My Fukushima by Taro Aizu
Coverpainting by Dutch painter and participant Gogyoshi Art Project international: Gonny Geurts.
You can buy the the book at Amazon.
Taro Aizu:
Ed Hanssen, a Dutch artist, wrote this kind foreword in English for me two years ago. Thank you for comparing my haiku to Van Gogh, Ed!
. Foreword
Taro Aizu is a Japanese poet and he introduced the Gogyoshi. Besides Gogyoshi, he also writes Haiku and Haibun. All three can be enjoyed in “My Fukushima”....
His Gogyoshi are bare, to the point, poetic, stripped of ornaments. They show his keen eye to his surroundings. They catch the reader off guard and shake his world. His poems catch Taro's wonder and he shows his fears and joys to the reader in just a few words and one becomes afraid or joyous, for they are so close to the heart. One easily feels his love for his Fukushima, not so long ago full of life and light. But..the beautiful. Mother Nature showed her cruel side: An earthquake, a tsunami and..... the melt down of a nuclear plant.
Life is no longer what it used to be : Children playing with dosimeters, green ricefields filled with cesium, empty beaches, rain killing softly, hope for the gorgeous bloom of Takizakura : the old cherry tree. These are only but a few themes from Taro's jewels of poetry called Gogyoshi.
The cat
Ignorant
As it licks
Cesium rain
From its wet fur.
Don't we all get wet by the rains pouring down on us? Are we humans aware of the content of rain? Just imagine... and the horror is close at hand. 5-Lines make you aware. This is true art!
We'll sing a song
And dance again
Around the blossoms
in our hometown,
Fukushima, Fukushima.
This Gogyoshi rejoices, gives us hope for a better future. We all want to sing and dance again. Every cloud has a silver lining, but this is pure gold.
Scarecrows
In harvest rice fields...
The sunset.
It reminds me of Vincent Van Gogh's most famous painting which pictures crows flying over wheat fields. Art in words meets art in paint.
Ed Hanssen
29 November, 2012
Nunhem, the Netherlands
