Imai Sei () 1950

Imai Sei was born on October 12, 1950, in Niigata Prefecture on the coast of the Japan Sea. He attended a high school in Tottori Prefecture. His school’s baseball team went to the national finals at Kshien Stadium near Osaka. He was not on the team but he has “a lot of memories” about high school baseball. He belonged to the school’s kendo (Japanese fencing) club. When he went to college he took English literature courses and studied Ezra Pound and Imagism. He now lives in Yokohama where he teaches high school.

He joined the Kanrai (Winter Thunder) haiku group in 1971 and was awarded the group’s haiku prize in 1981. Imai is also interested in the cinema and in 1995 wrote the script for the film Asian Blue. He is a haiku selector for the Tokyo Shinbun (Tokyo Newspaper), Kanagawa region, and is a member of the Association of Haiku Poets. Imai now has his own haiku group called Machi (City), where he stresses the importance of the shasei (sketching from nature) method of writing haiku, originally taught by Masaoka Shiki. The poet sketches in words what he observes in nature, then turns these notes into finished haiku.

Yokohama High School, where he teaches English, has also played in the finals at Kshien and has produced many professional baseball players, a number of whom have made the majors. One of these, a pitcher named Matsuzaka, was called “Monster” for his power. He now plays in Seibu for a Pacific League team and is still quite popular. So one way Imai can feel close to the world of baseball is through his students.

 

 

from the classroom

one can see the baseball field

spring clouds

kyshitsu kara miyuru kyj haru no kumo

 

 

the baseball stadium’s

ten-thousand empty seats

the first swallow

kyj ni man no kseki hatsu-tsubame

it’s the time of year

for night games to begin

eggplants in flower

nait no hajimaru koro no nasu no hana

at the night game

seeing a former pupil

in the bleachers

oshiego ni au nait no gaiya-seki

 

 

after the error

the player still faces the outfield

towering clouds

er shite mada ushiro-muki kumo no mine

 

 

the lizard disappears

while the little league catcher

keeps crying out loud

itsumademo hoshu gkysu tokage kie

walking home

with his glove on his head

shrieking cicadas

guroubu wo atama ni nosete semi-shigure

a ground-rule double

any ball that’s hit into

the green onion field

nirui-da to seri negi-batake ni iritaru wa

 

 

the baseball thrown

back into the game is wet

a mackerel sky

henky no nurete itarashi iwashigumo