Poet Profile

Judit Vihar

Judit Vihar is a translator and a literary historian. Since 1975, she has been teaching at Eötvös Loránd University Budapest and also at the Károli University Budapest since 1996. She has been the president of the Association of Japanese Studies and also of the Hungary-Japan Friendship Society since 2001. In 2002, she won First prize of the World Haiku Conference, the English-language haiku competition in Japan. She also took part in the first and second European Haiku conferences. She has translated from Japanese into Hungarian Oe Kenzaburo’s The Silent Cry, a Nobel-prize winning novel (1997). She organized the World Haiku Festival Pecs in 2010.

Awards and Other Honors: Pro Universitate – Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest (2000); First prize, World Haiku Review essay competiton (2001); Medal of Dai Nippon Butoku Kai (2007); Medal of University's Bonsai Club (2008); The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon (2009).

Books Published: A japán irodalom rövid története [A short history of Japanese Literature] (Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó, Budapest, 1994); "The Spirit of haiku" in The Japanese Traditional Thought and the Present (Prague, February 1996. pp. 163–168); "If his work was at question, he was always capable of anything!” The Notion of Artist and Art as Reflected in the Short Stories of Ryunosuke Akutagawa and Yasunari Kawabata] in: Japanológiai körkép (szerk.: Szerdahelyi István–Wintermantel Péter).  ELTE Eötvös Kiadó (Bp. 2007, pp. 287–299); Ezer magyar haiku [Thousand Hungarian haiku] (Napkút Kiadó, Budapest, (2010).

behind an old hut
the well I drink water from
belongs to the past

sunset on the lake
glowing exclamation mark—
your day is finished

the tower's face
counting the lonesome tears
of the willow

birds singing,
the pear-tree flowering:
gulash soup on the simmer

Credits: "behind an old hut" - Euro-Haiku: A Bi-Lingual Anthology [Edited by David Cobb] (Iron Press, England, 2007); "the tower's face" - Zilvervisje glimt, Haiku in - Gent - in Haiku, International Haiku Festival Gent 2010 (Uitgave Viadagio 2010); "sunset on the lake" - World Haiku Festival Pecs 2010 Haiku Anthology (MJBT, Budapest, 2010); birds singing" - Shamrock #3.