NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

The magazine is written in Japanese and contains fifteen pages of haiku and thirty eight pages of essays.

The work has a surprising depth of feeling. The haiku of Ryu Yotsuya are very modern both in subject and language. For example:

	Haiiro no usagi o kakae namakemono

	Cuddling the grey rabbit, the image of indolence.

The essays are varied. One deals with the feelings of a person driving a car over a frozen lake in Minnesota, USA. Not the least is their realisation that they are driving over ten metres of water. Another records the experience of a long distance swimmer and their need for high energy food, in this case sugar crystals.

There is also an essay on the yew tree. In Europe the yew is often planted in graveyards but in Japan it is known as the first as it is the symbol of a high official in the Imperial Court. The essay was the result of a three way discussion between a Canadian and two Japanese using video telephones.

Subtitled INVIATATION TO THE HISTORY OF WORLD-WIDE HAIKU, the magazine is in Japanese and unless you speak the language or have a friend who can interpret it you have problems. It must be said though that this magazine is a very good reason to learn Japanese. It is published twice a year and in this issue, to commemorate the publication of Haïku sans frontières: une anthologie mondiale, by Andre Duhaime, in Canada, the editors have collected some very interesting essays on the history and development of haiku round the world.

I particularly enjoyed Haiku In English In North America by George Swede. This excellent essay gives a history of the development of the form from the early part of the 20th century until today. The story is completed for the British reader by the essay Trackless Tracks: The Development of Haiku In Britain by Martin Lucas. In this Lucas states;

The history of haiku in Britain really begins as recently as 1990. Before that date there were a few scattered individuals doing the best they could with such resources as the Penguin versions of Basho, contacts with some American haiku magazines, and a minute amount of space in mainstream British poetry magazines which tended to understand haiku primarily as a form, 5-7-5.

I enjoyed reading my friend's scribbled translation, but then made the discovery that all of the wonderful content can be had in English on the magazine's website. Well worth a visit if you don’t have the time to learn Japanese.

This issue is a memorial to Niji Fuyuno, wife of Ryu Yotsuya and joint editor of the magazine. She "flew away" on February 11th, 2001.

Although the magazine itself is entirely in Japanese, Ryu Yotsuya has produced a brief digest in English with translations of some of the articles and work from the main issue. 14 of her haiku are included. Some obviously suffer in the translation but a number stand out for me including:

	She walks
	with a trailing summer bathrobe
	like Othello

		A spider's thread,
		tangled,
		comes from the florist's

	Lotus flower —
	a stray sound rises
	from a mallet