Last updated: June 7, 2023
Article
Senryu Poetry as Folk and Community Expression in Tule Lake Segregation Center
Tule Lake Relocation (later Segregation) Center, was a unique, if temporary, society. Soon after the center was built, the War Relocation Authority established a Community Analysis office to study, collect data, and report on life in Tule Lake. Staff included WRA employees, incarcerated Japanese Americans, and university social scientists and researchers. Though many Japanese Americans were happy to cooperate with the researchers, the office’s ability to fully understand Tuleans’ thoughts and social life were very limited. This difficulty increased when Tule Lake was converted into a Segregation Center, any incarceree who spoke with administration workers risked accusations of being a government collaborator. Regardless, the records and articles produced by the Community Analysis offer valuable insight into the often-tumultuous society of Tule Lake.
Senryu Poetry as Folk and Community Expression
By Marvin K. Opler and F. Obayashi
Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 58, No. 227
January – March, 1945
The following account deals with a type of poetry produced in a war-time community under federal jurisdiction. The locale is the Tule Lake Center for Japanese-Americans in northern California. The federal agency is the War Relocation Authority of the United States Department of the Interior. The authors are, respectively, the Community Analyst assigned to this Project since May, 1943, and one of his Assistants in the Community Analysis Section.
Tule Lake is one of several centers originally established to house Japanese-American citizens and aliens evacuated from the west coast under military order. For more than a year it had been a Relocation Center, like the rest, with a portion of the population found ineligible for leave into the outer communities. However, in the summer of 1943, the Center was designated for the purpose of segregating evacuees, who for one reason or another, failed to qualify for relocation back into the normal stream of American life. Immediately, Tule Lake witnessed a vast reshuffling of population. Those ineligible for residence in Relocation Centers arrived in Army-commandeered trains and those ineligible for residence in the Segregation Center were sent to other Centers. Before the train-loads had arrived, a tall manproof fence enclosed the Project area. Back behind the fence, people looked warily at their new neighbors’ families from all parts of the west coast and some from Hawaii were now thrown together. In the older generation, uprooted from American soil, were represented many provinces, or kens, of Japan fifty years ago.
The poetry discussed below is an expression of the community during this turbulent period. Yet the individuals and families who came to Tule Lake and those who remained behind represented many different points of view and types of background. There were farmers and merchants, artists and laborers, professionals and illiterates. There were a few rich and many poor. There were women and children born here, and aged immigrants who after a half-century of toil in America without benefit of citizenship wished to end their lives in the land of their birth. There were youthful citizens who came simply out of a desire to accompany their parents as so-called voluntary segregants. There were families with emotional ties to close relatives abroad and families who believed that the future was destroyed for them here. There was the farmer, the business man who saw his community stakes uprooted, the foreign-educated with his language handicap. There were the impecunious large families who saw no hope of re-establishing in communities farther east. To understand the poetry, one must understand the people. In general, they were all, except the very young, embittered and disaffected by the journey inland.
The poetry bears this out: In the new community, a tall, manproof fence with barbed wire slanting inward surrounded the blocks of tarpaper shacks. Here lived families who once resided in the cities and rural districts of Washington,Oregon, and California. Guarding installations, watchtowers manned by sentries, and floodlights commanded the village of the minority which "on the outside" at least, was once famous for low crime and delinquency rates, for generous support of Community Chest and Red Cross, and for frugal and industrious habits which brought families into middle-class brackets and sent children through college. All individuals in Tule Lake were fingerprinted and processed, screened and catalogued as to loyalty or disloyalty—all except children. Soon roughly half the adult community found jobs on project maintenance, and with families earned stipends of twelve, sixteen, and nineteen dollars per month, depending on the kind of work. Mass feeding was accomplished as before through huge mess-halls in all the blocks. Evacuee wardens patrolled the camp grounds under the surveillance of a Caucasian police department which grew notably in size and equipment. Before long, jeeps and peeps backed up the Army sentries at the gates. Life within the narrow Center confines became dull and prosaic, if not sternly regimented. Senryu poetry records much of this story. It is one way in which people in an abnormal community find outlet—in painting and music and Hollywood movies for the sophisticates, in baseball, basketball and jitterbug for the Americanized youth, in poker and sake for the man of the world, in Japanese checkers and chess and theatricals for the gentleman of Japan, and in Senryu poetry and Utai singing clubs for the older esthete.
