a good haiku.” I need to change how I approach the world. I need to look at the flowers and the grass beside the road. I’ve got to try to write poetry about what I see around me. I believe that the more I approach haiku in this way and the more I understand the essence of haiku, the better my poetry will be.
I asked Traveling Man Tree if he would show me one of his haiku. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a wrinkled piece of paper. Smoothing it out on his knee, he wrote:
潮風をたもとにいれて吊るしびな
shiokaze o tamoto ni irete tsurushi bina
a sea breeze
billowing in the sleeve
of hanging dolls
I wrote this haiku during the Doll Festival in March. My wife and I had gone to the baths at Inatori on the eastern shore of the Izu Peninsula. The town was decorated for the festival, with strings of little dolls hanging everywhere. The dolls billowed in the breeze, and their kimono sleeves fluttered gently, waving like silent chimes. This haiku gives me a feeling of peace and rest. My haiku master thought this was a good poem.
I wanted to ask Traveling Man Tree what he meant by “haiku master,” but he was now asking me questions. How long had I lived in Japan? Where in America was I from?
I had learned in Japan to rein in my very American habit of revealing a mass of personal details in first encounters. When I did make the mistake of giving long, detailed answers to such questions, the response back was either a nervous giggle or a blank stare. In Japan, my story was simple. My name is Abigail. I am an American. I grew up in Maryland. Because my identity is reduced to basics in Japan, I feel more at ease here than anywhere else. In the United States, people look at my frizzy brown hair, glasses, and thin, intense face and say, Are you sure you’re not from New York? When they learn my mother is from South America, they look at me with skepticism. I try to help them out by saying, I know I don’t look it—I take after my father. And having a Catholic mother and Jewish father makes me not quite a member of any religious community. In Japan, I am unambiguously, incontrovertibly non-Japanese. I fit the profile perfectly, and so I shed layers of complicated history and am much lighter for it.
Traveling Man Tree next asked if I liked haiku. Yes, a lot, although I have never written any of my own, I answered. We were silent for a while. I reread his haiku: a sea breeze billowing in the sleeve of hanging dolls. I had never thought of writing my own haiku. Now I wondered why. I found myself answering the question aloud, forgetting my rule of not giving too many personal details in first encounters. Frankly, I don’t think I have a poetic soul! I never kept a journal as a young girl. I never went through that phase of writing poetry as an adolescent. I can’t imagine starting to write poetry now. Traveling Man Tree nodded knowingly and replied, Oh, lots of Japanese people who never think of themselves as the poetic type write haiku. One of the most famous haiku groups, at the prestigious Tokyo University, has always attracted more science and engineering students than literature majors.
Neither Traveling Man Tree nor I had been paying much attention to the aisatsu ritual, but it was now Traveling Man Tree’s turn to offer remarks. He stood up, took the microphone, and motioned to me as he spoke. I want you