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We often wonder where successful individuals find inspiration and energy to do the things they do. Some may harbor their forces, spending long hours focused on a single problem, a single passion. Yet others expand their range of attention. They are polymaths, people of many concurrent interests. They take on multiple problems within a single discipline or profession; or, perhaps more surprisingly, they take on serious endeavor in two or more apparently unrelated areas of practice. What? They let a hobby eat up their time? They split their energies between two careers? How does that enable success?
There is no one answer to these questions—but there are some intriguing clues to what makes the creative strategy work. First, polymaths see strong connections between the things they spend their time doing. In important ways, one activity reinforces the other and vice versa within a personal network of enterprise. Moreover, and this is the second point, one activity affords a respite from the other, a recreation of sorts that restores creative energy. Instead of fighting ebb and flow in the problem-solving process, polymaths switch gears at the ebb in one activity and enter the flow in the other.
In the interview that follows the Japanese physicist and poet Akito Arima reveals how the strategy has worked for him, enabling him to reach the heights of achievement in two fields. The piece first appeared in Frogpond, the journal of the Haiku Society of America, volume 35, issue 3, 2012.
Dog Star: An Interview with Akito Arima
by Michele Root-Bernstein, East Lansing, Michigan
At the Fifth Haiku Pacific Rim Conference, held September 5–9 in Pacific Grove, California, participants had the privilege of attending a reading by the well-known Japanese poet, Akito Arima. Author of thirteen books of haiku and haiku master of Ten’i, one of the most prominent haiku groups in Japan, Arima has served as President of the Haiku International Association and played a leading role in reaching across the borders of haiku practice. Einstein’s Century (2001), a collection of his poetry in English translation, has been praised for “a certain traditional elegance and…delicate, confident cosmopolitanism.”1 A new selection of his haiku appears in English translation in Bending Reeds, the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society Members’ Anthology for 2012.
In tandem with his poetic vocation, Akito Arima has also pursued a world-class career in nuclear physics, contributing notably to explanatory models of nuclear structure. He has additionally served education, science and Japan as president of the University of Tokyo (1989-1993), president of Japan’s Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (1993-1998) and Minister of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture (1998-2000). Among numerous awards from around the world, he is recipient of the Humboldt Award, the Franklin Institute Wetherill Medal, the Bonner Prize, the French Legion of Honor, Knight Commander of the British Empire and twelve honorary doctorates. In Japan he has been named a person of cultural merit and Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun. In 2010 he was awarded the Order of Culture by the Emperor of Japan.
Intrigued by his extraordinary accomplishment in both art and science, I requested an interview with Dr. Arima, which in the mysterious machinations of conference planning became a public conversation directly after his reading and before his keynote presentation next day on “A Poetry Called Haiku.” I submitted my questions to Dr. Arima some weeks before our meeting. What follows is a condensed version of our exchange.
MICHELE ROOT-BERNSTEIN: Dr. Arima, Sensei, there has been much recent discussion in the pages of English language haiku collections and journals about the differences between traditional and modern haiku. For examples of both one might turn to your book Einstein’s Century. As an instance of traditional haiku, I might suggest:
buying hydrangeas—
the river the color
of dusk (p. 74)
As in instance of contemporary or gendai haiku, I might suggest:
tulip petals dropping…
one of them the ear
of Vincent Van Gogh (p. 71)
Can you explain the poetic impulses behind these two poems? Do you see yourself as traditional or modern or both in your craft?
AKITO ARIMA: Both. [Laughter] I like to mix things up. I often mix up two theories to make one. So, my answer is, I like both traditional and modern. And if you have an extremely traditional haiku, a deep traditional one, it’s very modern. Kiyoshi2 said new things can be found in the deep interpretation. So, traditional and modern are the same. Very simple.
MRB: Simple like haiku! Dr. Arima, perhaps you are familiar with the American poet E. E. Cummings, who also had some interest in haiku. He was not just a ground-breaking poet, he was also an enthusiastic painter. In fact, he initially wanted to be a painter, rather than a poet. And when asked whether his painting and his poetry interfered with each other, he had this to say:
Why do you paint?