Three Forms of Japanese Poetry
In Japanese poetry, there are three principal forms of metric composition.They are as follows:
(1) Chyo-ka (Long Song) composed of any number of stanzas. Each stanza usually consists of four or eight lines. Each line has two phrases, a first of five syllables and a second of seven. This form is as old as the Kojiki, the earliest systematic recording of Japanese history. It probably emerged as one of the results of the influence of Chinese poetry, the Kojiki being written about 1,200 years ago when Chinese culture was assiduously introduced tothe Japanese court. Yet Chyo-ka never occupied an important position in Japanese literature until Japan came in contact with Occidental culture. Then, the Chyo-ka form began to be used frequently in translations of American and European poems.
(2) Tan-ka (Short Song), or Wa-ka (Japanese-style Song). Tan-ka and Wa-ka are two names for one and the same form with only slight variations.The former is the more common variant. In it, the number of syllables is limited to thirty-one. On occasion, an extra syllable is allowed if it is a single vowel or “n." These thirty-one syllables are divided into five phrases or "meters," each phrase containing a fixed number of syllables in the order 5-7-5-7-7. This particular form of Tan-ka is said to have originated in the mythological period of Japan's history. Since it came down to the present, it obviously suited Japanese poetic taste. Depending on the historic period,various themes—deep national spirit, or samurai loyalty, or appreciation of nature, flowers, or a moonlit night—all find emotional expression in theTan-ka form. A felicity in composing Tan-ka is considered one of 'the finest accomplishments in Japanese literature.
(3) Senryu and Haiku are, in contrast to the above, more recent forms. About two hundred years ago, when the Tokugawa Era was at the height of peace and prosperity, there arose in Osaka and in Yedo (Tokio) a school of poetry which created a form still shorter than the Tan-ka. This school was composed of prosperous merchants, doctors, and in general a rising middle class with an interest in literature and leisure enough to appreciate it. In structure, the new form was merely the first three phrases of the Tan-ka, omitting the last two. The arrangement of syllables in phrases therefore was 5-7-5. The new form was called Hai-ku, and its topics or themes principally concerned the seasons and nature and such items as autumn moon, blossoms or the old pond. Generally, there was more freedom in choice of subject matter and more versatility in treatment. Occasionally the Hai-ku composer dwelt on human affairs and emotions, looking for the common and universal aspects of the mundane world as it affected man, but handling these matters in the light of discriminating literary taste. Either to compose Hai-ku or appreciate it in its full emotional impact and economy of line required the cultivation of esthetic taste to a high degree. Hai-ku tended toward the universal emotion and the mundane world, but remained, in the last analysis, a delicate and cultivated form nurtured under glass. It grew in the guest-rooms of sophisticates and never became a folk, or mass, art.
It is difficult to ascertain the chronological relationship of Hai-ku and Senryu. But it may reasonably be assumed that Senryu branched out of Hai-ku shortly after the latter came into existence. At any rate, the name, Senryu, which means ''River Willow," was simply the nom de plume of one who proposed to his poetry circle to compose Tan-ka by means of two persons, the first poet writing the initial three phrases of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, and the second adding the last two phrases of 7 syllables each. Apparently, the artistry depended on final unity and consistency in both the meaning and phraseology of the finished product. It was like certain forms of folk art in which more thanone person participates in the development of a theme, a story, or a coherent idea. It appears that the people who flocked around Senryu, unlike the poets of the Hai-ku School, displayed greater interest in human affairs than in the well-worn objects of nature. What Senryu lost in delicate and effete refinement,it gained in popularity, vigor, and hearty good humor. The Senryu cultists were commoners, men of the street, rather than esthetes. Naturally their products were in a lighter vein for the most part, although full of penetrating insight, sarcastic comment and tender emotion.
Soon, however, a movement began in Senryu circles to differentiate the form further from the Hai-ku. The opposition won out by proposing that the last two phrases of 7 syllables each be discarded, thus making Senryu exactly the same as Hai-ku as to form. Yet in its contents, Senryu retained the more common and popular values and became firmly established as folk art. Thus, Senryu required no "high brow" culture, no fixed mannerisms. But to its neophyte there still remained the danger of falling into vulgarisms.
