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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude to Mr. Geoffrey Fair-bairn of Melbourne and Mr. Harvey Mason of Sydney, whose unexpected and spontaneous generosity helped materially with this work. I am also indebted to Mr. Leslie Oates for valuable technical suggestions, to Mr. Peter Kelly for editorial assistance, to Mr. Gordon Kirby for arranging publication in Japan, and to Mr. Meredith Weatherby for designing the book and discovering the illustrations.

Special thanks are due to the respective publishers for permission to make quotations from the works of Alan Watts, D. T. Suzuki, R. H. Blyth, A. Miyamori, H. G. Henderson, and Arthur Waley. These quotations appear in the essay at the end of this volume.

The frontispiece was specially painted for this book by the well-known Japanese artist Tomoda Toshio, whose "haiku" name is Sōgyo. All the other illustrations have been selected from the four volumes of the Gendai Haiga Shû (Collection of Modern Haiga), edited and published by Shimada Yûkichi under the imprint of his publishing house, the Haigadô (Haiga Pavilion), Tokyo, 1915-17. This publication contained some 119 haiku paintings (haiga in Japanese), by 37 of Japan's leading contemporary haijin, skilfully reproduced in color by wood blocks. It was a limited edition which has long been out of print, the Haigadô is no longer in existence, and only a few of the artists are known to be still living. The paintings are reproduced here by kind permission of the publisher's grandson, Shi-mada Junji, with thanks to those artists who live and in memory of those departed. On behalf of all these genial haijin, the publishers and I welcome the opportunity of providing these examples of this little-known aspect of Japanese art.

Whatever accuracy there may be in the following verses is due to my predecessors in translation; while any poetic merit they may possess is the inspiration of Benten, the Japanese Goddess of Music and Poetry.

HAROLD STEWART