Japanese Culture is global culture

A lot of elements of Japanese culture have become part of the great global mash-up, especially food culture and pop culture. But none, I think, will have the endurance of the little poem that could, the haiku.

Via Miriam Burstein, who’s usually more inclined to blog in script than in verse, comes word of an Academic Haiku Contest: summarize your research in a mere seventeen syllables! Unfortunately, the contest is ending shortly, but if anyone can dash off haiku, I image that our readers can. My own contribution was bilingual:

Yamaguchi no
Hawai deimin ga
Obon kaeri

I suppose you’d like it in English? Let’s see if I can translate it and maintain the Haiku form:

Obon dances bring
Yamaguchi emigrants
back from Hawai’i

[Obon is the a Japanese festival honoring ancestors, a time when families come together. Yamaguchi prefecture was a significant source of Japanese migration to Hawai’i]
“International Labor Migrants Return to Meiji-Era Yamaguchi and Hiroshima: Economic and Social Effects,” under review.

My entry may actually have come too late to count, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun over here. Update: In comments, Jim Gibbon says that there’s a few hours left, until 8pm EST (that’s 3pm, HST), so let’s show ’em what we’ve got!

Weekend Update: Voting is open through Monday. He’s divided them into four categories so you can actually vote for four favorites! (OK, I’ve voted. Oddly, perhaps, I didn’t vote for my own haiku in the Social Science division. It’s the most technically correct haiku [the only one with a seasonal reference], but there was one I liked more. Go figure.)