Today, among literary hobbyists Senryu and Hai-ku are almost equally apprecited, and much ink has been spilt concerning the difference between the two. The most feasible conclusion is that in Hai-ku one perceives nature in terms highly colored with human emotion, whereas in Senryu one touches upon human affairs even through the medium of natural objects. Thus a "blossom" might be a fitting topic in Hai-ku poetry. But when "blossom" becomes a metaphor for a lovely girl, one is in the realm of Senryu.
The Tule Lake Senryu Circle
It is not surprising that a folk art, popular in the Japan of fifty years ago, found fertile soil in the Tule Lake community. The practice of composing Senryu here, as at other Centers, did not await the establishment of Tule Lake as the Segregation Center. The formation of a Senryu circle marked no sudden trend toward Japanization. Rather, this element of Japanese culture which had lived among the first generation, or Issei, as a part of their cultural heritage, was revived when West Coast communities were uprooted, careers interrupted, and the long, uncomfortable trek inland begun on the shortest notice. Senryu poetry, then, is one aspect of the cultural revivalism which occurred within the first-generation age group when they realized that their futures might be uncertain in this nation. As we shall see below, this cultural activity provides escape from the drab realities of Center existence. It also recaptures Japanese cultural values of an apolitical sort. Here the farmhand and housewife, working wiLhin a cultural form, can retain a kind of folk expression which has, at times, an artistic quality. Working within the sameform, they are able, on occasion, to comment satirically upon the monotonous existence they seek to escape. This "backward glance" at the conditions of Center life has been successful in catching the emotionalism of the residents, so that once again the folk art is expressive of the folk society.
The Tule Lake Senryu Kai
Literally, the name of this group means "Senryu Association." In actuality, it was a more or less informal club, organized at Tule Lake in September, 1942, when the evacuees felt reasonably settled and adjusted in the then Relocation Center.1 The club closed up shop in November, 1943, because of the much publicized "Tule Lake Incident." It began again in February, 1944. At present, it is holding regular weekly meetings in the Ironing and Utility Room of Block 14, every Tuesday night.
Membership
Up to November, 1943, the Tule Lake Senryu Association had over thirty persons on its membership roll. Six of these were women—housewives and widows. All of these women were Issei or first-generation. One elderly widow had a fine educational background in Japan and also spoke English fluently. The men ranged in age from thirty to sixty years, about ten of the younger probably being Kibei (a United States citizen who has lived, and possibly been educated in whole or in part, in Japan; literally "returned to this country"). In education, about one-third of the men had higher than grade school instruction in Japan. As employed on the Project, they were farmhands, block janitors, truck drivers, officers of the Tule Lake Co-operative, and a social worker. According to their pre-evacuation experience, they were farmhands, sawmill workers, business men (and some business women), housewives, restaurant operators, hotel proprietors, and so forth. Anyone could become a member by leaving his or her name and Center address. Of course, there were occasional visitors.
Regular Meeting
The chairman of the Tule Lake Senryu Association from May to November, 1943, was foreman of the block janitors. In education, he presumably had nothing better than the grade school in Japan, but he had composed Senryu for more than twenty years. He presided over regular meetings as follows.
A box was prepared containing many topics for composition, each written down on a small, folded slip of paper. The topics, furnished by the members, were replenished from time to time. By order of the chairman, a member picked out one of these slips, unfolded it, and announced the topic. The members were then required to compose Senryu on the theme mentioned. Each person wrote one to three Senryu on each topic, recording these on pieces of scratch paper, but leaving them unsigned. When the topic was announced the chair appointed a critic, or grader, of all the Senryu written onthat subject.
When the chair felt that enough time had been spent on a given theme, he announced that "the time is up." The compositions were then collected and submitted to the critic. Usually a member takes about forty-five minutes on a given subject, and then another topic is chosen, the same procedure repeated, while the critic is grading those composed on the previous theme. A meeting ordinarily covers three topics.
At the end of the last period of composition, the chair requested the critic of the first set of Senryu to announce the "grades." The critic, to do this, read aloud one Senryu after another beginning with the lowest grade. After each Senryu was read, its author answered by calling out his or her name. Then, and then only, the critic learned who had composed each poem. When there are some Senryu graded below par—and in each meeting there are a few—the critic spares the composer the embarrassment of reading them aloud. Occasionally, however, the critic states why some were rejected. The commonest defect is "too, flat," possessing neither originality nor freshness. Those ambiguous in meaning are also left ungraded. Although relations between male and female; or husband and wife, are allowed as subject matter, frank indecency or vulgarity is never tolerated. For example, under the topic, "Shoes," the following Senryu was rejected on grounds of indecency:
Ara fushigi (Oh, incomprehensible!)
