Kerouac and Haiku

   Jack Kerouac’s novel, On the Road, seems to pop up in my life quite a bit. More so than any other book, I’d say. Examples: I bet I’ve been gifted On the Road about a dozen times over the years. And it’s appeared in about 90% of the bookish conversations I’ve ever had with people I know a little but not a lot.
 
   I would usually be quick to point my finger at this kind of thing and say, “Aha! The Universe is speaking to me!” But in this case, I know better. In this case, it’s just a matter of mistaken identity.

    The thing is this: I don't love On the Road. But I probably give off many of the same vibes as people who do.

   It’s not that I don’t Get It. I’m all about raging against the machine. It’s just that when it comes to rebellion, Dean Moriarty is no Holden Caulfield. To me it seems like Kerouac’s Dean Moriarty rebels by playing the game by his own rules, sure – but he never leaves the stadium. Whereas Salinger’s Holden Caulfield point blank refuses to be initiated.
 
   It must sound like I’m busting Jack Kerouac’s balls. I’m not. The guy could write circles around most anyone. But like many authors (Salinger included), he ended up getting pigeonholed by his most famous work, so a ton of his good stuff gets pushed off to the side. In my humble opinion, one of the best things Kerouac ever did was write Haikus. Here are a couple beauties:

The dog yawned
And almost swallowed
My Dharma
 
/ / /
 
Missing a kick
at the icebox door
It closed anyway

   Haiku devotees that dig into Kerouac’s body of work might get annoyed because he breaks most of Haiku’s sacred rules. Haiku is very Japanese, and as such it’s supposed to obsessively adhere to form; it's meant to be a sparse poem of exactly seventeen syllables – arranged in three lines of five, seven, and five – and traditionally, it’s supposed to evoke images of nature. Here’s a classic example, a Haiku by Den Sute-jo (1634-1698):

higurashi ya
sutete oite mo
kururu hi wa
 
which (roughly) translates to:
 
Cicada!
Not your doing
But day darkens…

   When it came to Haiku, Kerouac observed only the outer boundaries and threw out the rest. Evocative? Yes. Three lines? Yes. But nothing else. He’s basically pulling a Dean Moriarty on us.

   Personally, I like his ‘restrained rebellion’ better when it’s coming straight from him rather than filtered through some character. Heck, I like many of Kerouac’s Haikus as much as anything from traditional Japanese poets. But I can’t help but wonder… Were Kerouac’s Haikus meant to pay homage to the Japanese or infuriate them?
 
  It might be possible that Kerouac simply liked the art form of Haiku enough to pick it up and run with it. And it worked. American ingenuity (a.k.a. cultural appropriation)! Always fun!
 
    But I suspect there’s more to it than that.
 
   There’s no doubt that Jack Kerouac had a deep understanding of the ethos interplay between Japan and America. He was, after all, a driving force in the wave of American interest in Japanese culture and Eastern philosophy that took place in the 1950s. Respectful observance of anything Japanese in the 1950s was certainly rebellious – just imagine how most Americans were taught to feel about Japan at that time.
 
   But also, Kerouac must have known that cultural sensitivity between America and Japan is essentially a one-way street. By this I mean that the Japanese, culturally speaking, offer significantly less ‘cultural forgiveness’ to other cultures than do Americans. To wit: There are hundreds of American books about “how to do business with the Japanese without unintentionally insulting them” but none addressing the reverse premise.
 
   Bottom line: By dabbling in Haiku, Kerouac must have known that he was simultaneously complimenting and insulting the Japanese. But he went ahead and did it anyway.
 
    That’s way more Holden than Dean, so count me in.

– O.M. Kelsey