Born in 1985, Yūmu Yamaguchi is one of the young poets of contemporary haiku featured in the collection,
Shinsen 21, published in 2009. We have observed, in previous installments of
Periplum (see The Haiku Foundation blog archives) the startling range of poetic styles represented in this amazing anthology from Ami Tanaka's abstract verbal games to Chie Aiko's emotionally-charged sensuousness. A sampling of Yūmu Yamaguchi's haiku reconfirms the multiplicity of approaches to haiku art in Japan today. If Tanaka is a puzzle-maker and Aiko a recorder of sensation and heart, Yamaguchi is, in a word, rebellious. He writes:
淡雪や結んで捨てるコンドーム
awayuki ya musunde suteru kondōmu
light snow -
a discarded, knotted up
condom
In its surface attributes, the poem is perfectly traditional. It opens with a seasonal expression ("light snow":
awayuki ya) adding up to five Japanese sound units and signaling a caesura with a "cutting word" (
ya). So far, the verse is something that Bashō, Buson or any poet of haiku tradition might have scribbled. The rest of the poem, on its surface, is also conventional with a middle phrase of seven and an ending phrase of five sound units. Its content, of course, is obviously not the product of any of haiku's Old Masters. In fact, Yamaguchi is poking fun at them. Whereas the haiku poets who formed the genre sought connection and transcendence in Nature, Yamaguchi discovers in the snow a cold, knotted-up condom. His poem is an act of parodic mischief.
In a recent essay in
The New Yorker, Louis Menand observes that
A 'diffused parodic sense' is everywhere. The culture is flooded with ironic self-reflexivity and imitations of imitations: travesties, spoofs, skits, lampoons, pastiches, quotations, samplings, appropriations, repurposings. This has happened on the low end (television commercials that are parodies of television commercials) and the high (postmodern fiction). (110)
It seems to me that Yamaguchi's presentation of a condom in the snow belongs somewhere on Menand's continuum of low and high fun-making.
There are depths to this literary joke. The haiku juxtaposes Nature (snow) with a human artifact, the condom. The latter suggests a moment of passion that is now over. The people who made use of the condom are absent, leaving behind only a tawdry vestige of their sex act. Looking closely, we see Nature again in the poem - though not living: inside the knotted-shut latex, the semen is frozen; the sperm are dead. Instead of connection with Nature, Yamaguchi offers an image of disconnection: the lovers did not completely touch; there was no fertility, no union.
The haiku is irreverent and transgressive: a subversion of haiku tradition. In a famous anecdote, a student of Bashō once presented the master with this verse:
Red dragonflies -
Remove their wings,
And they are pepper-pods.
Bashō is said to have objected: "There is nothing of haiku here." He corrected his student's poem to read:
Red pepper-pods –
Add wings
And they are dragonflies.
Haiku, for Bashō, adds value, in this case, wings to a pepper-pod so that it might take flight as a dragonfly. Yamaguchi's haiku subtracts value. Like Bashō's student who took away wings and the power of flight, Yamaguchi's poem erases or denies connections: the connection of love, the connection with Nature, the connection of sperm and ovum - leaving us with the bleak image of a used condom in a frozen winter landscape.
This, I think, is Yūmu Yamaguchi's artistic mission: to rebel against haiku tradition and, in so doing, infuse it with new life.
Haiku is dead, long live haiku!
*
Works Cited
Matsuo Bashō. Qtd. in Philip and Carol Zalesky.
Prayer: A History. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. 223.
Menand, Louis. "Parodies Lost: The Art of Making Fun."
The New Yorker. September 20 (2010): 107-10.
