The Haiku Apprentice. Abigail Friedman

to guess who wrote them. I had watched Momoko write down her five haiku on strips of paper and put them in the cardboard box with the rest of us. It would be easy to feel obliged to choose Momoko’s haiku, or to pay homage to Dr. Mochizuki, our group’s organizer, by picking his haiku. Equality and artistic integrity, I was learning, are essential aspects of a haiku group.

      After reading through the sheets of haiku and choosing our favorites, but before reading them aloud, we took a break. I was one of the last still reading and writing. My legs were numb from kneeling Japanese-style at the low table. A woman came up to me and said, It hurts to sit like that, doesn’t it? There’s really no need to do so for such a long period of time. I looked around the room and saw that most of the men had been sitting cross-legged and many women had shifted from a straight kneeling position to tucking their legs slightly to the side. One woman had her legs straight out on the tatami and was wiggling her toes as she chatted with her neighbor. Here, try this, said the woman as she folded a zabuton pillow over and pushed it beneath my legs. I had been trying hard, too hard, to be Japanese.

      When everyone was done and our short break ended, we moved on to the next phase of the session. Beginning with the person to the right of Momoko, we each read aloud the five anonymous haiku we had selected. After each reading, the author of the haiku announced himself or herself to the group.

      My turn came and I read out the following haiku:

      被爆後の生命をつなぐぶどう棚

      hibakugo no inochi o tsunagu budōdana

      after the bombing

      life hangs on

      to the grapevine trellis

      TRAVELING MAN TREE

      あかつきの夏富士の上星ひとつ

      akatsuki no natsufuji no ue hoshi hitotsu

      summer dawn

      above Mount Fuji

      a single star

      SOUND OF THE POND

      本を措くやがて秋富士見ゆる頃

      hon o oku yagate akifuji miyuru koro

      I set aside my book

      Mount Fuji soon appears

      in autumn form

      DANCE

      風の香ににじむ水色手漉き和紙

      kaze no ka ni nijimu mizuiro tesuki washi

      the scent of a breeze

      wafts pale blue

      washi paper

      FIELD AND STREAM

      掛物を水墨にかへ夕涼み

      kakemono o suiboku ni kae yūsuzumi

      black ink hanging scroll

      now changed

      the evening breeze blows cool

      OKA TAKEHIDE

      Momoko was the last person to read out haiku. Instead of limiting herself to five haiku, Momoko read, commented on, and praised about forty of them. She would take a haiku and use it to illustrate a point or offer a suggestion, peppering her commentary with stories about her own life and writing:

      As a child, I learned how to write haiku at my mother’s side. It wasn’t until I went to college that I joined a haiku group. There was a famous haiku poet at my college, Yama­guchi Seison. My mother told me I should write to him and tell him of my interest in haiku. I did so because of my mother’s encouragement, and that’s how I joined a haiku group.

      Sometimes, while reading aloud, she would stop and give us insights into the shared enjoyment of haiku.

      It is wonderful to write haiku alone, to contemplate it, to read and reread it, and to polish it in private. We can learn a lot about our writing doing this. Yet joining with others and sharing haiku is an essential part of the haiku experience. Think about what a haiku represents. This small chalice of only seventeen sounds is, in truth, an expression of the nature of your heart and soul. There is something magical about sharing this piece of yourself with friends who have gathered together to read haiku aloud.

      The Numamomo haiku group was filled with a spirit of warmth and common purpose. We were doing haiku as a group, but instead of social pressure I felt as in a warm embrace. Kuroda Momoko did not tell us what is beautiful, but asked us to judge beauty on our own terms. This was unlike learning experiences I had had at school or at work, and there was no place for my competitive streak. The only expectation seemed to be that I contribute haiku true to myself. I left Numazu brimming with enthusiasm, determined to come up with at least one good, “true-to-myself” haiku for our next gathering. Of course, I had no idea how to do this.