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Although the phenomenon of transculturality has existed as long as human culture, the increased speed of movement and communication worldwide has made it impossible to ignore in any aspect of cultural studies. In a society where changes were slow and foreign influences were few, an illusion of culture as homogeneous and static may have been easy to uphold, but in today’s ever-increasing flux of cultural change, the perspective of transculturality is more satisfactory in understanding human identity constructions. Compared with concepts such as interculturality, multiculturality, or hybridity, which all may have some relevance for describing cultural encounters, but which often presuppose the notion of cultural essentialism, the concept of transculturality has the advantage of recognising change and diversity, rather than focusing on boundaries or differences.

This volume takes a broad outlook on the concept of transculturality. Contributions from 19 authors and specialists, of almost as many diverse origins, grapple with this concept, each in their own way. How can transculturality be described? How can it help us understand our world? Many of the chapters deal with literary texts, others with the stories told in movies, drama, and visual art. There are texts about the complexity of the European Burqa-Ban debate, the negative aspects of Portuguese multiculturalism, or the border-crossing experiences of Filipino immigrants in Ireland. Several chapters examine stereotypes, the idea of movement, the dissolution of cultural borders, or the nature of bilingual writing. It is a unique contribution to the field, on a virtually global scale.

Seasonal topics are important to most modern and premodern Japanese haiku. Although so-called free haiku often is composed without references to the season, most haiku composed according to more “traditional” formats make use of seasonal words or topics. These are words or short expressions that are related to the season in various ways. Much criticism about haiku is concerned with these seasonal topics. One of the aspects that is often discussed is the hon’i, the “essence” these topics are supposed to have. It is often seen as a set of specific characteristics connected to a certain topic, which have been established by tradition and knowledge of these essences are regarded as essential, not only for writing haiku poetry, but also for appreciating haiku as a reader. Using a certain seasonal topic, the remaining part of the poem should somehow express this essence to become successful.

In this paper I will investigate how the topic harusame (“spring rain”) has been used in a number of poems and compare these results with how this topic’s essence has been described by some critics. I will start looking at the arguments of a number of influential critics in the field, who demonstrate a very limited view about these essences. These will be confronted with a few studies of the seasonal topics that are more directed towards the actual usage in the poetry. Broadening the perspective in this way, I will continue with an analysis of a number of poems written around the “spring rain” topic. I will especially put focus on the works of the eighteenth-century haiku poet Yosa Buson, who wrote an unusually large number of poems on this topic. The discussion will cover earlier interpretations of some of these poems and will show how these both adhere to and turn away from the supposed limited essence of the theme. The essence as such will be shown to be much richer than what is possible to define with a set of rules.

The approach to discuss the essence of a seasonal topic as solely some sort of fixed convention, something artificially constructed by the tradition, may be understood as a consequence of the mainly semiotic theories of language and literature that have been in fashion in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This extremely narrow theoretical stance has made it difficult to discuss a theory of essences from a more creative point of view. My suggestion is, however, that the search for an essence, which is carried out every time a poem is written, is an investigation in the aspects of a theme or a topic with the aim to make it vivid and give it a forceful and tangible expression. The analysis of the actual poetry will show that the search for essences is not necessarily a process of defining limits and setting up rules, but a search for ever new perspectives that may make a topic come to life, a creative search for how to “catch” a certain phenomenon rather than a process of defining right and wrong according to tradition.

Since the haiku movement basically was, and still is, an innovative movement that always tries to push forward towards yet a different perspective on the world, I will argue that rather than discussing the poetry from within limited theoretical frameworks, an investigation about the unique way in which a certain topic has been used in each poem, will make more sense. It will also be necessary to read a poem, not against the limited framework of cultural conventions, but against any possible aspect of human experience.

The dissertation is a study of the poetics of haikai in eighteenth-century Japan. It is more specifically concerned with the works of Yosa Buson and some of his followers. Rather than being a study of certain poems, it is an investigation of theories of aesthetics and composition, and of criticism. Most studies of haikai focus on the short haiku (or hokku) form, but the present study is more concerned with the core form of this poetry, the long chains of verses called "renku" or "haikai no renga". One important object of this study is to challenge some of the established views of haikai found in modern scholarship. For this purpose, many standpoints of haikai theory have been found useful, since they often approach questions of interpretation from new and unexpected angles. Theoretical stances that stress convention and traditionalism are criticized and the spirit of haikai is found to be more in concord with theories of cognitive poetics. The dissertation consists of three parts. The first is a study of general haikai theory. In this part are discussed theories of aesthetics, theories of creativity, and a few questions related to the interpretation of this kind of poetry. This discussion focuses on those questions that are central in Buson’s own writing on poetics and puts them into a broader context. The second part deals with practical theories of renku composing. An introductory chapter gives a historical background to many concepts used in Buson’s age, and this is followed by a full translation and critical study of a renku treatise written by his disciple Takai Kito. The last part is an investigation of modern criticism written on Buson’s renku. All existing full-length studies of these poems are discussed in comparison. The absence of a long critical tradition concerning Buson’s renku has, in many cases, prevented the formation of established interpretations, and this is ideal for a study of this kind.

