Читать книгу The Haiku Apprentice - Abigail Friedman - Страница 9

It was a man from Hiroshima with a Buddha-like smile who introduced me to haiku in Japan. Thinking back, there was little else that distinguished him. He was about sixty-five years old, bald, and of middling height. He wore a polo shirt, polyester pants, and loafers—much like a golfer, which he later told me he was.

I had just finished giving a presentation on the topic of Northeast Asia to a group of about twenty elderly Bunkyo University alumni and their friends gathered in a midsize hotel in downtown Tokyo. As an American diplomat in Japan, I spent many evenings talking to informal groups like this one about world events and especially about North Korea, whose worrisome missiles and nuclear ambitions were front-page news in Japan.

It was late, and I was tired. I sensed my audience did not care what I said; they were of a generation where a foreigner speaking Japanese was enough to grab their attention.

Still, the evening was far from over. Nearly every occasion in Japan requires a brief aisatsu, a mixture of a toast and self-introduction, and I knew tonight would be no different. I had not thought about what I would say. Giving a speech in Japanese was hard enough. Although I had lived in Japan for nearly eight years spread over two decades and had spent a good ten years learning the language, I had still devoted the better part of a month preparing for this speech. I wrote a draft in English and had it translated, then asked a Japanese colleague to read it into a tape recorder. I carried the tape around with me for days, earphones on, tape recorder running, mumbling aloud as I pushed my way through the crowded streets of Tokyo. The previous Saturday afternoon I practiced the speech while sitting on the sidelines of my nine-year-old son Sam’s soccer practice, mouthing the phrases, pausing the tape now and again to look a word up in the dictionary. At one point, Sam came over to tell me his team was switching fields and that I had to move. Later, his foot appeared on the ground in front of me. I looked up at him as from a fog. Mom, tie my shoe, he instructed gently. I stopped the tape and tied his shoe, wondering as I did so whether my failure to run up and down the field cheering him on would make him a less confident adult. I finished tying his shoe and kissed his chubby leg. He ran back onto the field, and my uncertainty evaporated in the crisp fall air as the distance between us grew.

People were getting up from their chairs, and heading out. I followed them into the room next door, where there were several buffet tables, seats along the back wall, and a standing microphone in the center. I took a seat and looked at my watch. It was 9:30 P.M. By now our three children would be in bed and my husband would be quietly reading. I had missed another evening with my family. What was I doing in this hotel among strangers? Someone was at the microphone. It was hard to tune into his Japanese mid-course. I listened to his voice without hearing the words, a waterfall of sounds splashing in no predictable direction.

We were on the tenth floor of the hotel. My thoughts drifted. What would happen if an earthquake hit right at that moment? I thought I might be feeling some tremors. Earthquakes are common in Japan. At home we had moved all the bookcases away from the beds and we kept a half-dozen gallon jugs of water under the kitchen sink in case the water supply became contaminated. I tried to size up the strength of the beams facing me. If there were an earthquake right now, would it be better for me to hug the vertical beams or run to the door frame? Everyone in Japan is told to run to the door frame; I would use my wits and go for the beam. People would be shrieking and shouting. Sirens would be going off. A woman would grab her purse and then drop it when she realized her survival was all that mattered. I imagined myself crouching behind the beam, protected from flying shards of glass. I would spring into action—cool, levelheaded, reassuring people and directing them to safety. If it was a really big earthquake, I would call the State Department Operations Center in Washington from my cell phone: the first to report it, our woman in Tokyo.

The bald man in the polo shirt came to sit in the empty seat next to me, and I floated back to reality, mech­anically reaching for my business cards. As a professional woman in Japan, I had learned to get my meishi, or business cards, across early, not just because women are often underestimated in Japan, but because of an important corollary: rank trumps gender. Once they saw I was a diplomat, I came to life for my interlocutors.

I kept my meishi in a neat leather holder; his were jammed in his billfold. He spent a few moments searching through his wallet, slowly pulling out and replacing a few until he found the one with his own name on it:

This was a very odd Japanese calling card. Mr. Ōiwa had no company affiliation. What was the Numamomo Haiku Group? Did Mr. Ōiwa work there? And if so, what was his position? I knew a little about haiku, those unrhymed Japanese poems capturing the essence of a moment, usually seventeen syllables in Japanese. I liked reading haiku at night before going to bed. They were short and quick to read, and I was a busy person. I liked being able to read a beautiful haiku for relaxation while at the same time improving my Japanese-language skills.

