The Haiku Life of Kiyoko Tokutomi

by Patricia Machmiller

Early Life

なが性の炭うつくしくならべつぐ
長谷川素逝

ah! this woman . . .
charcoal gracefully arranged
gracefully added
Sosei Hasegawa (tr Fay Aoyagi and Patricia J. Machmiller)

This is the haiku that brought Kiyoko Tokutomi to haiku. In her own words:

I would like to tell you how I opened my eyes to haiku. That was a half century ago, when I was living in the dormitory of my school. The last year college students were a bit wild. No one wanted to stay in the room. About three girls got together and visited the dormitory inspector. He was a psychology professor who welcomed us and gave us interesting topics. That night, he said “I am going to introduce you to a wonderful haiku.” . . . [H]e stirred the charcoal fires in the hibachi with the iron chopsticks. . . . As soon as his voice reached my ears, I was startled at how such a short poem could give the image of a beautiful lady’s movement, adding black charcoal on white ashes, and inside the ashes, fire-red embers.” (Tokutomi, “The History . . .” 17).

Her life began in Japan on Kyushu Island on December 28, 1928:

Her grandfather named her Kiyoko for her happy personality. She was . . . the second child of seven to the Shibatas, a family of rice farmers. Her spring, summer and fall were marked by the family’s work planting, tending, and harvesting rice. . . . Kiyoko watched hermother and the other women of her hometown, Nabeshima, harvest silk from the silkwormsthey raised. This small community in the prefecture of Saga near the Sea of Ariake is located about 40 miles from Nagasaki. In the nearby city of Saga she attended Saga Girls’ High School. Upon her graduation in the spring of 1945, she immediately enrolled in Saga Teachers’ College where she majored in Japanese literature.
In the summer of 1945, Kiyoko’s father, heeding the warnings in leaflets dropped by American pilots over Saga, bundled his children into their winter jackets and sweaters and took them to hide in the cave that he had dug in the family garden. Her mother and one of her sisters, on their way home when the planes flew overhead, hid in a deep ditch alongside the road. In this way the whole family survived the bombing of Nagasaki.
In 1948 she graduated from college and took a position at Nabeshima Junior High School, where she taught literature and dance. Here she met Kiyoshi Tokutomi, who was teaching English there. When Kiyoshi was nine, his father suddenly passed away. At the time, he and his siblings, all born in the United States, were sent to Japan by his mother to study. . . . Kiyoshi was still in Japan when the war broke out, trapping him there.
During and after the war, food was scarce. Kiyoshi cared so much for his young students that he gave to them whatever food he acquired for himself. Kiyoko would admonish him, “You are not the Buddha; you have to eat.” He had contracted tuberculosis. With no medical help in Japan he became extremely ill. After the war ended, he was not able to return to the United States immediately, as the United States required that he first prove he had not been a traitor.
While [his mother] pursued his case in the U.S. courts, his health deteriorated. All that saved him was the streptomycin she was able to send him from the United States. Finally, in 1951, he was given permission to return to the United States where he was promptly hospitalized.
Before he left Japan, he invited Kiyoko to come to America. She arrived in 1954. His long hospitalization had not improved his condition so it was decided to surgically remove one of his lungs. She was there for the first surgery and a second surgery to fix the first and a long succession of hospitalizations thereafter.
She spent her days at San Jose City College studying English and the rest of the time at his bedside. By her own account, in her first year in the United States she could neither speak English nor comprehend what was being said. During her second year she could understand everything but could not converse. It was in the third year that she began to speak English. (Machmiller and Tokutomi-Northon 114-115)

The Marriage

They were married in 1957 and had only one child, [Yukiko]. Since Kiyoshi was not strong enough to work, Kiyoko took a job at Fairchild Semiconductor on the assembly line. Her work was noticed because of her dexterity and precision, and as a result, she was often asked to perform technical work for the engineers. The accuracy with which she kept records of the experiments and her ability to read graphs and mathematical tabulations led to her transfer to the technical manuals department, where she became a specifications designer laying out and proof-reading engineering reports. It was in this capacity that the company discovered her finely developed sense of proportion and keen eye for graphical design.
[In 1967 Kiyoshi was given a medication for a lung infection.] A possible side effect of the medication, however, was deafness. Due to the improper administration of the drug, Kiyoshi suffered permanent nerve damage resulting in complete hearing loss. ((Machmiller and Tokutomi-Northon 116)