The spirit of haikai has always been subversive. In poetry haikai began as an underground movement, motivated by a desire to explore the forbidden, to ridicule the established, and to tear down dogmatic rules and conventions. At times it has been humorous and witty; full of parody and word-play, but at times it has become a serious search for ever new ways to understand our existence; a struggle to overcome the limitations imposed on us by tradition and habits. Unfortunately, popular belief as well as much serious scholarship has it that haikai is rule-bound, conservative, and stuck in tradition. Japanese culture is all too often supposed to be backward-looking and reverent of the past. One important aim of this study is to challenge such views, to show their shortcomings and replace them by more fruitful descriptions. Its main focus is on a number of theoretical works written in the eighteenth century and makes a detailed discussion of the poetics developed in these. It is a study which may be of interest for those looking for a new and fresh approach to this kind of poetry, an approach which at the same time comes closer to the original haikai spirit.

The treatment of Japanese commentaries in “Western” writing gives us an example of how a respectful stance in fact makes the Japanese scholarship invisible. On the one hand it is regarded as giving us the truth about the works discussed by it, on the other, it is not regarded as real scholarship at all. Sometimes it is treated more as a part of the literary work, or just reading help for the foreign scholar, rather than an interpretation of this work. It is not uncommon that any single commentary is regarded as enough for studying a work, implying that any Japanese will make the same reading. As a result, the interpretations made in these commentaries are never discussed critically. Classical haikai poetry is usually extremely hard to understand, both due to its lack of completeness and its incoherence. The foreign scholar usually has great difficulties in reading this poetry without help and it is only then that the commentary is accepted as a basis upon which some loftier theoretical discussion may be carried out. My aim here is to do the opposite procedure, to focus precisely on the minute readings of the poem that has been made in commentaries, and compare the different ways scholars have tried to reach understanding when reading a couple of eighteenth­century haikai poems. By challenging the different interpretations, I will show that there is nothing like a “Japanese reading” but just different individual understandings which are all a result of an individual mix.

Seasonal topics are important to most modern and premodern Japanese haiku. These are words or short expressions that are related to the season in various ways. One aspect of them that is often discussed in theoretical writing is the hon’i, the “essence” these topics have. It is often seen as a set of specific characteristics associated with a certain topic, which have been established by tradition and knowledge of these essences are regarded as essential for writing haiku and appreciating haiku as a reader.

In this paper I will investigate how the topic “spring rain” has been described in theoretical texts and compare these results with how its essence has been used in a number of poems. I will especially put focus on the works of the eighteenth-century poet Yosa Buson, who wrote an unusually large number of poems on this topic. The discussion will cover earlier interpretations of some of these poems and will show how these both adhere to and turn away from its predefined essences. The essence as such will be shown to be much richer than what is possible to define with a set of rules.

I will argue that the search for essences is not necessarily a process of defining limits and setting up rules, but a search for ever new perspectives that may make a topic come to life; a creative search for how to “catch” a certain phenomenon rather than a process of defining right and wrong according to tradition.

The word shasei (“sketching from life”) is frequently used in critical writing about haiku. It has played an important role in the formation of modern haiku, but has also been a reason for never-ending controversies.

The use of shasei as a concept in poetics originates with Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) and it has been used by haiku poets ever after. Shiki started using this concept as he thought that poetry composed from imagination tended to become imitative. Searching for inspiration in the outside world, the poets would constantly make new discoveries which would stimulate their creativity. It is usually maintained that Shiki’s source of inspiration was Western painting, in which sketching was frequently practiced. It was thus a consciously applied foreign technique, which sometimes also was used to make fresh readings of premodern poetry.

In this paper, I will discuss how this concept was formed through the interaction between some aspects of indigenous Japanese poetics and the influence of Western techniques. My hypothesis is that ideals close to shasei had already been developed in the premodern period, but that these, by the end of the 18th century, had become stuck in conventions. The incorporation of Western techniques, however, made it possible for poets to rediscover these ideals as a mimetic means of expression and develop a new way of composing poetry which had an even stronger such focus.