For exactly the same reason I breathe.
That’s not an answer.
There isn’t any answer.
How long hasn’t there been any answer?
As long as I can remember.
And how long have you written?
As long as I can remember.
I mean poetry.
So do I.
Tell me, doesn’t your painting interfere with your writing?
Quite the contrary: they love each other dearly.3
You are known for your contributions to physics, to haiku and to education policy. Are these activities, especially the science and the art, of equal value or importance to you? Do your physics and your haiku compete with each other or “love each other dearly”?
AA: First I wish to think about E.E. Cummings. I love his poems. They look like paintings. He organizes lines and line beautifully, sometimes short long short long and sometimes you see the lines become shorter and shorter, triangle shape. He’s really a painter, an artist. So in that sense in his poems both paintings and poems are mixed up. Again mixing. Also, if Cummings writes a poem in three lines, it looks like haiku! So now, what is your question? [Laughter]
I will answer you. If I am interested in the physics, I continue to work ten hours, one hundred hours, no problem. But sometimes I have trouble solving my own questions. Nature is very cunning in hiding her secrets. In that case, I go back to haiku. I look at the other side of nature. Then, she frankly tells me her beauty. I turn from physics and very detailed theory to gigantic scenery or the detailed beauty of flowers or the beautiful song of the insect. I write a haiku. Then my energy concerning physics comes back. Then I look at my problem again with different eyes. Then I can suddenly find the heart of a secret of nature.
Like symmetry. My specialty is the dynamical symmetry of nuclear physics. If anyone here has trouble sleeping, please tell me. I can easily make you sleepy by telling you about the dynamical symmetry of nature! How to make a universe, how to make a nuclear structure—and immediately, in minutes, you can sleep very well. [Laughter]
Sometimes I have difficulty finding little poems, little haiku, so even after two or three hours I cannot write a good haiku at all. Then I go back to my studio to study physics. So both of them help each other very much. Physics, or more generally science, and haiku, or more generally arts, both of them show us different faces of nature. One is the beautiful side of nature; the other is a very delicate fine structure of nature. There is no conflict between haiku and physics.
There is, however, another difficulty. My specialty in physics deals with many-body systems. More than 60 years I have been working in this field. So I thought I could be expert at the many-body theory of human beings. This was completely wrong. There is no way to solve the many-body problem in human beings, it’s more complicated, more erratic. Politics and administration are more cumbersome, more tiresome. So don’t go into administration; don’t touch politics. There’s no reward at all. That’s my answer.
MRB: It sounds to me like the poetry is both a recreation and a re-creation that prepares you to go back to the physics and vice-versa.
AA: But don’t touch politics. [More laughter]
MRB: Agreed. Shall we move on? The introduction to Einstein’s Century tells us you were mentored in haiku by Seison Yamaguchi,4 a professor of engineering as well as haiku master. Though I also understand that you wrote haiku from a very young age at the knees of your parents. However, my question is this: Do you belong to a tradition in Japan of nursing concurrent interests in art and science? Or, is there a two-culture gap in Japan, as many people believe there is in the West?5
AA: Between art and science, there is not so much of a gap in Japan. For instance, Seison, my teacher, was as you said an engineer. And Torahiko Terada6—he was an expert in seismology and physics and the first to introduce x-ray physics to Japan just two years after the Laue spots caused by x-rays were discovered in Europe. He was also good at haiku and very good at essays. Terada was father of my teacher, so I am his grandson as far as physics is concerned. So I follow his way to write haiku. He’s my role-model. However, he was better than I. Why? Because he never touched politics and administration! [Laughter]
MRB: So in Japan it’s perfectly acceptable—even admirable—to pursue a dual vocation in science and art?! I’m looking forward to the day that an American physicist writes poetry and gets credit—and a reputation—for both passions.
AA: But in the U.S. there have been many physicists who were very good musicians, for instance Albert Einstein and Frank Oppenheimer (younger brother of Robert).
MRB: True, though these days in the U.S. we tend, I think, to ignore the synergies of art and science. Nevermind that now, let’s look to the next question. Dr. Arima, you have been an active proponent of the internationalization of haiku. Does haiku, as a developing tradition and creative practice, benefit from close interaction or association with the concerns of other cultures, other arts and sciences? Where does the future of haiku lie?
