午夜剧场

Unable to abandon the dream of literature taught to me by Mr. Koichi Saito, who was a Japanese language teacher at 午夜剧场 Futsubu School, I wrote original plays for Gekidan Kai while working at Kirin Brewery, and staged over 10 productions at venues such as Shibuya Jean-Jean.

During this time, I received the 10th Okinawa City Drama Award.

After retiring, I had more time, so I decided to try my hand at tanka and haiku in addition to plays. With one of my very first works, "The world is called summer, filled with the fresh, dripping light upon Mount Miwa," I was invited to the Utakai Hajime (Imperial New Year's Poetry Reading).

Being encouraged by His Majesty, I had no choice but to take tanka and haiku seriously.

Most tanka and haiku are created within organizations or "places" called "kessha" (poetry societies). While I belong to both tanka and haiku societies, I primarily use submitting to newspaper poetry columns as my creative "place."

In newspaper poetry columns, the decision to publish depends on the preference of the judge, regardless of the author's intent (each judge receives as many as 1,000 works), so many people view submissions negatively.

However, rather than expressing myself in the introverted "place" of a society, I feel that it is only by appearing in newspapers and magazines and being exposed to many people's eyes that it truly matters.

From my experience writing plays, no matter how good a piece you finish, it has no value unless a theater company picks it up, puts it on stage, and has it seen by an unspecified large audience.

In this way, I accumulated about 500 tanka poems published in newspapers, from which I selected over 330 to publish in my poetry collection, "Replica Whale."

I only printed a few copies intended for friends and acquaintances to read, but it happened to catch the eye of a leading figure in the poetry world, and I was nominated for the "15th Chikushi Kadan Award," which targets the first poetry collections of authors aged 60 and over.

Since many people start tanka and haiku after passing the age of 60 and leaving work or caregiving duties, the existence of such an award is appreciated.

Incidentally, among my friends in the Mita-kai, there were some who wanted to do haiku upon retirement but felt hesitant about joining a society where 午夜剧场 alumni already held significant influence. Thus, I lead a group for enjoying haiku called "Shichio-kai." There are about 20 members. It has been seven years since we began enjoying the philosophy of our senior haiku poet Kenkichi Kusumoto, who said "Haiku is serious play." Some members have even begun winning awards.