Hunger
Behind fogging glass
Steam dances from noodle bowls
Coins too few to spare
...
飢え
曇る窓
湯気踊る丼
小銭足らず
— Dean Bowman
About the Work
Author's Note: This poem emerged during a period of unemployment, drawing on memories of my university days in Japan when I sometimes had only 250 yen a day to survive. This isn't a call for sympathy—simply the sharing of experience, honest and unadorned.
Inspiration: When late afternoon turns to evening and your stomach growls as you pass street stalls steaming with rich, abundant flavors, but you must choose a single onigiri and tea instead, the poem writes itself. Hunger becomes both literal and metaphorical, immediate and remembered.
Process: This began as an angry rant against the economy in 2008, scrawled in frustration. It lived in my notebook for five years, waiting. When I revisited it for a 2013 submission, time had transformed the rage into something quieter, more distilled—closer to what hunger actually feels like.
Translation: Translating haiku between Japanese and English involves much more than matching syllable counts. Japanese haiku use morae, sound units that make a 5-7-5 English structure feel "heavier" and wordier than the original. Working with the Japanese version of my "Hunger" haiku, I worked phrases like "曇る窓" (fogged window) and "小銭足らず" (not enough coins) to carry both literal and metaphorical weight, even a touch of understated humor that I can preserve in English through careful word choice and poetic device. The ambiguity and layered meaning central to Japanese haiku often resist replication due to structural and cultural differences, so I've come to prioritize emotional resonance, suggestion, and literary style over strict formal equivalence—trying to capture both the spirit and essential brevity of the original.
Publication Details
Hunger
Genre: Poetry
Author: Dean Bowman
Publication: Haiku Journal
Issue: Issue #25
Date Published:
Language: ja, en
Format: Print
ISBN: 9781495490231
Dean Bowman
Dean Bowman
Dean Bowman