Gogyohka

is a form of Japanese poetry pioneered by Enta Kusakabe(草壁　焔太） in the 1950s in his quest to find freedom from the restraints of Haiku and Tanka poetry. Unlike Tanka (or Waka) and Haiku, Gogyohka does not have any syllable requirement for the length of its lines. The only hardfast rule of Gogyohka is that the poem should be five lines long, although the lines should remain brief in keeping with the tradition of Japanese short verse. Here are three examples:

This ( こんなに )
loneliness ( 寂しいのは )
is me ( 私が私だからだ 　)
so I can not ( これは )
destroy it ( 壊せない )

--- Enta Kusakabe　(草壁焔太)

What kind of （どんな　）
stained glass　（　ステンドグラスを　）
have your （　通り抜けてきたのか　）
rose-colored cheeks （　君の　）
passesd through （　薔薇色の頬　）

--- Enta Kusakabe（草壁焔太）

almost winter　（　越冬準備の父　）
Dad outside with the ax　（　日がな　）
chonk...chonk...chonk　（　薪を割る　）
teaching us the sound　（　原野に　）
of snow coming　（　根雪を告げる音だ　）

--- Nobuko Miyoshi　（三好叙子）

Enta Kusakabe（草壁 焔太）

Kusakabe was born in 1938 in Dairen(大連） City, Manchuria（満州） , which was under Japanese control at the time. He moved to Kusakabe(草壁）, Kagawa Prefecture(香川県）, in 1947, and later attended Tokyo University, graduating with a degree in Western Literature.

During this period Kusakabe came under the tutelage of Japanese Tanka poet Samio Maekawa(前川佐美雄）and began avidly writing Tanka. He soon became frustrated with the form of Tanka, however, feeling as though its structure produced the same melancholy tone no matter what the subject matter In 1957, at the age of 19, he wrote his first Gogyohka:

I want to hide　（　花びらの　）
her finger　（　小さな　）
in the gentle　（　ふくらみに　）
swell　（　あの人の指を　）
of the flower's petal　（かくしてやるのだ　）

From there Kusakabe went on to publish numerous collections of poems with a few Gogyohka sprinkled in throughout the volume. Though older poets frowned upon the form generally, no one publicly objected to the inclusion of these poems.

In 1994 Kusakabe, who had by then been writing Gogyohka for 37 years, established, with 30 volunteers, the first Gogyohka Society and launched the periodical, Gogyohka. Currently there are 4,000 members of 150 local chapters of regional Gogyohka Societies in Japan. In addition, there are 500,000 people in Japan writing Gogyohka, including 150,000 children . These are membership-based organizations that offer monthly workshops (Uta-kai), lectures on poetry, and the chance to publish Gogyohka, commentary, and reports from workshops in Gogyohka, published monthly from Gogyohka no Kai, Kusakabe's central Gogyohka Society in Tokyo.

Central Axis

With its emphasis on free and open expression, Gogyohka has been shown through implementation in hospitals and psychiatric centers to have a therapeutic effect on a wide range of people, from cancer sufferers and aphasia to regular people suffering from isolation, depression, and anxiety. Kuskakabe explains the emotional benefits through the metaphor of a 'central axis':

When I write five-line verses, I am able to gather together my thoughts on matters that are occupying my interest at the time. This process allows me to observe myself; I can look at my heart objectively through other people's eyes, and thereby constantly reassess myself and improve my way of thinking.

The single most important thing for people is their central axis - the part of them that constitutes their very essence - and the most important thing for the self is to recognize and understand that inner, central axis. Once you are aware of what is most important to you, then you are able to build your own system of values in relation to it. This allows you to create a standard by which you can judge the relative importance of the various aspects of your life and the world around you.

When you are able to do this, the stress in your life naturally falls away. This is because stress comes from the inability to distinguish between what is and what is not important; if you treat everything in your life with equal importance, then you become upset when, inevitably, some things do not go as well as you would like them to.

The challenge of Gogyohka may be the same thing that is appealing about it--namely, its simplicity. Because any subject matter is game, and the only rule is that the poem be five lines concentrated for meaning, it can be said that it is very easy to write a Gogyohka, but very difficult to write an exemplary Gogyohka. In the preface to his collection of American Gogyohka, Text Messages, Peter Fiore writes, "working on Gogyohka is a meditation on the spontaneous challenge of the moment."

This moment may be rooted in something very simple and directly personal:

Walking beside a jumping frog
the road conveys us
different rhythms
not so different
destinations

-- Linda Umans

Or expressed in the more abstract terms:

Destiny
is an arrow
we do not
feel until
it strikes

-- Linda Voss

Or take as its central axis the world itself:

with all the living　（　全ての生と　）
with all the dead　（　全ての死を　）
the lovely earth　（　同時に支えながら　）
is floating　（　宇宙の暗闇に浮かんでいる　）
in a dark universe　（　青い地球よ　）

-- Aidu Taro（　会津太郎　）

Or take as its central axis in the concrete terms:

The corn tassels
blowing softly
in the wind of the Plains
grow higher
on the bones of the buffalo.