Yamome no heyanf (In a bachelor's room)
Onna gutsu (Woman's shoes)
The Choice of Topic
In collections of Tan-ka verse, classical and modern, a frequent topic is war. As a matter of fact, a number of poems are found which actually were composed on the battle ground. In Hai-ku or Senryu verse, on the other hand, we find very few which have a warlike theme, probably because both forms were products of peaceful times, express emotions in "a lighter vein,'' and because the classical authors of these forms were mainly civilians from various walks of life. However this may be, the Tule Lake Senryu Kai unconsciously turned its back on the topic of war. Though the poems were hardly "products of peaceful times," members never discussed the War at the meetings, and even afterwards when they fell to gossip, made no mention of it in their conversation. It was as if there were an unwritten code among them. The War was something to forget, and the meeting accomplished this if only for a few hours. While, in general, escape was an unconscious motive, life in the Tule Lake Center could not go unnoticed. On this, we shall comment later.
The Topics Classified
The following topics were found in a collection of Senryu made into a volume by the members of the Tule Lake Senryu Kai. The collection covers an eight months' period from January 4, 1943 to August 31, 1943. They have been grouped into three classes.
- Topics Expressed by Verb, Adverb, Adjective and Preposition: Too, or Again; Probably, or Seemingly; Then; Against, or Opposing; Spring Comes; Above All, or Further; Until Arriving; Given Up; Doubled; Worrying; While Awaiting the Downpour; Being Obedient; Peeping; Giving Up; Home Coming; Getting Ready; Careless; Worthless; and so forth.
- Topics Expressed by a Common Noun: Wall, or Partition; Records; Ice; Road; Mouth; Fagot: Lamplight; Tea; Horizontal Stripes; Socks; A Hurry-Scurry Fellow; Father; Companion; Children; Idiot; Screen; Finger; Evening; Razor; Skeleton or Spine; Wheels; Baseball; Vinegar; Eye; Diary; Bag; Next Door; Tobacco; Shoes; Thread; Sake (Rice-wine); Landscape; and so forth.
- Topics Expressed by an Abstract Noun: Daytime; Making Money; The Unexpected; Convenience; Connection; Yawning; An Addition; Action, or Moving; Soliloquy; Working Steady; Orientation, or The Objective; Red; Consolation; Grumbling; Trouble; Dreams, or Castles in the Air; Rest; Pleasing, or Charming; Green; Hara (Literal translation is "belly," but here the connotation is "Being Phlegmatic"): The Act of Thanking; On Being Emotionally Stirred; Alone ; Scent; Argument, or Discussion; One; Nearsighted; Relying, or Trusting; Games (including Gambling Games); Peace of Mind; A Refined or Polished Person; The Broad-minded; Carrying More Than One Responsibility; Sun-burnt; Something Coarse; A Period; Self-conceit; Complexity; Front; Inner Circle; Impromptu Performance; Appearances; Dreams; The Pretext; New Styles; A Letter, or Calligraphy; Disturbances; and so forth.
The above linguistic classification, based on a sampling of the topics recorded, shows that the abstract idea predominates as subject matter in the Tule Lake Senryu Kai. More precisely, those topics which in Japanese are expressed by abstract nouns represent nearly forty-eight percent of the entire collection. Mr. Obayashi, who analyzed the collection and translated from the Japanese, stated that if one added to this figure those topics in group (1) which can, in translation, be considered as abstract nouns, then a total ofsixty-eight percent of all topics may be said to be rather abstract in type.
