niwa nakuba ume-ni uguisu same-mo konu

--

without a garden

plum blossoms, bush warblers

and sharks do not come

--

Michio Nakahara (1951-). From "Haiku Nenkan 2025" (Haiku Annual Digest), Kadokawa, Tokyo, Japan, 2025.

The above haiku doesn't make much sense unless the reader is familiar with the following, very famous haiku by the late haiku master Tohta Kaneko:

ume saite niwajuu-ni aozame-ga kite iru

--

the plum in bloom

blue sharks have come right in

into the garden

Tohta's haiku is seemingly nonsensical at first but as we search for the truth that should exist in all successful haiku we realize the sharks are a metaphor. The school of marauding blue sharks is a cold snap, bringing icy winds into the garden. The fragility of the plum in the chill spring air is heightened by the threatening presence of the sharks, cold and blue.

Michio Nakahara's haiku, by including "garden" and "sharks don't come," is directly referring to Tohta's haiku and relies on the reader's knowledge of it to succeed.

The combination of plum blossoms and bush warblers as a theme harks back to the poetry of ancient China and is often found in Japanese woodblock prints and all manner of other art. Michio unites the ancient and modern in this haiku to focus the reader's attention on the importance of the garden, or more correctly the importance of a place where a diversity of entities can coexist and interact -- without such a place there can be no progress.

Selected, translated and commented on by Dhugal J. Lindsay

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Pique your poetic interest with more Haiku in English here.