A haibun in honor of Kiyoshi and Kiyoko Tokutomi
Narrow Road to the Redwood Mountains
by Patricia J. Machmiller
A haibun in honor of Kiyoshi and Kiyoko Tokutomi
ah! this woman . . .
charcoal gracefully arranged
gracefully added
Sosei Hasegawa (translation by Fay Aoyagi and Patricia J. Machmiller)
This is the poem that drew Kiyoko Tokutomi to haiku as a young college student in Saga near her hometown, Nabeshima, Japan, where she was born to the Shibata family on December 28, 1929. In later years, as a teacher and mentor to the haiku group that she and her husband, Kiyoshi Tokutomi, would create, she would recite from memory many haiku of the masters like this one, for example, of Bashô:
At first with delight
then with sadness I watch them
fish with cormorants
(translation by Makato Ueda)
But I get ahead of myself. After graduating, she begins teaching literature and dance at the Nabeshima Junior High School. Here she meets Kiyoshi Tokutomi, who is teaching English there. Kiyoshi is a young American who was studying in Japan when the war started. I suspect one of the reasons she was attracted to him was the kindness he showed toward his students. She told me she had had to admonish him for giving his food away. You are not the Buddha; you have to eat. It was in these circumstances of wartime Japan that he contracted tuberculosis. With no medical help he became extremely ill.
After the war, in 1951, he returned to the United States. In 1954, Kiyoko followed him, traveling to San Jose, California. They were married in 1957.
tinsel sparkling—
through the afternoon we two
writing
In the beginning of their marriage they didn’t really write haiku together—that would come later—but they were very devoted to each other, and in 2003, in going through Kiyoko’s papers after she died, we found notebooks of Kiyoshi’s. He had started writing a journal in 1957, the year his daughter was born, which he continued to write until he died in 1987. He was an inventor with a patent; he dabbled in mathematics. With Kiyoko’s help he started a mathematics competition for high school students between the United States and Japan.
evoking clusters
of algebraic symbols—
smell of tangerine
All the while he was battling tuberculosis. Finally they decided on surgery—he survived with half a lung.
the puppet’s master
hidden in the shifting light
old year turns to new
In 1967 a medication that was meant to cure his tuberculosis left him totally deaf.
mountain crevices
marked by a flow of snow
a cloud like a hand
cold emanating
from the renovation site
centuries old
After first searching for a way to reverse his hearing loss, including a five-month stay for Kiyoshi in a hospital in Japan when they wrote to each other daily, they came to realize restoration was not to be and with this acceptance they turned to haiku.
withering blast!
through parted clouds the glitter
of the Pleiades
They join the Kari Haiku Society of Japan in San Jose where they become very active, recording all the haiku from each meeting and sending the haiku to Shugyo Takaha to be judged.
spring rain—
a downpour of light filling
the tea garden
They were such thorough record-keepers that all the haiku, the transmissions to Takaha in Japan, and his replies now reside in the Haiku Archive in the California State Library in Sacramento, California.
In 1975 Kiyoshi decides that English-speakers might like to write haiku, and with Kiyoko, founds the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, of which I am almost a charter member. At first the society was a division of the Yukuharu Haiku Society until in 1978 it became independent.
the rim of the sun
touches the rim of the world
spilling out spring dawn
With a happy exuberance they build a community of poets.
Conception Bay—
small islands poke out of
the sea’s vast night
Kiyoshi is the first president of the society. He publishes the first Geppo, the Society’s monthly newsletter. Kiyoko compiles the society’s first kigo list. Teruo Yamagata of the Yukuharu Haiku Society is a regular contributor. Kiyoshi bubbles with enthusiasm.
unstoppable
the river and its stories—
the laughing mountain
Kiyoko is always by his side. At meetings she writes in the air in Japanese calligraphy what is being said by the participants so that Kiyoshi can keep up with the flow of the conversation.