AA: Future of haiku? Please wait for my talk tomorrow morning, when I will explain why haiku is becoming so popular! Here’s a preview: it’s very short; the theme is fixed, something related to nature; and it’s very easy for us to remember. In fact, even I can write an English haiku. Why? I don’t need to have a big vocabulary. A hundred English words is good enough to write an English haiku. [Laughter] Two or three words in the first line, three or four words in the second line, and the third line, maybe two. Only ten words is good enough to write one haiku. And as far as theme is concerned, mainly we talk about the beauty of nature and human life directly related to nature. We don’t talk about anything complicated. So haiku poets can be lazy. [Laughter] Please wait until tomorrow morning. Okay? Make the next question an easy question, please!
MRB: I was going to ask is that why, because it’s so apparently simple, haiku is going to work its way around the world and we’ll have haiku in every language?
AA: Seriously, I would like to say we need haiku in this century. In order to achieve global peace, we must understand each other. The best method is to make haiku.
MRB: About that making, can you tell us something of your creative and compositional processes? Where do haiku come from? Striking images? Given lines that drop into your mind? In bits and pieces or wholesale? Are you a Mozart (composing in your head, spontaneously) or a Beethoven (composing on paper, laboriously)?
AA: I am not a Beethoven. Intuition is most important to me. Imagination. And also creativity. Sometimes it takes many hours to make one poem. I wish to change this word and so on. But sometimes instantly I can make a haiku. For instance, I recited earlier a poem of mine about a golden temple.7 I went to this famous temple, which 400 years ago Bashō [the greatest of haiku masters] also visited, and I remembered Bashō’s haiku.8 Then, in one second, I wrote my whole poem, just after looking at water rushing, coming from melted snow. It was beautiful scenery. So, sometimes it takes time; sometimes it doesn’t take time. It depends on the situation. The important thing is how to concentrate myself in the poem. Always we must watch what’s going on.
MRB: In other words, be ready, whichever way the haiku comes. Dr. Arima, you may know of Sofya Kovalevskaya, a mathematician and poet of the 19th century. She argued that, for her, both pursuits—the science and the art—required “the utmost imagination.” She wrote: “[I]t is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in spirit.”9 So I’m asking you, might the reverse also be true? Is it impossible to be a poet without also being a mathematician (or a scientist) in one’s soul?
AA: As Kovalevskaya said, imagination is most important. In order to make a good haiku, in order to create a new theory, in order to create a new way of experimenting, it takes imagination. And, funny coincidence, in Japanese the word for imagination [想像 souzou10] sounds like soh-zoh. Creativity, creation [創造 souzou10] also sounds like soh-zoh. So in Japanese souzou means two things: imagination and creativity. The study of nature as well as art both require us to have two things—in lazy Japanese, one word, but for diligent Americans, two words. Creativity and imagination, both of them are very important.
MRB: If I may offer a paraphrase, you think there’s an art to science. Is there also a science to haiku?
AA: Yes. As I said, in order to find a new theory in science we have to look at nature’s fine structure, how delicately made it is. The delicacy of nature reflects its beauty. Physics tries to understand the delicacy, haiku or art tries to find the beauty, of nature. Both are the same. No question. [Laughter]
MRB: No question, both are the same? Or are we done?!
AA: No, you can have another question, if you wish.
MRB: I wonder, then, if you would comment on one of your poems in Einstein’s Century?
the Dog Star:
Einstein’s century
comes to an end
(p. 26)
My question, what new age is dawning?
AA: New age? In physics? You ask me the most difficult questions! [Laughter] Last month a very important discovery was made; the origin of mass was finally solved.11 But still in the universe there are many steps of development we don’t understand yet. Particularly important in the life sciences, why is there life, why do living things have memories? Another important, if minor, question concerns the asymmetry of life. Do any of you have your heart on your right? One among 100,000 people have the heart on the right side of the body. If physical law were strictly obeyed in life then we would have to have the same number of people with hearts on the right as on the left – fifty/fifty. But living things seem to break the symmetry very severely. Why is this so? Nobody knows. By the end of this century, however, those questions will be solved.