Center Life As Subject Matter
One purpose of this analysis was to discover the extent to which Senryu poetry furnished escape from the inadequacies of Center life, and conversely how much it expressed reactions to that life. Again, taking the period from January 4, 1943, to August 31, 1943, two topics were selected from an average of twelve for each month to illustrate the degree to which Senryu topics in general became vehicles of escape or instruments of social comment. To prevent exaggeration of the escape motif Mr. Obayashi selected as his two topics of the month those subjects which had under them the greatest number of recorded Senryu concerning Center life. He then constructed the following table.
| 1943 | Topics | Total Number of Senryu Under the Topic |
Number of Senryu concerning Tule Lake Center Life |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan. | "Daytime" | 24 | 14 |
| "Wall" | 30 | 8 | |
| Feb. | "Being Happy" | 36 | 2 |
| "And Then" | 45 | 5 | |
| March | "Doubled" | 31 | 3 |
| "Consolation" | 28 | 4 | |
| April | "Waiting" | 36 | 6 |
| "Green" | 21 | 4 | |
| May | "Seemingly" | 38 | 4 |
| "Finger" | 30 | 2 | |
| June | Miscellaneous | 50 | 8 |
| "Games" | 25 | 3 | |
| July | "Being Obedient" | 40 | 4 |
| "Farewell" | 25 | 12 | |
| August | "Bag" | 44 | 9 |
| "Next Door" | 55 | 9 | |
| Total | 558 | 97 |
From the above table, it is obvious that Senryu concerning Center life at best do not exceed seventeen percent of the entire number of 558 Senryu. It may therefore be concluded that the members preferred as subject matter topics unrelated to life at Tule Lake. It may further be assumed that they desired to forget the drab existence in the Center, and as a matter of fact sought in Senryu a method of escape from it. Cultural revivalism and folk expression are, then, the prime purposes of Senryu poetry. The cultural form itself provides the refuge, the recreation, and the escape.
While Senryu is, in the main, a vehicle of folk expression which provides escape, it is also, though in a lesser degree, an instrument of community expression. The following examples have been selected from the collection of 558 Senryu to indicate the nature of such social comment. It may be said, parenthetically, that these social poems catch the emotionalism of the residents toward Center life in its characteristic intensity and bitterness. That there are not more of them is probably best explained by the fact that conversational comment of this type is daily and uninterrupted, the satire stale by repetition, and Senryu after all too dignified a form of folk expression, too convenient an escape, to dwell on the humdrum level of life as it is lived. When the Senryu group remembers Center life, however, the comment is pungent and the dislike studied. They then again become the "exiles," on"budgets" of sixteen dollars a month, who pass the day with "frequent yawns.”
| Original | Literal Translation | Free Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Shyu-yo-sho | The Center, | In the Center, |
| Akubi majiri no | Of yawning, mixed, | With frequent yawns |
| Hi o okuri | A day is spent. | A day is passed. |
| Sore kara no | Since then, | Since that time, |
| Yosan jyu roku | The budget, by sixteen | A budget is limited |
| doru de | dollars, | To sixteen dollars. |
| Sumi | Is done. | (One manages on twelve, sixteen, or nineteen dollars a month—if employed.) |
|
Original |
Literal Translation |
Free Translation |
|---|---|---|
|
Mata shimon ka to |
Again, the fingerprints, |
"So, finger-printing again!" |
|
Oyaji no |
The old man's |
See the old man's |
|
Nigai koa |
Bitter face. |
Bitter face. |
|
|
|
(We are not criminals.) |
| Original | Literal Translation | Free Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Ryo donari | Two neighbors, | Neighbors on either side: |
| Batten ben ni | Batten (colloquial) and | One from Batten-ken, the other |
| Gansu chyo | Gansu (inflection). | From Gansu. |
| (Batten is colloquial for people from Kumamoto province; Gansu, for those from Hiroshima. People are thrown together.) |
| Original | Literal Translation | Free Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Yume dakega | Dreams only, | Only in dreams, |
| Jiyu no ten chi | Of freedom and earth and sky, | In a world of freedom, |
| Kake meguri | Running about. | Earth-bounded, we walk. |
| (And here, the fence.) |
| Original | Literal Translation | Free Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Shyu-yo-sho | The Center, | In the Center, |
| Fuyu no hiashi mo | The steps of a winter day, | The shortness of a winter's day, |
| Oshiku nashi | Not minded. | Is not minded. |
| (As there is so little to do.) |
| Original | Literal Translation | Free Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Sake no aji | The taste of rice-wine, | The craving for rice wine, |
| Hai sho e mademo | Even there, to the place of exile | Even in the Center exile, |
| Tsuki matoi | Clinging around. | Clings tenaciously. |
| (Rice wine has its uses.) |
| Original | Literal Translation | Free Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Koko mo mata | Here, too, | Here stands our metropolis, |
| Sumeba miyako no | A metropolis, when residing, | Once we dwell long and feel |