at the bay’s entrance
water becomes sky becomes
spring dusk
It’s a busy, joy-filled time—a time of learning, growing, and building. I work with Kiyoshi translating Shugyo Takaha’s The Enjoyment of Haiku, several chapters of which we publish in Haiku Journal, once an annual publication of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society. One warm summer day I came to the Tokutomi’s house on Eighth Street to continue our work and find him sitting outside in the shade of an oleander. He is very pleased with himself because he had been strong enough to walk all the way around the block that morning. As we worked, I noticed a small wind chime hung in the oleander. When I remarked on it by writing him a note (this is how I communicated with him), he said that Kiyoko had hung it there for him to “listen” to.
wind chimes in a calm—
the pensive listening to
the sound of no sound
The two of them, Kiyoshi and Kiyoko, lived this way, paying attention to the small details in their life, being kind to each other, and appreciating the life they had. In all the time I knew them, I never heard them complain of the way life treated them or of the difficulties that came their way. Then in 1987 Kiyoshi dies.
far out on a sea
the color of spring dusk
a white kayak
It is a time of deep sadness for Kiyoko. Sometimes she forgets to eat. Once she is so weak she faints.
the winter wind—
how are you, I ask and from
her bed she says, fine
It had become a tradition for Kiyoko and Kiyoshi to come to my house for Thanksgiving dinner. That year when I invited Kiyoko to come, she declined saying she didn’t feel up to it. Then on Thanksgiving Day she arrived at my door. She had had a dream, and in it Kiyoshi had said to her, I don’t know where you’ll be tomorrow, but it’s Thanksgiving and I’ll be at the Machmillers’!
Thanksgiving dinner—
with a gust of wind the late
arrival arrives
Kiyoko continued on the path alone.
white caps on the sea
and a vacant stare—
spring melancholy
She became the guide and spokesperson for Yuki Teikei.
on the winter shore
she notices the white sand—
a white happiness
In the month of her 65th birthday (January 1994) Kiyoko retired from National Semiconductor.
driving to the heart
of the red-leafed mountain
to live her last days
Ben Lomond, a small town in a redwood forest, became her retirement home. There she cared for her grandchildren, whom she loved, but the days were long and sometimes
lonely . . .
a plain of seaweed
off the Monterey Coast—
spring melancholy
absentmindedly
eating a persimmon
in the poet’s house
She made several trips to Japan during those years. In 1997, members of Yuki Teikei and other poets accompanied her on a tour of Matsuyama, Sado Island, Kyoto, Yokohama, Tokyo, and Shizuoaka. She spoke at the Milky Way Renku group on Sado and at the Haiku International conference in Tokyo, giving the history of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society. In Matsuyama, Kiyoko and her group of traveling poets were graciously received by Mrs. Yoshino and her Hoshi members. Mrs. Yoshino hosted a lunch, and Minako Noma and Miyoko Iwasaki led us on a tour of the Shiki Museum. That evening we watched the sun go down from Matsuyama’s famous castle. It was a magical time.
hazy moonlit night
we dart into a shop for
noodles and quail eggs
When we returned from Japan, Kiyoko told me that Shugyo Takaha had made her a dojin in Kari. This was a great happiness to her.
In 2000, Yuki Teikei celebrated its 25th Anniversary. Mr. Yamagata came from Japan. Kiyoko gave the main address. She attributed the continued vitality of Yuki Teikei to Kiyoshi’s decision early on not to hold onto the presidency of the organization, but to pass it along to other members of the group. I was the third president of Yuki Teikei following Dr. Edwin Falkowski who followed Kiyoshi.
with a clink they sink
deeper into themselves—
the ice cubes
And then there came the time that memory became illusive.
dog days of August—
she lingers in the twilight
waiting for Godot
autumn sky—as if
whisking its corners the which
which, which of bamboo
young leaves: this feeling
of wanting to know what now
I can never know
sun on autumn sea—
its shining iridescence
masks an ocean
the one who would quote
Bashô no longer knows
the cormorant’s name
house in the redwoods—
the river rushes by beneath
blank windows
I used to visit her in her house in Ben Lomond.