In an attempt to reverse the hearing loss a decision was made for Kiyoshi to travel to Japan for an extended period for medical treatment. Kiyoko would stay in the U.S. caring for their daughter, then ten, while continuing to work at Fairchild. The deep bond between the two is evidence by the letters they exchanged. In the five months he was gone, Kiyoshi wrote to Kiyoko every day, sometimes two or three times a day; she wrote him once or twice a week. In all they exchanged over 280 letters. An indication of the tight bond between the two is in these excerpts from the letters:

From Kiyoko, July 22 (1967.) Your first letter arrived this Friday. I hoped I would get another one today, the 22nd, and it came. It seems this is the first time that you went into the hospital with a happy feeling surrounded by well-wishers and good opportunities. Don’t you think so?
At times we thought that luck was not on our side. But I’ve never felt this happy noticing that you stand on the brighter, warmer side of life and feel blessed in spite of being hospitalized.
Because of Watanabe-sensei, you have been given this good opportunity and are happily receiving treatment—I’ve never felt this blessed—although we are separated, I feel more content than the times when I would visit you every other day in the hospital and get to talk with you every night. Can you understand? Let’s make the best of this regardless of the result. (Tokutomi and Tokutomi 43)

Then she joked with him:

By the way, before I forget, I’d like to give you some advice. You were so happy that you wrote 主侍医, which means the Emperor’s chief physician. The Imperial Household Agency may not like it! It may be safer to call your doctor 主治医 (physician-in-charge). It would be funny if you use 主侍医 in any letters to others. I recommend sincerely that you give up the duties of the Emperor immediately and become a commoner! (Tokutomi and Tokutomi 43)

On that same day Kiyoshi was writing from Japan:

Kiyoko-san, you took care of me so well and gave me strength. I don’t know how to thank you.As my wife you poured your devotion over me, loved me, took care of me tenderly—sometimes at night tears run over the brim of my eyes just to think of it. Can I ever take care of you as you take care of me, from the depth of my heart, with a tender touch, with love, like you do to me? I know I can’t match your compassion, your tender care—but if our situation were reversed (I pray it won’t happen), I am going to try very hard to take care of you as you have done for me. When we are apart like now, I feel your devotion so strongly that I realize how lucky I am. (Tokutomi and Tokutomi 45)

After this extensive hospitalization in Japan, Kiyoshi and Kiyoko came to the realization and acceptance that Kiyoshi’s hearing loss was permanent.

Founding of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society

Upon accepting this change in Kiyoshi’s health, Kiyoko decided that she would introduce him to her passion, haiku.  She hoped that at literary gatherings, where the focus was on the written language, Kiyoshi would be able to participate more easily with others.
To Kiyoko’s delight, Kiyoshi enthusiastically embraced haiku; it was his idea to teach haiku to English-language writers. Together they founded the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society [YTHS]¹ in 1975. (Scott 10) This is the same year that [they] joined Kari Haiku, the Japanese Haiku Group of Shugyo Takaha. Thus began [Kiyoko’s] extensive years of writing haiku in both Japanese and English. [Kiyoshi and Kiyoko] conducted the haiku meetings as a team. Kiyoshi would introduce an idea for discussion and Kiyoko would follow the discussion, translating the cogent points for him by air-writing in Japanese on her hand and forearm, which she would hold up like a tablet for him to “read” the invisible strokes as she wrote. This was their usual method of communication: Kiyoko listening to what people said, Kiyoshi reading what she wrote either in the air or on paper. Close friends would often take up the pen themselves and write directly to him. (Machmiller and Tokutomi-Northon 116)

I meet the Tokutomis in 1975 when I attended my first haiku meeting that September.

