By Mark Peterson
On the heels of a recent trip to Japan, coincidentally, I was asked by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to write an essay for their webpage, Korea.net, on the positive cultural relations between Korea and Japan. The current government is taking a conciliatory position vis-a-vis Japan, in contrast to the previous administration, which took a more confrontational approach. I suppose that the variations of policy are a good thing and a byproduct of government by democracy. It’s a healthy kind of pendulum swing, the essence of democracy.
My recent trip to Japan was at the invitation of Doshisha University and the Korean Cultural Center Osaka. My presentation was on K-pop. I’m not a specialist in K-pop, but I looked at what I could see in the history of Korean entertainment and I made some observations that argued that the antecedents of today’s K-pop run deep in Korean history, maybe 1,000 years or more.
But the result of my trip was a renewed positive appraisal of Japan and the Japanese people. While it is true that historically, the actions of Japan in and toward Korea have not been happy — in fact, the historical brutality of Japan toward Korea is disturbing — despite the historical facts, today’s Japanese, for the most part, are really cordial and conciliatory toward Korea.
There are exceptions. There are reports that bookstores have so many anti-Korean books that there are often whole sections of the bookstores devoted to books critical of Korea. And then there was the infamous case two years ago of the Harvard Law School professor who wrote that the comfort women were all contracted prostitutes. His article was debunked in Korea, America and around the world, yet it “had legs” and served a hateful purpose in Japan among the political elite who use the “hate-Korea” motif for their own agenda. The article at root was so poorly written that its core argument, that the women were contracted prostitutes, not conscripted or deceived women, lacked authenticity in that the author produced not one copy of such a contract. Not one. Together with the fact that most women of that era were illiterate and not capable of signing a legal contract, in Japanese or Korean, also contradicted his core argument.
But with the disputes aside, the swing of diplomatic relations is toward conciliation under current leadership. And I have a proposal that I wrote up for my article for the ministry — it is that Japan include "sijo" in its curriculum and that Korea include "haiku" in its curriculum.
Haiku is taught in American schools. Every American student in the third or fourth grade learns, not just about haiku, but how to write haiku. In the last 20 or 30 years, literally every American student writes haiku. There are numerous books on haiku and countless websites posted by students interested in haiku. Yet, haiku is virtually unknown in Korea.
When I make presentations on sijo in Korea, I often ask if people know haiku — very, very few Koreans know what haiku is, with some exceptions, perhaps.
I haven’t surveyed Japanese audiences about sijo, but I would bet lunch money that the Japanese do not study sijo.
My proposal is that each country include in its curriculum the study of the short poem form from the other country. Now, before you reject the idea as impossible, look again at America. In every school district curriculum, every student in America learns how to write haiku. Every one!
The learning of haiku had political implications. On a trip to Japan by President Obama, he quoted a haiku that he had written for the occasion! The goodwill generated by that gesture was incalculable. And I would hope that in the future when President Biden visits Korea, he would quote a sijo written for the occasion.
Well, if the American presidents can quote sijo and haiku, why not the Korean president and the Japanese prime minister? Imagine the goodwill that such a gesture would generate. And then think about the implication of haiku and sijo being studied in the classrooms of each country.
Japan should include sijo in its curriculum and have students write sijo in Japanese. And they can have contests — the Korean Cultural Centers in Osaka (where I visited) and Tokyo could host contests for Japanese students writing sijo in Japanese, and the first-place winner could be given an all-expense paid trip to Korea.
Similarly, think of the goodwill generated in Korea, if Korea did the same — include haiku in the curriculum, have students write haiku in Korean, and then if the Japanese Embassy offers trips to Japan as prizes for the best haiku in student contests.
I don't really think that the departments of education in each country will take up this suggestion, but the Korean ministry of culture agreed to publish my essay making this suggestion. That is a first step. We can only hope that each government will take the second or third steps to make this proposal a reality. Remember, if it happens, you saw it here first.
Mark Peterson (markpeterson@byu.edu) is a professor emeritus of Korean, Asian and Near Eastern languages at Brigham Young University in Utah.
Haiku in Korea, 'sijo' in Japan
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29.02.2024
By Mark Peterson On the heels of a recent trip to Japan, coincidentally, I was asked by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism to write an essay for their webpage, Korea.net, on the positive cultural relations between Korea and Japan. The current government is taking a conciliatory position vis-a-vis Japan, in contrast to the previous administration, which took a more confrontational approach. I suppose that the variations of policy are a good thing and a byproduct of government by democracy. It’s a healthy kind of pendulum swing, the essence of democracy.
My recent trip to Japan was at the invitation of Doshisha University and the Korean Cultural Center Osaka. My presentation was on K-pop. I’m not a specialist in K-pop, but I looked at what I could see in the history of Korean entertainment and I made some observations that argued that the antecedents of today’s K-pop run deep in Korean history, maybe 1,000 years or more.
But the result of my trip was a renewed positive appraisal of Japan and the Japanese people. While it is true that historically, the actions of Japan in and toward Korea have not been happy — in fact, the historical brutality of Japan toward Korea is disturbing — despite the historical facts, today’s Japanese, for the most part, are........
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