Yamaguchi Yūmu. 山口優夢。『新選２１』(
Shinsen 21). 邑書林, 2009. 35. English translation by David G. Lanoue.
very interesting and informative david
the use of strict meter with modern subject matter is indeed
a deliberate two-fingers up to the establishment
the condom knotted up is interesting too
i see a sense of traditional japanese manners
where the lover did not want his sperm to mess the ground
counterpoised with the rebellious act of littering and discarding the condom
one gets a sense that yumu is also having a dig at the modern practice
of freezing one's sperm in case of future impotence
the poem in its entirety is playful and does seem to serve as a metaphor for yumu's own style
and approach to haiku
great read
slainte
col :)
Hmmn, if Yamaguchi had presented this to Basho I rather think he might have told him to get rid of the condommu. Not because it is coarse per se, but because it's trying too hard.
It seems to me as though the work is already done with 結んで捨てる not just on a semantic level but they way the phonics of 'musunde suteru' contrast the crips delight/optimism of 'awayuki ya!'.
Perhaps we could have ナプキンヌ - that way we preserve the use of katakana for the reviled object. Ok, I'm only joking with the napkin-nu. But I wonder if the orthography of コンドーム, and the underlying reason for such, is part of the intended juxtaposition?
Best wishes, John
Perhaps it was cold and beginning to snow outside their car. When finished they did not want to leave the car's warmth, and theirs. The condom was knotted before throwing it out the briefly opened window, to avoid messy splashing.
Umm, no.
::)
Is the sperm dead... I see a connection between this and the last of your comment, David sama:
Haiku is dead... long live haiku!
The maturity of the poet may be a blessing and a curse?
OBTW: Happy Holidays!
A condom in the snow is a modern incongruity and I think that's why--even though the back story is unknowable--this image works as haiku. Modern haiku has a fair number of these--odd objects of our age that seem incongruously out of place. Haiku has lots of incongruities, jumps, and juxtapositions that alter the observer's perceptions, so this kind of haiku works well with the genre.
Yet, I think it is this haiku's snow, its traditional seasonality, that brings intensity to the observation. Winter, the dead and cold time of year, the end of life, here intensifies the condom image. It emphasizes the end of lovemaking, the passion and the warmth of human emotions that are now with the passage of time dead and cold as snow. I think it is clash between the human need for warmth and the hard awareness that all our passion will eventually pass out of experience, that makes this haiku as traditional as it is modern. Transience often is the primary haiku observation when seasons are involved.
I have guessed at the meaning of the knot and get nowhere. I think it deepens the incongruity, and perhaps "ties up" the pouring of passion that here turns to ice.
The knot, for me, means there is no hope, all desire and warmth are gone out of the world, and with them almost all color...spring will come for other life, but not for any in this momento mori postmodern tongue-in-cheek commentary on (endgame for?) shasei, as I think David and merlot have implied...
more wine?
Hello all,
Just found this one by Michio Nakahara (b 1951) in his book Message from Butterfly, published last year in Japanese and English:
Spermatoza
also know it's the season
when the worms come out
(tr. by James Kirkup & Makoto Tamaki)
When David sama presented this young Japanese poet's work at HSA Southern meeting in Hot Springs, it fomented lively and insightful discussions. And, David, if I may say you are a very inspiring and insightful teacher. Bow.
Is he a rebel or is it merely a statement of fact - what is - if we empty our mind of thought judgement and conjecture, it is the latter.
There are two things going on here: first there is the craft of the haiku reminiscent of Machi Tawara utilising traditional form for tanka with contemporary subjects; and secondly the subject matter.
Of course condoms are a topic for haiku as they have been around for decades now, and are used for a variety of purposes, and are widely accessible at pubs, drugstores, and various shops and supermarkets etc...
Condoms are used for both sex, and mules (drugs), and I am sure it's almost second nature for most people to tie a knot in the condom. Not necessarily because they are tidy minded, or mindful of DNA evidence, it's just a reflex for most but not all people.
The haiku is well crafted, and that can be perceived in its English "translation", and it does have vertical axis, and is not merely a one layer poem.
I'll look forward to more English versions of his haiku.
Alan
Quote from: Gael Bage on January 06, 2011, 04:19:08 AM
Is he a rebel or is it merely a statement of fact - what is - if we empty our mind of thought judgement and conjecture, it is the latter. -Gael
When reading a poem, why empty the mind of thought, judgement and conjecture? To what purpose?