By understanding shasei in modern haiku as such a development from a uniquely Japanese poetic ideal in dynamic interaction with a practical technique coming from the multitude sources described as “Western” and resulting in a new form of aesthetics, we may avoid the common stance that shasei is an “impure” influence. Instead we may see this concept as essential for analysis of an important aspect of the expression in haiku.

In linked poetry, modern renku and Edo-period haikai no renga, the ideal of “linking by scent”, nioizuke in Japanese, is regarded as typical for the haikai tradition that followed after Matsuo Bashô. Today it is often used as a generic concept for “Bashô-style verse linking”, but there is not much research done about its background and possible meanings. The modern way of understanding this concept probably originates from an argument by Torahiko Terada, in which it is linked to the montage technique of Western cinema. This understanding has been adapted by several haikai scholars, and eventually it becomes connected with the metaphor theory of Roman Jakobson in an article by Haruo Shirane. The aim of this paper is to deconstruct this modern way of understanding the nioizuke by demonstrating how it has been discussed in older texts and treatises. Analyzing some of the works written by several of Bashô's disciples and followers in later centuries and the often enigmatic descriptions of this “scent” and similar concepts they give, it will be suggested that there originally was no single and generic concept, but several related words which were used to describe ideals very different from the basically structural montage or metaphor theories of modern scholarship. A proposal of a more useful definition of the concept will be made and a few verse links will be interpreted from this perspective to demonstrate the usability of the concept in its supposedly more original form.

In Reading Japanese Haikai Poetry Herbert Jonsson makes an inquiry into the multitude ways in which Japanese linked haikai poetry has been read and understood. A number of poems composed by the eighteenth-century master Yosa Buson are analyzed in great detail. Although closely related to the popular haiku, haikai is often regarded as difficult for non-specialists, but this study offers the reader a wealth of explanations, displaying the varied perspectives available. The first part of the book consists of a thorough investigation of how these poems have been interpreted in the Japanese commentary tradition. The second concluding part offers an innovative study of the poetics of scent (nioizuke), essential for understanding the creative force of this poetry.

The concept shasei (“sketching from life”) has been central in the formation of modern Japanese haiku. Although much criticised by academics, especially when applied to the reading of classical haiku, it is undeniably an important concept in modern and contemporary haiku poetics. One may find arguments around shasei in the writings of the traditionalist Takahama Kyoshi as well as in the essays of the avant-garde haiku poet Kaneko Tōta. The concept is, however, defined in different ways by different authors and the reason for adhering to it as an ideal may thus vary.

In this paper, the shasei concept will be analyzed in the light of how it has been discussed by some of the most influential modern and contemporary haiku poets. Critical and theoretical writings, from the early texts on the subject by Masaoka Shiki to contemporary essays by Mayuzumi Madoka will be investigated. By contrasting different ways of understanding shasei an argument will be attempted to reach a meaningful definition of the concept, by which it may be used as a tool for gaining a deeper understanding of contemporary haiku. It will also be shown how shasei, although originating in a different context, is closely related to the ecocritical way of questioning the anthropocentric perspective; the notion of getting into contact with and be affected by the the physical world, as expressed by Scott Slovic among others.

A few examples of contemporary haiku will also be analysed to illustrate how the concept has relevance for reading a variety of styles. The gentle emotionalism of Mayuzumi Madoka as well as the drastic similes of Kaneko Tōta will be shown to be fully understandable only when studied in the light of this concept.

Mitsuhashi Takajo (1899-1972) is regarded as one of the most original of the haiku poets active in pre- and postwar Japan. She started studying haiku for Hara Sekitei, a poet of traditionalist lineage, but she soon turned away from the simple realism and focus on natural scenery, typical for early 20th century haiku, and started to explore more subjective and challenging subjects. The aggressiveness of some of her poems have become well known, interpreted as expressing a feminist perspective and the frustration over being a woman in a patriarchal society. As in most modern haiku, her work is strongly autobiographical, and many of the turbulent shifts, both in her private life and in Japanese society, before, during, and after the war, is reflected in her poems. In the postwar period, Takajo started to collaborate with avant-garde poets in Tomizawa Kakio’s circle, and her work became even more experimental.