From the beginning, Yuki Teikei Haiku meetings involved a discussion of the kigo that was appropriate to the season followed by writing. Often meetings were conducted outdoors to bring the writers in direct contact with the natural world. In 1977 [the Tokutomis] published the first Haiku Journal, the official magazine of Yuki Teikei; it contained a list of kigo for autumn and winter, which Kiyoko had compiled, and several articles by Kiyoshi on writing traditional haiku. In July 1978, Kiyoshi and Kiyoko edited the first GEPPO, a work-study journal for members, which has been continuously published by the organization ever since. (Machmiller and Tokutomi-Northon 116)

For the Tokutomis tradition was very important. They not only promoted their traditions; they were interested in other traditions, as well. For example, Kiyoko and Kiyoshi always came to my house for Thanksgiving dinner. Thanksgiving was not a tradition in their house and when their daughter went off to college, they were even less inclined to make a big meal. However, they both enjoyed being introduced to the traditional foods of an American Thanksgiving, the roast turkey, the stuffing, the mashed potatoes, and the cranberry sauce. Kiyoshi particularly loved the pumpkin pie; Kiyoko not so much. She said she had eaten enough pumpkin during the war that she had no desire to eat another pumpkin. She preferred apple.
Wherever Kiyoshi was, because of his deafness, note-writing was part of the mix. He loved young people and he was very adept at engaging our two teenage boys in conversation by writing notes back and forth to them. One Thanksgiving my mother, who was visiting from South Dakota, was sitting next to him. Suddenly in the midst of the general din, Kiyoshi and my mother burst out laughing. In their exchange of notes, he’d sprung a joke on her. He loved jokes—even practical jokes. When their notes were passed around the table, one person after another burst into laughter as the joke was revealed.
The year that Kiyoshi died, I invited Kiyoko to come for Thanksgiving dinner, but she declined saying she didn’t feel up to it. We were about to sit down to eat when the doorbell rang. It was Kiyoko. Kiyoshi had come to her in a dream and told her I don’t know where you are going to be tomorrow but I’m going to be at the Machmillers’.

Later Years

Kiyoko’s initial return to Japan was in 1964 when she brought [Yukiko] to meet [Yukiko’s] grandmother and great grandmother. . . . It would be another 15 years before she would return to Japan. (Machmiller and Tokutomi-Northon 116)

On July, 1, 1979. Lillian Giskin and I, accompanying Kiyoko Tokutomi, landed in Seoul, South Korea; Air Force One carrying the US President, Jimmy Carter, had just departed after he completed a State visit to South Korea’s President Park Chung Hee. We were attending the Fourth International Poetry Conference hosted by South Korea. The Park regime under a 1972 constitution had imposed a very harsh, authoritarian rule on South Korea. During his visit “President Carter asked President Park to abolish the emergency decree forbidding criticism of the Government and to release dissidents who had been placed under house arrest during his visit, and Mr Cyrus Vance, the Secretary of State, who accompanied him, presented two lists of over 100 political prisoners and requested their release.” (Keesing’s Record of World Events 29799) Among those imprisoned was the prominent South Korean poet, Kim Chi Ha. This was the atmosphere we found at the conference. There were protests against the government and people led away by uniformed officials. Since the signs were in Korean, it was hard to know exactly what was happening. What was clear was that tensions were running high. When I asked Kiyoko about what was going on, she said, “The Koreans fight with their poems.” It was in this highly charged state that Kiyoko was verbally accosted by four Korean poets; they were expressing their anger at the abuses that the Japanese had inflicted on Koreans prior to and during WWII. I watched as she quietly and graciously apologized without equivocation for all the pain caused by the Japanese government. I could see that her sincerity won them over. In her charming way she made many friends for Japan at that conference.²
Following the conference the three of us continued on a two-week tour of Japan. We had lunch in Nabeshima in the house where Kiyoko was raised.

How I love it
the sea of my hometown . . .
cherry petal shell (Tokutomi, Kiyoko’s Sky 27)

We toured Kyushu Island, saw the Gion Parade in Kyoto with its centuries-old floats adorned with treasured tapestries, visited Nara’s famed temples, and attended the all-day Kabuki Theater in Tokyo.

This trip would become the beginning of many regular trips. She delighted in traveling to Japan, and in her later years she usually scheduled three-week excursions once a year. She enjoyed the prospect of visiting places in Japan that she had not yet seen. The many people—musicians, artists, writers, as well as former classmates—that she met on her journeys were unfailingly generous in their welcome. Even with the outpouring of hospitality, by the third week she would feel the tug of home, and she would be ready to return. (Machmiller and Tokutomi-Northon 117)
Kiyoshi died in 1987. This was a terrible loss to Kiyoko. She suffered a deep depression and lost her appetite. Once she was hospitalized because she was so weak she fainted.

