inspiring people...

I don't even know how to begin to describe how blessed I have been in my life to have had such wonderful, loving and amazing friends. Today I am very honored to tell you a little about my friend Yukiko, who has been one of my very best friends since high school. For the last 30 years or so, we have drifted in and out of each others lives by mere geography but have remained very close in our hearts. Those shared experiences of our younger years - happy, sad, crazy times have cemented the love and respect we had and still have for each other and it's a wonderful feeling when we talk or are able to get together...it's like we haven't even skipped a beat. Yukiko was very blessed to have had two amazing parents who put up with alot of wild energy from their teenage daughter and her crazy friends. We understand now, as we are parents and are grateful to them for how wonderful they were to all of us during those years. We had a lot of fun, and it seemed never a dull moment. Yukiko has lost both her parents, they've been gone for awhile physically, but they live on thru their daughter and her children and all the lives they touched over the years. They wrote a book many years ago, that has just been translated from Japanese to English and it's a wonderfully inspiring love story, that I hope if you ever are able to come across this book, you take the time to enjoy it. I know I definitely will. They also were the Founders of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society. Their purpose was to nourish and foster the art of writing haiku in English using the traditional guidelines developed by haiku poets in Japan, where haiku originated. I know how proud Yukiko is of her parents and how much love and respect she has for them and the life they led. I, too share the same sentiment!

"Autumn Loneliness: The Letters of Kiyoshi and Kiyoko Tokutomi, July-December, 1967, translated by Tei Scott Matsushita and Patricia J. Machmiller, was published in September. The Tokutomis were the founders of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society. The book contains 300 letters of those exchanged between Kiyoshi and Kiyoko during a very difficult period in their lives. In 1967 Kiyoshi had just lost his hearing due to medication he was taking for tuberculosis. He traveled to Japan for a long hospital stay to undergo treatment that would attempt to recover his hearing. Kiyoko remained in the U.S. in San Jose’s Japantown with their 10-year-old daughter, Yukiko. The letters reveal their deeply respectful and loving relationship, how they dealt with grief and disappointment—individually and together—and the empathetic and steadfast way they supported each other during difficult times. The reader will gain insight into the character and thinking of the couple who would become leaders in the English haiku world. The 360 page book has a selection of pictures of the Tokutomis in their early years. "

(photo via hardscratch press)