In this paper, I will discuss Takajo’s development as a poet and show how her oeuvre offers examples of several of the stylistic movements that make up the history of 20th century haiku. Her poems usually include a seasonal reference and adhere to the 5-7-5 rhythm of traditional haiku. However, she uses these conventions in ways different from the objective visuality of the traditionalists. Already in early works, an interest in human society and psychology links her to the Shinkô (New style) poets and the Ningen tankyûha (The explorers of the human condition). Like many other female poets in her generation, she sometimes uses homely themes, but seldom in the simplistic style of the so-called Daidokorohaiku (Kitchen haiku); rather she uses these for enigmatic juxtapositions typical for the avant-garde style, pushing the boundaries of language expression. She also shows a flexibility in register, sometimes using classical poetic language, but sometimes writing in colloquial Japanese, at times even using childish expressions, thus becoming a forerunner for later poets such as Tsubouchi Nenten and Ikeda Sumiko. 

This paper is part of a larger research project, which investigates modern Japanese haiku by female poets.

In this paper I will present a research project which aims to understand the processes affecting a literary genre, when it is moved from the specific context of its original culture and becomes adapted to, and developed in, an entirely foreign environment. The genre in question is the Japanese haiku, which originated some 500 years ago, and which still is practiced actively in Japan and abroad.

More than a century has passed since the haiku started its journey over the world. Today, haiku-poetry has become an almost global movement, and there is a growing population of haiku enthusiasts, especially in Europe and North and South America. As in Japan, haiku is poetry that is written as much as it is read. A demand for receiving guidance in the art has created a market for introductory works and handbooks of various formats. Such educational texts give a view into the aims, aesthetics, values, and even preconceptions of the people engaged in this form of poetry. In Japan, a very large number of such handbooks have been published, often by leading poets. In other languages, the number of such publications is naturally smaller, but it is still large enough to make meaningful a comparative study of the views about haiku within different cultural contexts. 

My aim is to cover the most important works of this kind written in English and Swedish and compare the arguments in these with a selection of handbooks written in Japanese, which are chosen from poets of different backgrounds, covering the spectrum from traditionalists to avant-garde poets. Thus, the diversity within the Japanese haiku scene will be reflected. I will discuss some of the differences found concerning attitudes towards, realism, metaphors, seasonality, language rhythm and prosody. 

Until the beginning of the 20th century, in Japan, writing haiku had been an activity that mostly concerned men. However, in the early decades of this century, an increasing number of women began to express themselves in this poetry format. In the beginning, haiku by women were called “kitchen haiku”. This name was taken from the “kitchen column” in the most influential haiku journal, the hototogisu, of the early modern haiku movement. Not without pejorative connotations, this word still gave a, at least, partly adequate description of the topics often used by female poets. At this age, more than ever, haiku had become an autobiographic art and a frequent occurrence of household topics in the works by female authors was an inevitable consequence of the situation of women in the Japanese society. It is also undeniable that such topics brought entirely new perspectives to the genre. 

In this paper, my aim is to make a critical evaluation of the notion of “kitchen haiku” and show that it includes less obvious aspects. It is true that many poems in this style have a homely character, focussing on quiet everyday themes and family life, but this does not give the whole picture. Investigating the works of leading female poets of the early and mid-20th century, with a special focus on Takeshita Shizunojo (1887-1951) and Mitsuhashi Takajo (1899-1972), I will show that the topic of rage and frustration is conspicuous. This is strikingly different from the mainstream haiku poetry by male authors in the same age, where such topics are rarely found, and implies that expressions of anger may be understood from a gender perspective. I will reflect over how much the individual biographies of the authors can explain such topics, or if they should be seen as a general frustration with the roles forced upon women by the surrounding society. I will also show how such themes result in new ways of expression, often in the form of bold metaphors, that are likely an important formative force behind the avantgarde haiku movement in the postwar period.

Japanese haiku is often analyzed from the point of view of its visual and allusive expressions, but there are not few haiku poems that explore sound and the impression it makes on us. Well-known examples are, of course, “the sound of water” from the so-called “frog poem” by Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694), and the same author’s way to express the deafening noise of the cicadas as “silence”. Interpretations based on Zen, paradox, and synesthesia have been explored by others, but in this paper, I will focus on what I define as polyphonic effects. I will analyze a selection of the numerous examples of sound-haiku found among the work of Yosa Buson (1716-1784). As he, besides being the most important haiku poet of his age, also was a leading painter, the picturesque qualities of his work have often been stressed, but he seems to have had a particularly keen ear for the richness of the sounds of his world, which often gives his works a vivid- here-and-now quality. He can use sounds of varying tone color, intensity, volume, and distance to create three-dimensional polyphonic effects. I will discuss how these sound compositions may be a development of the common haiku technique of juxtaposition and speculate about influences from the drama music of his age, when music is said to have been mainly a heterophonic matter.