| Suria ni nare | Accustomed to the sand. | At home in sand and dust. |
| Original | Literal Translation | Free Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Tsuma mo mata | Wife, too, | Wives also, |
| Teishyu no namiili | Same as husband, | Now earn the same amount |
| Gekkyu toru | Works and earns a salary. | As husbands. |
| (Why not more, my dear husband!) |
| Original | Literal Translation | Free Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Sakuno uchi | Within the fence, | Within the Project fence, |
| Mata kaki hitoye | One more fence, | All other barriers |
| Mawari michi | A round about way. | Make a circuitous road. |
| (With apologies to Frost, manproof fences make poor neighbors.) |
| Original | Literal Translation | Free Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Kibana naki | With few natural flowers, | Here, where natural flowers are rare, |
| Haru o zoka ni | Spring is seen in the artificial flowers, | Spring is seen |
| Miru haisho | In the Center. | In artificial ones. |
| Original | Literal Translation | Free Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Dehairi ye | On coming in, on going out, | On arrival and departure |
| Kiroku towareru | The record is requested, | From the Center, |
| Shyu-yo-sho | In Relocation Centers. | One's past record is exhibited. |
| (To keep in mind past mischief.) |
| Original | Literal Translation | Free Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Ashi ato ga | Foot-prints, here, | Here, upon the wall again, |
| Tsuiteru kabe mo | On the wall remain, | Foot-prints stamp the nicety |
| Shyu-yo-sho | In the Center. | Of Center life. |
| (When were the barracks last painted?) |
| Original | Literal Translation | Free Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Kanshito | The watchtower | Where escape is never dreamt of, |
| Nogare rarenai | Where no one can escape, | There the watch-tower |
| Tokoroni ari | Is standing guard. | Stands guard. |
| Original | Literal Translation | Free Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Ho-o-shin no | On future plans, | Discrepancy as to future plan, |
| Oyako de ka waru | Differences between parent and child, | Often divides parent and child |
| Sakuno uchi | Within the fence. | In Center life. |
| Original | Literal Translation | Free Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Henka naki | Changeless | Here in the exile's |
| Haisho ni henka, | In the place of exile, | Monotonous life, |
| Aru kion. | Is the temperature. | Only the seasons change. |
| Original | Literal Translation | Free Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Unuborete | Self-conceited, | Be self conceited as you will |
| Mitaga haisho no | Yet here it is merely | But know that here you are |
| Nakano koto | A place of exile. | Another exile. |
| Original | Literal Translation | Free Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Onaji yane | The uniform roofs, | Here, reminiscence comes, |
| Nagamete shinobu | Looking at, lost in reminiscence | When looking at |
| Shyu-yo-sho | In the Center. | The endless rows of barracks' roofs. |
| Original | Literal Translation | Free Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Chyu, fuchyu | Loyalty, disloyalty, | "Loyalty," "disloyalty," |
| Mojiga men-shimu | The words make eyes sore, | Such words to plague us yesterday, today. |
| Kino-o, kyo | Yesterday, today. | In eyes made red with weeping. |
| Original | Literal Translation | Free Translation |
|---|---|---|
| Jin shin no | Man's mind imprisoned and | Disturbed though men's minds |
| Midaru saku nimo | Disturbed behind the fence, | Are behind the fence, |
| Yomejitaku | Prepares for marriage. | Someone still prepares for marriage. |
| (Life marches on.) |
The Style and Appreciation of Senryu
This selection of twenty Senryu illustrates the restraint, suggestiveness and studied understatement characteristic of the form as a whole. In old Japanese prints of, say, Kunihiro or Hiroshiga, the space left empty bears an important relationship to the entire composition. So, in Senryu and Hai-ku, what is leftunsaid but suggested in the economy of line etched in with only seventeen syllables has an emotional impact on the hearer. In the above examples, therefore, we have included in parentheses the reader's imagined comment. If, by chance, the social comment appears at points to be an overly satiric or witty reflection on Center life, the reader unaccustomed to the social psychology of Relocation Centers must realize that the actual feelings are still more bitter and the urge to satire keener. He must take our word for it that Japanese circumlocution, restraint and understatement are still here.
Both to illustrate the style and feeling of Senryu poetry and to measure the emotional intensities of the above examples, Mr. F. Obayashi has selected from among classical Senryu an example which shows how much meaning Senryu conveys without "saying." The poem tells also how closely the form is interwoven with Japanese social life, customs, and values:
Hosu sode ni (Sleeves which must be dried, and also)
Nururu sode ari (There are wet sleeves)
Doyo-boshi (In mid-summer sunning)
Free translation
With kimono sleeves drying,
Sleeves are lightly moistened,
In midsummer's sunning.