--- Tim Geaghan

Breath and Line Breaks

Syllable count does not determine the length of the line in Gogyohka. This frees it from the confines and repetitious nature of Tanka and Haiku. Instead, it is the breath that governs the length of the line. A breath is the natural pause a speaker takes between phrases, IDeaS, and perceptions. But it is individual to a particular speaker and their language. Consider the breath and tone of the next Gogyohka:

I wish
that the
whole world was like
a teddy bear and
just be able to hug it when you're sad

-- Catherine Cooke

The poem has two hard enjambments, between lines 2 and 3 and between lines 4 and 5. But here it works well, as it conveys the breathless excitement of the poem's speaker when read aloud. The breath of a given writer varies greatly, and Gogyohka can accommodate long lines like "just be able to hug it when you're sad" above, or incredibly short lines. Some Gogyohka have only one word for each line:

November--
finally
no
more
crickets

-- Peter Fiore

Enta Kusakabe recognized the naturalness and universality of the breath. All people breathe. And since the line is not determined by syllable count, Gogyohka can give voice to many different melodies, different modes and tones. The naturalness and universality of the breath also means that Gogyohka can be written in and translated into any language. Here are three written in French, Chinese, Arabic, Tagalog and Korean respectively:

Comme il est doux
le souvenir
du premier baiser
échangé
dans un coin discret

--- Thérèse D'hulst

前方緩步踱來
一位臨辭行的同事
說著，與我交接吧
我好奇地詢問
他遞來一只貓飼料的碗

--- 小鬍子

احب اساتذتي كثيرا ...ولكني ...
لااظهر هذا الشعور...
لعلي طالبة جادة اكثر من الازم
فكم دافعت عن اساتذتي من بين التلاميذ
ولكن.. اساتذتي لايعلمون....

---الوردة القرنفلية

Humalakhak ka ng malakas
At sabihin mo sa mundo
Na kung sino ka
At kung ano ang katulad
Na mabuhay ng masaya

--- Urie

흑단처럼
검은 머리카락
눈처럼
새하얗게 분칠한 얼굴,
이치마츠 인형은 백설공주

--- mirabelle

Gogyohka's compatibility with any language allows non-speakers of Japanese to compose Japanese poetry. Japanese as a language relies on sounds, rather than syllables, which are of different lengths than syllables. So Western languages especially do not translate well when given sound requirements such as those in Haiku and Tanka. In short, sound and syllables do not correlate in a 1:1 ratio. For example, the word "New York" in English is two syllables long. But in Japanese, it is 5 sounds: "NI-YU-YO-O-KU". So even Haiku written in English syllable patterns of 5-7-5 are at best a rough translation of the original Japanese form. In fact, it can be argued that all Tanka written in English, since they do not absolutely adhere to the Japanese sound requirements, are Gogyohka. English Tanka may separate itself along different lines, however, by defining rules regarding season words, restricting tone, and breaking lines by a principle other than breath.

It is this discovery that Gogyohka lines could be patterned along the breath of any speaker of any language, since all languages contained breath, that led Kusakabe to begin his mission to bring Gogyohka to the entire world. As such, he has made a number of trips to the United States since 2006, lecturing and giving workshops at various schools, libraries, colleges, and public venues.

The American Gogyohka Society

In the Fall of 2008, Kusakabe met Elizabeth Phaire, her husband Joseph Gesick, and Linda Voss in New York, and together they formed the American Gogyohka Society, with Phaire as the Director. In the same time frame, Phaire, Gesick, and Voss lectured at the first World Gogyohka Conference in Japan, hosted by Kusakabe.

Kusakabe continues to visit the US to offer workshops and give lectures, with his next visit scheduled for April 2010. Through the American Gogyohka Society he has already participated in a number of events, ranging from the Kiku show at the New York Botanical Garden and Sakura Matsuri at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to workshops at the Princeton Club of New York in midtown Manhattan, and public schools and libraries in Westchester County.

In November 2009, Tim Geaghan and Peter Fiore created Gogyohka Junction, a social networking site dedicated solely to writing, sharing, and learning about English Gogyohka. It counts among its members a number of Japanese Gogyohka poets, including Kusakabe himself, and works in tandem with the Gogyohka International to promote the widespread availability of Gogyohka in all languages. Two Gogyohkas featured on Gogyohka Junction are these, by Phaire and Gesick, respectively:

where rainbow
and river meet
I am swimming
waiting for
you

--- Elizabeth Phaire

I can feel
my father's
terror
as he
grows old

--- Joseph Gesick

Finally two English Gogyohka by Japanese members of Gogyohka Junction;

A flower and a butterfly,
each lives its own life
with no idea of
helping each other.
Thus nature goes on.

--- ripple

Tell me
how it's possible
to break
the broken heart
again.

--- Chico

References

  • Kusakabe, Enta. Gogyohka. Tokyo: Shisei-sha, 2009 [2006]. Trans. Matthew Lane. Rev. Elizabeth Phaire.
  • Fiore, Peter. Text Messages. New York: Mushroom press, 2009.

fr:gogyohka ja:五行歌