I hear Shikibu
among whispering redwoods—
on good days she weeps
Most times we would drive to Santa Cruz for sushi, and then I would take her to the ocean.
the autumn seashore—
the constant muttering stops
where breakers flower
singing to herself
she doesn’t notice lovers
by the autumn sea
Once a year I would bring her to the Yuki Teikei haiku retreat at Asilomar in Pacific Grove, California, where being around haiku and haiku people would seem to pull her out of the coming darkness.
her night mutterings
what did they know in Salem
of the winter mind?
winter strawberry—
she apologizes to
the teacher not there
Once as I was tucking her into bed at Asilomar she said: Who are you, Pat? I know you’re Pat, but who are you? When I said that I was a long-time friend, she said, Oh. Then, after a pause: I thought you were a relative.
snow on the hilltop—
her mutter-mutterings
fall into silence
All through her decline she continued to write haiku. At one point after a bad fall:
rehab courtyard—
wrapped up in a plaid blanket
she counts syllables
Her English seemed to fall away and since I didn’t understand Japanese, we often didn’t talk. But she continued to write haiku in English whenever I would come.
sitting together
a circle of pigeons watch
us watch the cold sea
Haiku was like a light in the growing fog of Alzheimer’s
glinting winter sea—
I don’t think I can compose
haiku anymore
She was pleased when her book, Kiyoko’s Sky, translated by Fay Aoyagi and me, came out in early December of 2002. In mid-December her daughter brought her to the Yuki Teikei winter party along with her nine-year-old granddaughter, and she read aloud from the book for the first time. We didn’t know that it would be the last time.
red glow of charcoal
she hears her grandmother’s voice
reading her haiku
On Christmas Day, 2002, she passed away.
blush of winter moon—
this woman that comes in grace
that leaves us in grace
In 2007 eight members of Yuki Teikei traveled to Japan. In Tokyo one evening we had dinner at the home of Takeko and Teruo Yamagata and on another evening we wrote renku in Masajo’s Pub with Emiko Miyashita and others. We then traveled to Matsuyama where we attended the third Haiku Pacific Rim Conference, held at the Shiki Museum where this speech was presented for the first time.
It was after Kiyoko’s death that we found an exchange of letters written in Japanese between Kiyoshi and Kiyoko. These letters, translated by Tei Matsushita Scott and me, were published by Hardscratch Press in 2009 in the book, Autumn Loneliness: The Letters of Kiyoshi and Kiyoko Tokutomi, July–December, 1967. The original letters reside in the American Haiku Archives in Sacramento. The letters speak to the extraordinary love between these two people and their enormous capacity to overcome hardship and to find beauty in the simple and the everyday. Theirs was a haiku life.
in the hearth flames
separate like their separate dreams
yet like the fire, whole
Acknowledgements
This haibun was first published in The Proceedings of the Third Conference of Haiku Pacific Rim (Matsuyama, Japan, April, 2007) and later in Autumn Deepens, Yuki Teikei Members’ Anthology, eds. Jerry Ball and June Hopper Hymas (Sunnyvale, California: Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, 2010). Patricia J. Machmiller’s haiku translated into Japanese by Fay Aoyagi. The following are previous publication credits for individual poems.
“absentmindedly,” “sun on autumn sea,” and “the one who would quote,” One Hundred Gourds, Carolyn Hall, ed. (San Francisco: Two Autumns Press, Haiku Poets of Northern California, 2003)
“autumn sky—as if,” Spring Sky, Yuki Teikei Members’ Anthology, June Hopper Hymas, ed. (San Jose, California: Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, 2001)
“dog days of August,” Bashô Festival 2002 Anthology (Iga Ueno, Japan, 2002)
“young leaves: this feeling” and “her night mutterings,” Haiku: A Poet’s Guide, Lee Gurga (Lincoln, Illinois: Modern Haiku Press, 2003)
“I hear Shikibu,” Kurumaza, Emi Goto, ed.