Lost—with my husband—
my wish to play jokes
April Fools’ Day (Tokutomi, Kiyoko’s Sky 74)

Kiyoko continued on with the work they had started together in the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society. Her leadership style was more indirect than Kiyoshi’s: she tended to listen, to give encouragement, and to offer guidance when asked. In 1997 she was invited to speak at the Haiku International Conference in Tokyo about what she and Kiyoshi had accomplished. On this trip she led another group of haiku poets [Alice and Alex Benedict, June Hopper Hymas, Lynn Leach, Patricia Machmiller, and Fay Aoyagi] in an exploration of the historical places of Japan. They visited Kyoto, the cultural center of old Japan; Matsuyama, birthplace of Shiki; Mt. Yoshino, with its hermitage of the 12th century poet, Saigyo; Sado Island, land of intellectuals exiled during the shogun era; and Tokyo, with its Edo past. In Tokyo the poets were invited to dinner at the home of Teruo Yamagata, long-time member of YTHS and member and last president of Yukuharu. Poets Jerry Ball, Garry Gay, and Claire and Patrick Gallagher joined Kiyoko’s party there. Everywhere the poets went they met modern Japanese writers of haiku and renku, who greeted her with great warmth and enthusiasm.
She continued to write haiku in Japanese and English and in 1999 she was named dojin in Kari, a designation in Japan given to the most accomplished members. In 2000, the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society celebrated its 25th Anniversary. Speaking at the dinner celebrating this event, she modestly gave credit for the success of Yuki Teikei to its long succession of presidents starting with Kiyoshi. Kiyoshi had decided early on to pass the torch to others, and Kiyoko attributed the Society’s ability to attract and retain creative talent to this decision.
In September 2001, she was invited to read at the celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the US-Japanese Peace Treaty held in the Bay Area.
. . . She has spent well over thirty years teaching Japanese in various locations in the Santa Clara Valley and many years teaching calligraphy and Japanese at Yu-Ai-Kai, the Japanese Senior Center in San Jose.
. . . [After she retired she moved from San Jose to] Ben Lomond, a town in the Santa Cruz Mountains south of San Jose [where] . . . redwoods and the nearby creek [could be] seen from her windows season after season [and] can be found in the haiku she has written since 1994.
In August 2000, she was diagnosed with cancer. . . . She [was] also diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. . . . (Machmiller and Tokutomi-Northon 117-118)

I bask in the winter sunshine
of the calligraphy
“Returning Home” (Tokutomi, Kiyoko’s Sky 81)

Her book of haiku, Kiyoko’s Sky, was published in December, 2002 (K. Tokutomi). She read from it at the Yuki Teikei Winter Party; two weeks later she died on Christmas Day, 2002.

Kiyoko Tokutomi’s Poetics

Kiyoko Tokutomi studied with Shugyo Takaha, haiku master of Kari Haiku Society of Tokyo, Japan, since 1975. In an introductory commentary to her book, Kiyoko’s Sky, he wrote:

Kiyoko Tokutomi is one of those rare haiku poets who follow yuki teikei (the traditional Japanese form with a seasonal element or kigo) both in English and Japanese. To understand the background of her haiku, we should keep in mind that she lives in Ben Lomond, California, on the West Coast of the United States. I have heard that spring in California comes early, and by mid-February, many people have started wearing short-sleeved shirts. Cherry blossoms bloom in full in March or April, the same time as in Japan. They even have a Cherry Blossom Festival. Their summer is relatively cool along the coast. In San Francisco, it seems that one needs an overcoat on a summer evening. Though there is no lingering heat like in Japan, there are heat waves, referred to as Indian summer, which come in September and October. Winter is their rainy season and especially around New Year, it rains often. It is then that you can see a rainbow. Therefore, “rainy season” and “rainbow” would be winter kigo there.

In a letter to me sometime in 1985 Mrs. Tokutomi reported on her Japanese haiku group’s activities:

“Here in the US, an ocean away from Japan, access to Japanese culture is limited, and we have to grope in the dark when we write haiku.  We decided to watch a video, Introduction to Haiku, on NHK TV, which featured Shugyo; we also criticized each other’s work at the monthly kukai [a meeting for the purpose of writing and judging haiku]. We began to read each other’s haiku more intensely and with greater appreciation. We live in an English-speaking society, but one night each week, it a pleasure for us to speak in Japanese. Sometimes we lecture each other on Japanese expressions we have forgotten and the kukai becomes a study of the Japanese language.” (Takaha 14)

In her haiku the redwood appears throughout the seasons.

