MITSUAKI KOJIMA

Have you written a haiku for your nengajo New Year's greeting cards yet? After diligently writing haiku for each of the four seasons this year, composing one last haiku should be an easy enough task. Unfortunately, the final haiku of the year can often end up sounding more like a proverb or a maxim, a rule of conduct. Many haiku fail because they either sound too trite or too grandiose, such as these poems printed in "Office Haiku" by James Rogauskas, St. Martin's Press, 2006.

Company Christmas
Parties--passive aggression
Taken to new heights

Today is payday--
For one brief, shining moment
It all seems worthwhile

Well written year-end haiku can range from the insignificant all the way to infinity, and from the mundane to the extraordinary. Jerry Ball ended what might have been just another day in the office with a haiku that transcends time and space. Kiyoshi Fukuzawa was uplifted to a similar frame of mind at an afternoon concert held near the end of what has been a sonorous year-long celebration of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 250th birthday.

End of a long day
I invite the universe
into my office

Young Mozart
beyond time and space
joins our tea

The Yeun family in Tokyo penned the following haiku on nengajo last year. It hits just the right balance between a simple moment and a vast concept.

First sunrise
our family see
New Asia

Hidenori Hiruta recently received a gray postcard notifying him that a close friend had passed away. Angelika Kolompar writes about the many shades of gray that can be seen along the shoreline of Vancouver Island.

Gray postcard
his smile rising up
deep prayer

November morning--
counting the many
shades of gray

Winter for Adarsh Maxton in Osaka is a good reason to stay in bed a little longer, and for Janette Cheung it meant staying seated a little bit too long on an Osaka-bound train.

Early winter
turning over in bed
cosy snooze

Winter chill
watching my stop pass by
on the heated train

On the day after Christmas in India, R.K. Singh laments the economic disparity among people living in Dhanbad, India. At about the same time near a garbage heap in Yamanashi, Marites C. Omori wrote about a discarded bright red ribbon.

Scrounging for scrap
in a pile of garbage:
empty Christmas

Winter rain
top of the garbage
red ribbon

Stephen J. DeGuire composed the following haiku in Los Angeles after reading about the rising number of reported bullying incidents in Japan.

One flower fallen;
The whole field diminished--
An unsettling sun

Want to try composing haiku ?

Back numbers

The first issue of the Asahi Haikuist Network in 2007 appears Jan. 13. Send haiku about the New Year to David McMurray at the International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun, 5-3-2 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-8011, by fax to 03-5541-8539, or by e-mail to is@asahi.com.