Re-trazar el Haiku

Abstract

The present paper studies the materiality of the Japanese haiku in the early 20th century. After giving a general overview of haiku studies in the West, it presents a theoretical-analytical category to address the Japanese haiku: re-trace. Through Jacques Derrida’s notion of deconstruction and exploring the problem of translation in this context, re-trace is configured as a practice placed between translation and critical studies concerning haikus. To make use of this category, some of the haikus of a characteristic poet of the period, Taneda Santōka, will be examined