• Journal of Contemporary Eastern Asia
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.35-47
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• 2013

This study aims to understand haiku phenomena from the viewpoint of communication, which emerges from reciprocal relationships among haiku poets, haiku societies, media on haiku, and other establishments relating to haiku. Such an analytic point of view, which tries to consider both the operation of each autonomous agent and that of the whole system consisted by the agents, is included in the realm of second-order cybernetics. The operation of a system cannot be reduced completely to a system's individual components, which is why such a viewpoint is required. Fundamental informatics, which is employed as a theoretical framework, and two haiku movements, which include shin keiko haiku ("new-trend" haiku) and dento ha haiku (Hototogisu-school haiku), forming an important part of modern haiku history, are the focus of this study. As a result, modern haiku history is considered to be an evolution of a haiku system, whose main incentive is an awareness of the production mechanism of haiku communication occurring through second-order observations in the system. This study also illuminates how haiku poets, haiku societies, and media covereage of haiku play roles in the evolution of the haiku system.