Road signs for haiku poets

 

19th century haiku poets

I love anachronism. I thought it would be funny to have people from the 19th century talk about a “quickie” (a quick sexual encounter) and a “kukai” (haiku meeting).  The picture come from a royalty-free clipping book.

Old Pond – Melon

“Don’t imitate me, it’s as boring as the two halves of a melon.” — Basho

This melon gave me lots of trouble. At first, I drew the lines vertically.  I knew something was wrong but I didn’t know what exactly. I put the comic aside for 4 weeks. Then one day at the market I realized the lines on melons are horizontal. Bingo! 

Imagine a world without cherry blossoms

“The soup, the salad… everything is covered by cherry blossoms” — Basho

The cherry petals stick to my shoes, my umbrella, my clothes, my hair…. If I were a frog, I would be covered head to toe with petals and I imagine it would be very hard to get rid off. Therefore Kawazu is not too enthusiastic about cherry petals in this cartoon.

Old Pond – One dollar

This comic was inspired by a comment by Michael Dylan Welch on Facebook saying that Modern Haiku was paying its contributor $1 thirty years ago and are still offering the same amount nowadays which means that, factoring the inflation, haiku writers are being paid much less today.

You can read this comic two ways: either Kaeru doesn’t know what to do with this money because he is a frog (that’s my interpretation), or that he just realized there’s not much he can do with just a dollar.