With its redwoods
springing to their full height
the mountain laughs

Redwood
on its top the presence of
summer moon

The redwood’s
intended destination
towering autumn sky

Withering blast!
redwood forest
thrown into confusion

Is there a redwood forest near her house?  The redwood seems to be an important center of gravity for her haiku. It is very symbolic. I want to ask her what kind of tree it is. Perhaps I should visit her to see the tree for myself. (Takaha 17)

And June Hopper Hymas, a long-time student of the Tokutomis, made these observations:

Some themes recur in Kiyoko’s haiku. One is of a distant childhood

A child’s New Year’s gift—
the days when I last received one
are far away

and of a remembered home place:

In deepest winter
I only think about it—
a hometown visit

It was here in a never-forgotten garden that her father had cleverly fashioned a koi pond so a stream would pass through it, keeping the water always fresh:

White camellia—
my father loved this garden
now so forlorn

Her home on the island of Kyushu was very near to the sea. On a visit to Japan in 1997 Kiyoko and a group of Yuki Teikei members traveled to Sado Island where we watched some beautifully performed traditional dances at a reception the local mayor had arranged in our honor. Sado, a remote island used by the Tokagawa shoganate as a place of exile, has preserved many of the traditional folk arts. One of the songs, “Sado Okesa,” Kiyoko remembered singing during her childhood on Kyushu. Sado and Nagasaki, we learned, were major seaports during the rule of the shogun and communicated by sea. Kiyoko had long wondered how she had come to love a Sado folk song and now she knew.

How I love it
the sea of my hometown . . .
cherry petal shell

In this haiku she is referring to sakuragai, the fragile pink shell of a tiny crustacean. Sometimes found on ocean beaches, and prized for its delicate beauty, the shell’s name and appearance signify cherry blossoms. The fleeting beauty of cherry blossoms has a special significance for Japanese people. Her use here of the cherry petal shell, a spring kigo, evokes feelings of tenderness and a deep recognition of the transience of life. (Hymas 9-10)

Fay Aoyagi while translating Kiyoko’s haiku made these observations:

Although we know from Kiyoko’s renku writing that she can write from her imagination, we find that when she writes haiku, she writes only from her direct experience. She sketches small but precious moments of happiness, which she is able to discern in her immediate surroundings: rivers, ponds, and the woods near her house. She describes her ordinary life as a widow, a mother, and a grandmother. She left her birth country as a young woman and spent her adulthood in a land where everything is fast-paced and many people are eager to be recognized. She is a strong-willed woman, who is not afraid of speaking her thoughts. But at the same time, she has never lost her love for subtlety, modesty and gentleness. . . . . Though she does not place herself at center stage in haiku, we feel her gentle, but keen eye. The power of her haiku is simplicity. With very few exceptions she uses the traditional 5-7-5 form in her Japanese haiku. (Aoyagi 125)

Kiyoko’s simplicity, it turns out, can be very deceptive as seen by this example:

minasoko no ishi marumaru to haru no koi

water bottom/’s/stone/round-round/-ly/spring/’s/koi

On the pond’s bottom
a round, round stone
and this spring carp (Tokutomi, Kiyoko’s Sky 87)

I too had noticed Kiyoko’s way of writing:

Her approach to writing was very direct: she would look out at a scene, trust her ability to discern the important, and write without any apparent inhibition, always being true to what she felt at that moment. Like a highly skilled painter, her writing had just the right tone and color to perfectly balance the mood of her expression. The deftness with which she wrote her delicate images always surprised me. To be able to write so skillfully in a second language is the sign of a great sensibility. With her life propelled by caring for Kiyoshi’s physical (the whole time I knew Kiyoko and Kiyoshi, his health was precarious) and mental needs (he was an innovator originating, for example, the first English-language haiku study journal and with her help starting a mathematics competition between United States and Japanese high schools) as well as working full time to support her family, I am sure getting time to write was difficult. She never mentioned writing for the Japanese Haiku Group, Kari, and it was not until, as a member of a group accompanying her on a trip to the 1997 Haiku International Conference in Tokyo, Japan, that I learned that she was studying under Shugyo Takaha and that her haiku had been published in Kari, the official magazine of the Kari Group. . . .
Kiyoko’s haiku are in the formal, traditional style whether she is writing in English or Japanese. Her work in English always begins with a capital letter; the 5-7-5 structure has consistently been part of her haiku practice. . . . The language she uses, whether writing in Japanese or English, is always simple and direct and so we have chosen vocabulary that honors this simplicity of expression. (Machmiller, “On Translating . . .” 126-127)

