#HAIKI RISING ARCHIVE#

We met Mikajo (as she is familiarly known) in her family home, on August 4, 2007, through the generosity of her son, Shiwa Kyôtarô (a.k.a. Drawing on her experiences as a woman, she presented new dimensions of contemporary haiku. Mikajo is one of a handful of pioneering women of the postwar zen'ei avant-garde gendai movement who not only championed women's issues (in what had been something of a cultural vacuum), but also pioneered gendai haiku itself.

Through more than five decades she has been not only a leader, but has served also as a guide to a new poetics.

Her brilliance as a poet of gendai haiku is without equal - her radical voice, daring and cutting humor, and unpretentious poetic stance are fearless. Not only is she one of the last living students who has studied directly under the New Rising Haiku poets Saitô Sanki and and Hirahata Seitô, she is also a cultural treasure. įreely download, share & copy not for commerical gain.

#HAIKI RISING ARCHIVE#

Richard Gilbert, “Cross-cultural Studies in Gendai Haiku: Yagi Mikajo” Gendai Haiku Online Archive (2008), Kumamoto University, Japan. The 1984 Osaka 21st Century Association Celebration Shield for numerous civic achievements, including the vision, founding and construction of the Yosano Akiko Museum, Sakai City. Haiku: Benitake, 1956 Akai chizu, 1963 Rakuyôki, 1974 Sekichû no fû, 1985 Shigo, 2002 Yagi Mikajo zen kushû, November, 2006, and others. Further biographical details are given in the “Commentaries” link, to the right. In 1964,she became the leader of her own journal-group Hana. She engaged in haiku activities not only with the senior poets of the New Rising Haiku movement, but also with the younger postwar haiku poets, such as Kaneko Tohta (1919-), Suzuki Murio (1919-2004), Akao Tôshi (1925-1981), and others. Her haiku style is known as zen’ei (avant-garde) haiku. She was given the haigô (haiku pen-name) “Mikajo”-in emulation of the kanji found in “Yosano Akiko,” by Seitô and Sanki. Following the war, she was first taught haiku in the shasei style by Suzuka Noburo (1887-1971), then by the previously arrested New Rising Haiku poets, Hirahata Seitô and Saitô Sanki, as well as others. She received her MD Degree from Osaka City University, becoming the first female ophthalmologist in the history of Japan.

Yagi Mikajo (b. 1924 – Yagi Michiko, Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture), graduated from Sakai Women’s High School (the same institution from which tanka poet Yosano Akiko, 1878-1942, also graduated), and entered Osaka Women’s Medical College (now Kansai Medical University). Yagi Mikajo - 'Avant-garde haiku': Tasting the Era

Haiki rising