The man also seemed to have two names. Should I refer to him as Mr. Ōiwa or as Mr. Ryojinboku? I was not sure what Ryojinboku meant, although I could see that the three characters—旅、人、木—individually stood for Traveling Man Tree. I pictured Mr. Ōiwa as a man-tree with a kind smile and warm eyes, with leafy branches delicately growing from his head as he walked, dragging roots at his feet and stopping occasionally to rest and compose haiku.

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 to welcome my neighbor. My friend is fond of haiku. She tells me she has never written haiku, but I think perhaps she is just shy. I am sure she writes excellent haiku. Perhaps she will recite some of her work for us tonight. With that Traveling Man Tree sat down and gave me a wink, and the audience turned to look at me.

What made Traveling Man Tree tell the audience I wrote haiku? I walked up to the microphone, wishing more than ever that I were someplace else. It’s true, I am very fond of Japanese haiku, I told the small gathering in Japanese. They are so beautiful and peaceful. But I am afraid Mr. Ōiwa is wrong, I have never written any of my own.

Then, partly to satisfy the audience and partly to avoid having to reveal any more of myself to strangers, I offered to recite some of my favorite Japanese haiku. The group responded enthusiastically, and so, like a schoolchild, with my hands clasped behind my back, I began to recite a few haiku in Japanese that I had memorized from R. H. Blyth’s four-volume work on Japanese haiku. Those volumes were the first, and for many years the only, set of books I owned on the subject.

夕晴れや浅黄に並ぶ秋の山

yūbare ya asagi ni narabu aki no yama

in the evening clear

of a pale blue sky, a row of

fall mountains

KOBAYASHI ISSA (1763–1827)

山くれて紅葉の朱をうばいけり

yama kurete momiji no ake o ubaikeri

the mountain darkens

stealing the crimson

from autumn leaves

YOSA BUSON (1716–83)

故郷も今は假寝や渡り鳥

furusato mo ima wa karine ya wataridori

my childhood home also

now but an evening’s lodging—

migrating birds

MUKAI KYORAI (1651–1704)

行く我にとダまる汝に秋二つ

yuku ware ni todomaru nare ni aki futatsu

I who am going,

and you who remain

two autumns

MASAOKA SHIKI (1867–1902)

After each poem, the audience nodded approval as one or another recognized a famous haiku. Ah, Shiki, sighed one. That’s Buson! exclaimed another.1

A man in his seventies stood up and said, I was in the hospital for an operation last year. Kidney trouble. As he spoke, he lifted his shirt, pointed to his kidneys, and made a cutting motion with his hand. We all leaned closer, to see his scar. There I was, lying on my side in a hospital bed in nothing but a flimsy white robe, when suddenly this haiku sprang to mind:

腎臓に管うがたるる酷暑かな

jinzō ni kuda ugataruru kokusho kana

into my kidney

a tube pierces

ah, the summer heat!

The group leaned back and laughed. Can you believe it? I’m in the hospital, in pain, cranking out a haiku! I sent that haiku in to the Nihon Keizai Shinbun newspaper, and they selected it and printed it in their Sunday edition’s haiku column. Incredible! To think that’s what it took for me to get my haiku published.

As he told his tale I quietly returned to my seat. Traveling Man Tree had made up a plate of food for me from the buffet: a bowl of cold soba noodles, a few cucumber rolls, some sushi and smoked salmon. I set the plate on my lap, pulled the chopsticks out of their paper sheath, and began to eat, as happy as if I was greeting an old friend at the end of the day. Traveling Man Tree watched me with a look of amusement on his face. You did a great job reciting those haiku. Listen, why don’t you join the haiku group I belong to?

I was flattered by his offer, but protested that I really never had written a haiku in my life. My work kept me busy enough. Traveling Man Tree dismissed my objections. That doesn’t matter. You just have to enjoy haiku. You don’t need anything more. We meet once every couple of months in Numazu. Our haiku master is terrific. I have your card. I’ll send you an invitation.

It was getting late, and people were saying their goodbyes. Before we left, we stood in a circle to perform the somewhat old-fashioned customary ending to a party. Yō . . . oh! Three sets of three rapid claps performed in unison by everyone present, followed by a single clap and then a round of applause. An elderly Japanese friend once remarked to me that young people in Japan do not seem to follow this custom much anymore, but she had added, almost as an afterthought, Just wait, though. As the young get older, they too will enjoy traditions.

Outside, the pavement was wet from rain. I hailed a cab and slid into the back seat. On the way home, I chided myself for having stood up and recited haiku that evening. I must have looked ridiculous. Who ever heard of an American diplomat reciting haiku? I could only console myself with the thought that I would never see any of these people again.