To see things as they really are - not coloured by our own experience and ego perhaps, this s why there are so many interpretations possible, because we are all unique. We try to keep self out of the equasion when composing a haiku then when reading one we do the opposite. I am not a buddist but an enlightened buddist would probably see it this way and accepts what is - as it is, many of the original haiku poets were considered enlightened . As Alan says nothing wrong with condoms as a topic, but once we start speculating .... it is in fact unknowable ... though we could give many clever interpretations coloured by experience and culture. A drug smuggler, an academic, a lover, and a prostitute might have very different thoughts and interpretations
Quote from: Gael Bage on January 06, 2011, 09:04:10 AM
To see things as they really are - not coloured by our own experience and ego perhaps, this s why there are so many interpretations possible, because we are all unique. We try to keep self out of the equasion when composing a haiku then when reading one we do the opposite. I am not a buddist but an enlightened buddist would probably see it this way and accepts what is - as it is, many of the original haiku poets were considered enlightened . As Alan says nothing wrong with condoms as a topic, but once we start speculating .... it is in fact unknowable ... though we could give many clever interpretations coloured by experience and culture. A drug smuggler, an academic, a lover, and a prostitute might have very different thoughts and interpretations
Gael, you are speaking of haiku (poems) as if they are found things, like apples or rocks, when in fact they are products of a poet's thoughts, speculations, understanding of himself in the context of his environment and culture.
Quote from: Gael Bage on January 06, 2011, 09:04:10 AM
I am not a buddist but an enlightened buddist would probably see it this way and accepts what is - as it is, many of the original haiku poets were considered enlightened .
I can't speak of enlightenment, but I can tell you a buddhist would, in accepting the poem for what it is, strive to understand the author's cultural experience and intentions, which are part of 'what is'.
well, I wrote a haiku with a condom between lantana seedlings (a pervasive weed here, hard to root out) in it, early on, and it was met with icy silence when I posted it on a forum (years ago). Mind you, it might've been just an awfully bad ku.
Someone else I know got into trouble with a haiku about 'first snow' :o on the bedspread. No overt reference to condoms or the lack of, even. (yes, Virginia, there is a connection between 'snow' & what's in the condom, )
Could it be that we're willing to accept from someone from another culture what we're not willing to accept from someone from our own?
I do like Louis Menand's concept of ' ironic self-reflexivity' that David posted. Somehow it takes me back to Barthe's 'Empire of Signs'.
- Lorin
Hi Lorin,
It might have been the lantana that caused a silence. ;-)
I've tackled a lot of lantana in my time, and it's a tree killer if left for too long, so I hate the stuff. It was seen as a sort of Victorian pot plant, ridiculous idea as it was ugly as a faux pot plant as it is now strangling trees.
I think a few people wrote haiku about condoms, or some sex related matter, and especially back in the 1990s and even early 21st Century, there was a presumption that haiku had to be "natury".
As this haiku shows, and I'm sure others, everything is inter-connected with nature.
Alan
"As this haiku shows, and I'm sure others, everything is inter-connected with nature." Alan ...
A great thought for us all to keep in mind. We are fully integrated beings and as natural as the coyote or red herring.
I've always had trouble defining the other side -- if it isn't of and/or inter-connected with nature, what is it?
:)
Don
May I ask the members interested in this poem, what, if anything has Yuumu san's poem given to you as poets?
And, might I vloluteer a reply using what the poem has given to me as a poet: mostly a different perspective. Frankly, it has galvinized my sense of subject. Generally, my poetry has a "natural" setting not linking to man-made objects bur more objects that exist in nature independent of humans or would exist without the presents of humans. Yet, I can appreciate a little more accepting a wider subject matter due in part to Yuumu san's poem and David's introduction.
I find the haiku truly reflects the poets feeling of the chill that had come over his world...it was not just a condum but a knotted up condum... I feel is it even more than a parody...but a condemnation in that he brings to mind the passion that had been there once... now hidebound and frozen.