The explanation of this delicate etching is that, in Japan, the rainy season of about a month precedes midsummer, when clothes and other objects which absorb moisture (and are in danger of getting moldy in the storeroom) must be dried. It was customary, in old Japan, to dry these articles under the blazing midsummer sun. In the above Senryu, a person, presumably a woman, while sunning the stored clothes, comes upon the clothes worn by a beloved one who has passed away. The tears well up and kimono sleeves are moistened. There were sleeves drying and sleeves moistened under the hot, drying sun of midsummer.
Conclusions
Today, almost two hundred years after its birth, Senryu unlike Hai-ku, is still accepted as a folk art and folk expression.2 It is a means of developing pungent humor, a form of mental recreation, and no less, anesthetic instrument of personal refinement.3 As folk art, it is socially organized and in Japan three or four monthly periodicals carry on the popular tradition which stemmed, as a commoner's art, from the romantic movement of Hai-ku poetry. At Tule Lake, also, the Senryu Association carries on, holding its regular weekly meetings in the Ironing Room of Block 14. Here, in addition tothe esthetic and formal values mentioned above, Senryu keeps green the memory of folk culture and poetry. As such, it provides a point of pride and refuge for the exile who sees himself dispossessed and tossed aside. It leaves open an avenue of escape from the drab realities of Center life. And finally, when Center life rears its "ugly head" in Senryu poetry, it receives a rebuke which is sharp and incisive, restrained and dignified, witty and pungent.4
Tule Lake Center, Newell, Calif.
Footnotes
1 Mr. F. Obayashi, who compiled these data, was a member of the group from May to November, 1943. Without him, this article could not have been written.
2 J. F. Embree, Japanese Peasant Songs (Memoirs of the American Folklore Society 38, l944) 5-8. This volume, published in 1944, was available for reference after the Senryu analysis was completed. It was reassuring for the authors to learn that Embree's discussion of the formal and literary aspects of the Tan-Ka and Hai-ku is strictly comparable. In his discussion of rural folksong, Embree differentiates a number of folksong forms from "the much studied literary tanka and haiku."
3 The difference between Embree's collection of Kumamoto peasant songs and Tule Lake Senryu in regard to obscenity may be explained as follows: the former involves a peasant situation in which expression is ordinarily freer with sexual reference, while the latter is consistent with a somewhat urbanized, popular form of poetising which did not grow directly out of the songs of the peasantry, but was rather a city folk derivation of Hai-ku as explained above. Some of the Kumamoto peasant songs, moreover, are widely known in both city and countryside. The functions of vulgar ditties are therefore well served, and Senryu, like Hai-ku, is free to preserve its own code of "outlawing obscenity." Senryu is more of a cultivated art, in contrast to peasant songs, even though it remains a popular commoners' art. Obscenity is common currency; Senryu, on the other hand, are collected and published.
4 It would be false to confuse this emotional reaction with politicalized thinking. The evacuation period and all the subsequent events which have caught up and embittered the residents of Centers, particularly at Tule Lake, led to two culturalized types of reaction. The first was the escape and refuge found in cultural revivalism. Assembly Centers and Relocation Centers witnessed the efflorescence of flower arrangement, utai singing, Senryu poetizing and the like. Shutoff from the mainstream of American life, surrounded by fences, forms and investigations, familiar objects of culture offered solace and restored courage. The second culturalized reaction was the necessary response to the new conditions of existence, and for a proud people satire and bitterness served best. The welding together of these two reactions is frequently through art forms. For example, the Analyst has noted that the traditional songs sung at wedding banquetsarc often in the same satiric vein. One priceless example heard recently, which brought down the house, concerned the sea-gulls who fly into Tule Lake in summer. The translation obtained for the chorus went as follows:
The sea-birds fly inland to the dry and waterless desert. They stop here, but will not stay. Too dry, too dreary here. They fly away. Even the sea-birds find no reason to remain.
The satire of "social pride," group pride, at the same gathering took the form of a lampoon on sentimental English songs when one man, in mock sadness sang a soulful version of: ''It's a Long, Long Way to Tipperary."