Thursday, June 4, 2015

#2 Unifying Intersectional Discord within English Haiku Idioms


The systematic cultural reappropriation & suppression of people’s collective notions of self, nature, & haiku 

Haiku, it's "a cicada shell of its former incarnation, verging on extinction in the area of 

world credibility as a serious literary genre". (Robert D. Wilson's online essay "The Colonization 

of Japanese Haiku" on the Simply Haiku Journal website).

So why are English Haiku Idioms (ehi) and more specifically hokku/haiku in particular suffering 

from literary gentrification, while teetering on the verge of extinction? Well some publishers, scholars, 

critics, poets, and Mr. Wilson suggest it's due to "the effects and depth of the colonization of the Japanese 

language and cultural memory via its adoption of the German-based university system; a colonization that 

would, in time, water down the depth and aesthetic integrity of hokku". (Donald Keene, "Dawn in the 

West").

“Gandhi understood this ... the systematic and complete elimination or suppression of the native 

... language ... of one people by another. Even though the people in question might be given material 

benefits through education ... if there is systematic destruction of their ... relationship with nature. 

Stripping people of their collective notion of self is a prelude to ... the process of colonization ... 

(which) goes on today under the name of 'development' wherein success is measured by the criteria of 

Westernization. ... Gandhi fought against this form of colonization as much as against its material and 

political manifestations … Although he was not against Christianity.” (Excerpt From: Malhotra, Rajiv. 

“Being Different.”iBooks.)

Neither Gandhi nor Malhotra were referencing Japanese Poetry, still their thoughts in regards 

to colonization and its effects on native language, material benefits via western education, and our 

relationship to nature are all relevant to this discussion. Gandhi and Malhotra did so not in opposition to 

Abrahamic religions, but as a part of an effort to constructively critique them, alongside their own 

Dharmic religions. They did so in large part to prompt discussions with other interested parties. I am 

using their words to do much the same with haiku. In doing so I'm not suggesting that Japan has had its 

language eliminated; still it's hard to deny it hasn't been suppressed in regards to its adaptation in the 

literate Western World. 

Much like Chinese Characters this suppression is most evident in regards to the decline of young 

Japanese, Chinese, and Korean’s ability to remember the stroke order of their character based writing 

systems. These systematic collateral casualties of the A-W world occur as advancements in smartphone 

technology erodes and suppresses as Gandhi put it "peoples collective notion of self", their "ethnic and 

cultural identity". Yes I am aware you can input characters with keystrokes, and even awkwardly do so 

with finger strokes. Still this process of finger stroking is prohibitively cumbersome, and restricts the ease 

of use that is supposed to personify the smartphone experience. Thus instead of going thru numerous 

impedimentary steps to finger stroke in their characters in the correct order, most give in to convenience 

and dictate or type in their characters. This subtle, seemingly inconsequential change in behavior, 

inputting characters via a keyboard or vocally, rather than finger stroking characters into a text is an 

example of what Rajiv Malhotra was referring to when he stated "Cultural appropriation gives a false 

impression of equalization.” (Excerpt From: Malhotra, Rajiv. “Being Different.” iBooks.). This cultural 

appropriation is also evident in how english mukigo/senryu is becoming indistinguishable from 

kigo/haiku.

This is also an example of how Chinese, Japanese, and Korean peoples receive "material benefit"

only at the cost of the "suppression of their native language" (Gandhi). Take this logic a step further and it 

becomes intersectionally apparent that the smartphone maker Samsung might be characterized as having 

been gentrified and or self colonized too. I suggest that Samsung has been gentrified and or self colonized 

in regards to how it’s been assimilated into the global financial market (“developmental success”). As a 

result Samsung financially thrives (”material gain”), in exchange for contributing to the intersectional 

suppression of their “native language” (Korean/Hangul). This intersectional suppression of their "native 

language" becomes deceptively apparent, in regards to how Samsung coerces it's native smartphone users 

to suppress their culturally unique way of stroke ordered character driven writing, in lieu of the A-W's 

iPhone keyboard driven writing model.

It may not seem that the suppression of this culturally unique native language on smartphones 

relates to haiku, but I maintain they correlate intersectionally. They correlate in regards to the systemic 

intersectional suppression of the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Peoples "collective notion of self". This 

notion of  self is subtly suppressed when character based writing is culturally appropriated for keyboard 

based writing on smartphones; much the same occurs when mukigo/senryu is appropriated in place of 

kigo/haiku. These forms of A-W reappropriation, and native language suppression intersectionally 

correlate to cause discord; discord in how people culturally identify with their unique collective notion of 

self. This reappropriation and suppression also creates discord for everyone, intellectually and literally. 

Whether or not the A-W world is doing so intentionally is irrelevant to this discussion. The fact that all of 

these issues (colonization, gentrification, the systemic suppression and or reappropriation of native 

language, the collective notions of self, cultural identity, and our relationships with nature) intersect and 

correlate with one another is what needs to be understood by writers and readers alike, in order to rectify 

the discord in regards to haiku today. 

Still the issue of Japan's colonization whether self imposed by itself or externally imposed by the 

A-W world, is only one of the intersecting root causes behind the discord and decline of ehi (sedoka, 

kataota, katauta, renga, choka, wakka, tanka, hokku, haiku, haiga, poekuagery, etc) like haiku. In Wilson's 

essay he briefly touched on the fact that haiku began its decline during the Meiji Era, prior to the arrival 

of the black ships. In this essay I’ll take this hypothesis several steps further. 

No comments:

Post a Comment