[Shun-hai: Haiku] The Unofficial Chiyo Ohashi Award
This is a private award I'm running on my own☆
I selected the haiku that I liked from the list while keeping the authors' names hidden.
※In order of submission
◎The Unofficial Chiyo Ohashi Award [Gold Prize]
The pool in the middle of the night, dark even to the bottom
Author: Hanakaze-san
It gave me goosebumps.
It felt like I had peered into the abyss of my own heart...
What could be at the bottom of the water?
A haiku that makes you hear music.
As a supplementary prize, I composed a song. I borrowed the haiku for the title.
Please have a listen☆
◎The Unofficial Chiyo Ohashi Award [Silver Prize]
Thunder god, a thunderbolt to your heart
Author: PJ-san
“A thunderbolt to your heart”—Japanese I want to say out loud... Wait, is that even Japanese? lol
If you actually got hit by that, your heart would stop⚡
I pictured the thunder god shooting lightning from his finger and zapping your heart.
On the shore
I'll take steps
Until dawn
Author: Plum-san
I like this haiku; it has a certain Showa-era vibe.
It doesn't feel like modern dancing, but rather has the atmosphere of a slow ballroom dance.
I want to dance until dawn, too.
Summer evening, is hide-and-seek over already?
Author: Tsuru-san
Hide-and-seek starts so suddenly and ends just as suddenly, doesn't it?
Just a moment ago I could hear, "Ready?" "Not yet!", but then, huh? There's no one here...
I imagine a park illuminated by the sunset.
A park after the children have gone home feels like another world, doesn't it?
I got bitten by a mosquito in the bedroom, you idiot
My vocabulary is so poor it's like a skunk vine
Poet: Meat and Fillet's Little Empire
Your use of seasonal words is genius.
The emotions contained within them come across directly.
Especially 'skunk vine' (kuso-kazura).
I've always wondered if the person who named this plant was a middle schooler...
My vocabulary is amazing, isn't it.
Doing the same thing every day, the sound of cicadas
Gathering around the Wi-Fi, we are like mountain avens
Poet: Limitless Ronin Piyo
Sending my daughter to nursery school and my son to after-school care, it's the sound of cicadas every day.
Repeating the same things every day, time passes before you know it...
The mountain avens (chinguruma) haiku made me laugh because the scene just popped into my head.
With this seasonal word, the whole thing played out in my brain like a comedy sketch, and I could see the image.
Fingers tangled in Beyer, early summer heat
Poet: Sazanami
I imagined the sound of a piano drifting from a house I was passing by.
It's one of the moments I find most peaceful.
The sound of clumsy practice is also nice, isn't it~☆
Signs of a ghost in the classroom, rainy season mushrooms
Poet: Daiki Shioda
It's damp and good.
It's horror, but I also like how the high humidity makes you feel like you'd sweat even more.
Feeling darkness in the brightness, swimsuit tan lines
Poet: Kando
Darkness lurking within the brightness.
I like haiku that go from the surface to the hidden side.
Only a slight fever left behind, the end of summer
Author: rira
The word 'love' doesn't appear anywhere, but it made me think of a love that ends with the end of summer.
I went to read the article afterward and seeing the explanation made my heart flutter.
It was a long time ago, but it reminded me of how I used to pierce my ears whenever I had to make a big decision...
Carrying grave markers on their backs, the sweaty children, Ge-ge-ge no Ge
Author: Hakka Hayashi
It is a mysterious verse that feels like it exists in the space between this world and the next.
When you go to a graveyard, children always seem to get excited, don't they?
I was drawn to the strange worldview where life and death coexist, so I gave it a 'pon' (like) on the short story.
It served as a hint for the setting of what the characters are made to do.
Thank you very much☆
Summer grasses, and a person passing by in silence
Author: Haru-to-tomoni🌸
It is a verse that makes me curious because 'a person passing by in silence' feels so profound.
Are they passing by in silence even though they have something on their mind...?
It also made me feel as if I had become the grass, watching someone pass by in the scorching heat.
That person's, that perfume's secret
Author: Ma-kun
Scents are directly linked to memories, aren't they?
The back of someone who couldn't convey their feelings leaves only their scent behind as they depart...
That is the scene that came to mind.
Drunk and staggering, the summer festival of abnormal weather
Author: Shugyoso Ikkyu
Summer festivals were held in many places for the first time in a while this year, but there were so many people I couldn't move...
Everyone was exhausted.
And with this heat... I imagine the organizers must have been staggering too.
An alcoholic at a standing bar, the end of summer
Author: Yadokari
I don't drink, but I have many friends who love alcohol.
They really have all sorts of heroic tales... I thought of them collapsing on the floor or the ground at the end of summer.
Watching the marble in the ramune you drink with my eyes
Poet: Minchon-san
If the person you like is drinking ramune, you'd end up watching them, wouldn't you? Ah, I want to become that marble... or something like that. It's heart-fluttering.
Walking and counting the empty shells, the voice of summer
Poet: Yukihiro🧸-san
It reminded me of my daughter when she discovered cicada shells everywhere. 'There's one here! Oh! And another one over here!!' I like this haiku because the 'voice of summer' also lets you feel the lingering atmosphere.
Cicadas buzzing, the silence of the line waiting for the water truck
Poet: Umino Chie-san
It's a haiku that makes you see the anxious feelings and even the faces of the people standing in line. I think it's a haiku that truly captures the 'now'.
Summer night breeze, a hole in a dream where stories fall
Poet: Hiro-o-san
It's a fantastical haiku. And then I realized it was Hiro-o-san's poem. It's a haiku that makes you wonder what happens next, as if you might be spirited away.
A gal with her belly exposed, and the Sumida River in yukata
Vinyl hydrangeas dancing in Shinanomachi
Poet: Sasara Madoka-san
I like both of these because they feel like modern Japanese summer. It's nice that the Sumida River and Shinanomachi are mentioned. I somehow feel a sense of the Showa era from them.
Summer haori, someone else's wife who looks like she's about to speak
Poet: Saito T-cho-san
A premonition of a somewhat sultry night conversation. It's all the fault of summer... It's a haiku that brings a scene to mind.
Does father's sunglasses bark at the sun?
Poet: Tsuruno Fukurokoji
You rarely see anyone wearing sunglasses like that these days, lol.
I feel like I'd have to make a snarky comment too.
I wonder if it was normal back then? People from that era seem to have such gravitas even when they're young.
Like, 'Are you really in your twenties!?'
Thank you for such a heartwarming scene.
That is all.
With 'Min-Hai' frozen!!, I suppose the unauthorized awards will be on hiatus for a while too.
Even when I chose works without knowing the authors' names, I often ended up picking the same person's work; it was deeply moving to realize that one really does have a specific taste.
◎Anyone can host an unauthorized award~
◎Seasonal Cup Final Round
Voting ends today, August 1st, at 9:00 PM!