to the imagination, it is profound rather than trivial. Brevity is occasioned by intensity. Nor is the effect of the Japanese hokku at all similar to that of the epigram as commonly conceived, which, like the serpent with its tail in its mouth, is a closed circle. As Mr. Noguchi says:
Although my understanding of that word (epigram) is not necessarily limited to the thought of pointed saying, I may not be much mistaken to compare the word with a still, almost dead, pond where thought or fancy, nay the water, hardly changes or procreates itself The real hokkus are a running living water of poetry where you can reflect yourself to find your own identification.
In this little book Mr. Noguchi gives us many unintentional examples of the hokku in his way of expressing his thought; there is no dead phrasing. This in itself is a hokku in spirit:
A great hokku poem never makes us notice its limitation of form, but rather impresses us by the freedom through mystery of its chosen language, as if a sea-crossing wind blown in from a little window.
To appreciate Japanese poetry we must identify ourselves as much as possible with the vision of the Japanese poet and artist—the two arts are more intimately connected in the Japanese mind than with us. "The ancient sages said that a poem is a painting without visual shape, and a painting is poetry put into form." To understand the deeper significance of Japanese poetry, indeed, we must go back to its foundations in the body of art and poetry produced during the Sung dynasty in China under the influence of Zen Buddhism—"this gentle Zen doctrine, which holds man and nature to be two parallel sets of characteristic forms between which
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