In 2000 it became clear that Kiyoko had developed Altzheimer’s; she was house-bound so I would visit her once a week in her home in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Her ability to converse in English fell away and since I don’t speak Japanese, we did not talk much. But we wrote haiku. It was my hope that she would write in Japanese because, as a dojin in Shugyo Takaha’s Kari, she was expected to send ten haiku to him every month. But I was unable to communicate this to her. Instead, my presence seemed to be the prompt she needed to write haiku in English. Which she would do. After our writing session, we would share what we wrote. She had always written haiku, whether in Japanese or English, in the five-seven-five form. This did not change. I could see on her paper the pencil marks where she had been counting the syllables. These hand-written drafts of her work now reside in the California State Library. Here is a haiku written during that time period; she was also being treated for colon cancer:

Chemotheraphy
in a comfortable chair—
two hours of winter (Tokuomi, Kiyoko’s Sky 111)

Sometimes during our exchange, I might suggest that a particular haiku could be improved by, say rewriting the first line. She would ask what did I suggest. I would ask her to take a fresh piece of paper and write twenty first lines from which she could than choose a replacement. Or I might suggest she choose a different adjective by writing down twenty adjectives.
Here is a haiku revised in this manner:

Such musical green
the tree leaves washed with rain
quiet winter morning (Tokutomi, Kiyoko’s Sky 111)

But the essence of Kiyoko’s haiku, as the reader can see from the later examples of her English-language haiku, is lightness:

So lightly it goes
and so lightly it comes back
—the swallowtail (Tokutomi, Kiyoko’s Sky 64)

With the barest language and the simplest observations, her images touch us so lightly that we are left wondering what was it that she, like the swallowtail, did to open our hearts. We cannot see the effort, for there is none. There is only purity of spirit, transparent and uplifting. (Machmiller, “On Translating . . .” 126-127)

Citations

Aoyagi, Fay. “On Translating Kiyoko I.” Kiyoko’s Sky. Kiyoko Tokutomi, translated by Patricia J. Machmiller and Fay Aoyagi, Brooks Books, 2002.
Keesing’s Record of World Events (formerly Keesing’s Contemporary Archives). Volume 25, August, 1979, Korea, United States, p 29799.
Hymas, June Hopper. “Looking Upward: The Haiku Of Kiyoko Tokutomi.” Kiyoko’s Sky, Kiyoko Tokutomi, translated by Patricia J. Machmiller and Fay Aoyagi, Brooks Books, 2002.
Machmiller, Patricia J. “On Translating Kiyoko II.” Kiyoko’s Sky. Kiyoko Tokutomi, translated by Patricia J. Machmiller and Fay Aoyagi, Brooks Books, 2002.
Machmiller, Patricia J. and Yukiko Tokutomi-Northon. “Kiyoko Tokutomi—a Life in Two Worlds.” Kiyoko’s Sky. Kiyoko Tokutomi, translated by Patricia J. Machmiller and Fay Aoyagi, Brooks Books, 2002.
Scott, Tei Matsushita. Diary of Kiyoshi Tokutomi. By Kiyoshi Tokutomi. Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, 2010.
Takaha, Shugyo. “California and the Haiku of Kiyoko Tokutomi.” Kiyoko’s Sky. Kiyoko Tokutomi, translated by Patricia J. Machmiller and Fay Aoyagi, Brooks Books, 2002.
Tokutomi, Kiyoko. “The History of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society.” Young Leaves: An Old Way of Seeing New, Haiku Journal, Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, vol. 7, 2000, pp 17-23.
Tokutomi, Kiyoko. Kiyoko’s Sky. Translated by Patricia J. Machmiller and Fat Aoyagi, Brooks Books, 2002.
Tokutomi, Kiyoshi and Kiyoko. Autumn Loneliness: The Letters of Kiyoshi and Kiyoko Tokutomi, July-December, 1967. Translated by Tei Matsushita Scott and Patricia J. Machmiller. Hardscratch Press, 2009.