MITSUAKI KOJIMA

"School's out!" is the screaming voice Sosuke Kanda likely heard in his haiku. Satoru Kanematsu conjures an August long ago when children ran screaming in fear.

Small boys
big voices in the alley
summer vacation

Grand fireworks
none of the kids know
the air raid

Tezukayama Gakuin University sophomore Harumi Miyake has a few exams left to do.

She turned in a homework assignment correlating the traces made by insects and monsoons to Peter Duppenthaler, her professor of haiku in English.

In the same way that broken umbrellas dot the path taken by a typhoon, the receding edge of the monsoon season can be plotted by the number of forgotten umbrellas.

Midterm exams
I can't find
a vacant seat

Rainy day
traces on the wet road--
slowly

End of the rainy season
plastic umbrellas
at the station

Shizuka Suzuki received a "Wish you were here!" kind of postcard from a friend on vacation in Bali.

Though she isn't going anywhere exotic, she picked up this refreshing haiku by twirling postcard racks in Tokyo. Reiko Nishimura is spending a slow summer season reminiscing in Sakura, Chiba Prefecture.

Blue seas, skies
choosing a postcard
as if abroad

Hazy basin
where she lived last years
here I am

Takashi Ikari wrote his haiku at a haiku conference in Sweden. Traveling all the way to Stockholm and Goteburg, he found himself. Kagoshima University student Maiko Hida prays she'll find someone new.

Here I am
surrounded by European languages
slightly hot

Shooting star
hope I get a nice guy
one, two, three

Yuji Hayashi and other professors at Seinan Jo Gakuin University hope to instill a deeper appreciation of nature by organizing an international haiku workshop and contest with an "Autumn Trees" theme. Readers of the Asahi Haikuist Network are invited to enter by sending postcards marked "Seinan Jo Haiku Contest" to the International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun at the address shown below. The deadline is Sept. 26. Nine winners will be announced by David McMurray during his lecture on "Poems for Mother Earth" to be given Oct. 14 from 1 to 3 p.m. at the International Village Center in Kita-Kyushu. For more information write <haiku@seinan-jo.com>. Here's a haiku by Hayashi:

Clinic's eaves
young swallows show off
big red throats

Want to try composing haiku ?

Back numbers

The next issues of the Asahi Haikuist Network appear Sept. 1, 15 and 29. Mail haiku to David McMurray at the International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun, 5-3-2 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-8011, fax 03-5541-8539, or e-mail <is@asahi.com>.