MRB: And, in the meantime, we may use haiku to contemplate the beauties of asymmetry in living things?
AA: Yes.
MRB: Arima Sensei, we would be so honored if you would choose one your haiku and read it aloud and tell us something about it and what it means to you.
AA: Already I read so many haiku. Aren’t you tired? [Laughter]
MRB: One of your favorites?
AA: .About 40 years ago, I wrote a haiku while attending a small physics conference here at Asilomar. But it takes time to find it. So I’ll read something else.12
fuyubae no sumiiru mahô no ranpu kau
winter fly
living in the magic lamp…
I buy it
I went to India and I bought a lamp. I hoped it was the magic lamp of Aladdin, but it was not. I made another poem there:
tômin no hebi wo okoshite hebitsukai
arousing the snake
from its winter sleep—
the snake charmer
This guy showed his snake in the winter, when the snake would rather sleep. There are many interesting sights, when you go out from your own country.
NOTES
1. Gary Snyder, jacket blurb. Akito Arima. Einstein’s Century, Akito Arima’s Haiku. Trans. Emiko Miyashita & Lee Gurga. Decatur, IL: Brooks Books, 2001.
2. Kiyoshi Takahama (1874-1959), Japanese writer and poet, was a close disciple of Masaoka Shiki and guardian of traditional haiku style.
3. Forward to exhibition catalogue Paintings and Drawings of e.e. cummings. Rochester, NY: Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, 1945.
4. Seison Yamaguchi (1892-1988), professor of engineering at Tokyo University, was the student of Kiyoshi Takahama in matters haiku.
5. In 1956 the physicist and novelist C.P. Snow published an essay called “The Two Cultures” in which he argued that a gap between the humanities and the arts, on one side, and the sciences and social sciences, on the other, “has been getting deeper under our eyes; there is now precious little communication between them…” (Rpt.in The Scientist vs. the Humanist. Eds. George Levine & Owen Thomas. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1963, p. 1.) The two-culture debate remains unresolved to this day, with some scholars and practitioners charting the differences between the arts or humanities and the sciences in educational, ethical, even psychological terms and others stressing the commonalities, usually in terms of intellectual and creative endeavor.
6. Torahiko Terada (1878-1935) was a physics professor at the University of Tokyo whose x-ray diffraction experiments, reported in 1913, independently confirmed European explanations of the observed phenomena (that is, the pattern of spots produced on photographic film when x-rays were beamed through a crystal, first recorded by Max von Laue and named in his honor). Terada set Japanese physics in this area on course.
7. The Hall of Light (Hikaridô) at Chûsoji Temple in Hirazumi:
a single thread / from the Hall of Light: / snowmelt water (Arima)
8. midsummer rain / has fallen and yet remains— / the Hall of Light (Bashō)
9. Sofya Kovalevskaya. A Russian Childhood. Trans. B. Stillman. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1978, pp. 102-103.
10. From Denshi Jisho — Online Japanese Dictionary at http://jisho.org/. The two kanji for imagination denote, in English, thought / image. The two kanji for creation denote, in English, origin (start) / make (create).
11. In early July 2012 physicists working with CERN’s Large Hadron Collider announced the discovery of what many believe to be the Higgs boson, key to the origin of particle mass. According to The New York Times, “The finding affirms a grand view of a universe described by simple and elegant and symmetrical laws — but one in which everything interesting, like ourselves, results from flaws or breaks in that symmetry” (Dennis Overbye, Physicists Find Elusive Particle Seen as Key to Universe, July 5, 2012, A1) .
12. From Einstein’s Century, p. 50.
Michele Root-Bernstein has one foot in the humanities and social sciences, another in the arts. Co-author of Sparks of Genius, The 13 Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People (1999) with her husband and colleague, Robert, she studies creative imagination across the life cycle. She also writes haiku, appearing in a number of North American journals and in A New Resonance 6. Currently, she serves as associate editor of Frogpond, the Journal of the Haiku Society of America.
© 2015 Michele and Robert Root-Bernstein