Since the early twentieth century, the concept shasei (“sketching from life”) has repeatedly been discussed in critical writing about Japanese haiku. It was originally included in the theoretical framework surrounding haiku by Masaoka Shiki. Presumably influenced by Western techniques of painting, he turned it into a method to gain creativity and into a specific style of writing. After Shiki, the concept has been at the center of many debates, and it has been defined in widely different ways.

Most research about shasei has focused on the early developments of Shiki and his followers, but in this paper, I will analyze how it has been discussed by Kaneko Tōta, one of the most influential poets of today’s avant-garde haiku. Tōta’s writing on haiku comprises a wide variety of texts. Some are easy-to-understand handbooks aimed at beginners, some are complex theoretical works aimed at the ever ongoing critical discussion within the haiku movement. Others are autobiographical reflections on his own development as a poet, and yet others are interpretations of his own poems and those of other poets. In these works he frequently touches upon the shasei concept, but not without ambivalence. Although he recognizes its importance, and frequently recommends composing in the shasei style to learn the art, he also criticises its limitations and the lack of coherence in Shiki’s writings about it.

I will, however, not only focus on Tōta’s outright discussions in which shasei is mentioned directly. In many of his arguments and interpretations, he proposes ideas that may be understood as a sophisticated development of the shasei theory, which casts light on the creative process behind his poems. It also raises several questions about the reading of his poems and other contemporary haiku.

What may be gained from mistranslations of Japanese haiku?

Translations into Western languages of Japanese haiku have been done for well over a century. The shortness of these poems with their seemingly simple structure has made the form attractive to translators with little or no knowledge of the original language, and in both old and newer publications of translated haiku, mistranslations abound. In translation studies, the focus is usually on the strategies followed to reach a, in some sense, successful translation. In this paper, however, I will investigate a few examples, in English and Swedish, that may rather be regarded as failures and consider why these have turned out in this way. Following George Steiner, I will suggest that translation is a hermeneutic process that is open ended. Mistranslation will thus not be understood as a complete failure, but rather as a first tentative step towards understanding. In that way we may analyze the structural and contextual aspects of the (mis)translation and show how adjustments of these may help us to get beyond what we may regard as common sense and get closer to the very different world of the poem. This may also help us to reflect over the way in which conventions and the cultural context function to define the borderline between understanding and misunderstanding.In addition I will discuss the common theory in haiku translation, maintained by David Barnhill, Steven D. Carter and others, insisting on that the words of a poem, even when translated, should be rendered in the same order as in the original. It will be shown how this theory often lead to what may be called "pidgin translations" which may have influenced the development of Western haiku into a poem that is slightly different from the form practiced in Japan.

Den japanske haikudiktaren Kaneko Tōta (1919-2018) var en av nittonhundratalets mest inflytelserika lyriker. Han tillhörde den grupp av diktare som vände sig bort från traditionella uttryckssätt och experimenterade med både politiska teman och avantgardism. Ett urval av hans haiku har här för första gången tolkats till svenska. De introduceras med en kort biografisk bakgrund och ett antal reflektioner kring hur hans dikter kan läsas med behållning.

Eyelight, in the eyes of a human portrayed on film, is a cinematographic means to augment the vividness of expressed emotions. This is used by both cinematographers and stills photographers, and it is also expressed in Anglo-Saxon, Arabic, and Japanese literatures. Here, the effect of using eyelight in the cornea of the human eye on film is examined by eye-tracking individuals on a Swedish university campus, in order to study their perceptual responses to film characters, with, or without, a glimpse of light in their eyes. The participants’ perceived capacity to discern the emotional states of the film characters was also tested. Eye-tracking data were analysed for entry time, fixation time, dwell time, hit ratio and revisitors, while emotional decoding was captured through a self-report survey, and by open questions. Our results demonstrated that film viewers’ attention is captured 49% faster, and 11% less time is used per fixation to film characters’ eyes, when eyelight is used. In addition, 58% of our participants claimed that emotions were easy to discern from eyes in the eyelight condition, whereas only 36% claimed that emotions were easy to discern under the no-eyelight condition. Although our results concern the subjective impression of one’s ability to discern the emotions of each film character, they offer preliminary support for the idea of using eyelight to enhance emotional communication in film and stills photography.