Roadrunnner Haiku Journal

February 2009 Issue IX:1

Gendai [21st Century-Modern] Haiku Translations

by Hiroaki Sato

Fujiki Kiyoko (dates unknown)

Fujiki started publishing haiku in 1933. She became a prominent figure in the Shinkō (New Rising) haiku movement, and disappeared in 1940 when its leaders were arrested for advocating liberalism and “anti-traditionalism.” Practically nothing else is known about her.

One feature of Shinkō haiku poets was a rejection of seasonal elements, but Fujiki often employed them. The haiku selected here were all published in the magazine Kikan (Flagship), which played a leading role in the Shinkō movement.

In an old bed a devil grabbed me by my black hair

Pity the stokers at the ship's bottom summer has begun

Early autumn's good ocher-colored my limbs my body

Insomnia

In winter rains I'm listening to a nurse's tale

An Oppressed Wife’s Memo

Lonely spring a wife lives as if she were machinery

The quiet sound of a falling mosquito resounds in my body

Through my temples a locomotive dashes dark

A parting

Trees budding officers and men quietly return

Fingerprints of desolation everywhere clouds white

On the tatami of August a woman has grown fat

Katydids my perspective gradually narrows

In a monks' quarter I swallow down painful love

I wouldn't want war and women to be separate

Boy going to war reticent the sukiyaki singeing cooks down

Killed in battle all his thirty-two teeth untouched

Under a clear sky healed I smell my own loneliness

Having gotten used to the depth of war I love a dog

Not being the widow of someone killed in battle loneliness

Friend's husband in a distant battlefield the sea glistens

I turn off the lights and enjoy the solitude of solitude

Having lived single-mindedly I’ve lost my goal