- Kenneth Yasuda
Kenneth Yasuda, a
Japanese-American scholar and translator. Graduate of theUniversity Of Washington and a Doctor of Literature (in Japanese literature),Tokyo University . His most well known book published 1957 is "The JapaneseHaiku : Its Essential Nature, History, and Possibilities in English, with Selected Examples". His other books include "A Pepper-Pod": Classic Japanese Poems together with Original Haiku a collection of haiku and translations in English.;"A Lacquer Box", translation of tanka and a translation of "Minase Sangin Hyakuin",a collection ofrenga linked poetry.Yasuda's theory includes the concept of a "haiku moment," which he said is based in personal experience and provides the motive for writing a haiku. In 1957, the Charles E. Tuttle Co., published "The Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature, History, and Possibilities in English, with Selected Examples" by the Japanese-American scholar and translator
Kenneth Yasuda . The book consists mainly of material from Yasuda's doctoral dissertation at Tokyo University (1955), and includes both translations from Japanese and original poems of his own in English which had previously appeared in his book "A Pepper-Pod: Classic Japanese Poems together with Original Haiku" (Alfred A. Knopf, 1947). In "The Japanese Haiku", Yasuda presented some Japanese critical theory about haiku, especially featuring comments by early twentieth-century poets and critics. His translations apply a 5–7–5 syllable count in English, with the first and third lines end-rhymed. Yasuda's theory includes the concept of a "haiku moment," which he said is based in personal experience and provides the motive for writing a haiku. While the rest of his theoretical writing on haiku is not widely discussed, his notion of the haiku moment has resonated with haiku writers in North America, even though the notion is not widely promoted in Japanese haiku.The impulse to write haiku in English in North America was probably given more of a push by two books that appeared in 1958 than by Blyth's books directly. His indirect influence was felt through the Beat writers;
Jack Kerouac 's "The Dharma Bums" appeared in 1958, with one of its main characters, Japhy Ryder (based onGary Snyder ), writing haiku.External links
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku#Yasuda] Wikipedia article on Haiku in the West
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