kakashezi poopiyaki
10-08-2008, 06:02 PM
An Interview with Kakashezi Poopiyaki
Taken from her haiku blog: www.poopiyaki.blogspot.com (a quick 15 second read every morning)
Kakashezi Poopiyaki is one of the modern world’s most prolific writers of Haiku poetry, yet she has rarely been read outside of her native Japan, save in small cultist literary circles. She became known to the Japanese intellectual elite in the early Nineties during her highly theatrical weekly readings at the Coffeehouse Kika in downtown Tokyo. Her poetry readings often involve such diverse props as red roses and colostomy bags, staple guns and lipstick, half-melted candlesticks and blue smoke-bombs. Critic Sato Hana considers her “the perfect mixture of the odd and the accurate.” Author and Critic Duke Misako called her, “a theatre of truth; behind her props and alarming subjects, she touches on definitively human concerns: life, death, fear, loss. She must be read, and seen to be believed.”
Friends, family, and colleagues describe her as mousy, pursed, feline, intense. She is an exquisite chef, specializing in Italian cuisine, plays the harmonica and conga, and can quote American history better than most Americans. Her oft-recurring theme—excrement— has caused certain critics to declare her as too fascinated with the repulsive, and to dismiss her as taboo for taboo’s sake. Conversely, she has been praised for elevating the ugly to lovely and operatic levels, and using her themes to portray life as it really is. Her language can be playful, rough, and elegiac; she can imagine humans as nothing more than savage animals, animals as beings much more than human.
Japan’s underground “Taki” magazine calls her, “the most revolutionary and important Haiku artist to emerge in centuries.” Slowly gaining popularity in Japan, she began to give readings at numerous universities, always (as at Kika) greeted by her loyal following, often carrying one of her first two collections (“My Name is Kakashezi,” “Sixty-Four Poems”) for the signing. She has recently completed a third volume of Haiku entitled, “The Shez in My Life,” which Misako proclaims to be, “her finest hour. Her finest day. Her finest sixteen years. These poems continue along Poopiyaki’s unique thematic path, growing ever more dark, and ever more redeeming.”
After inheriting a substantial sum at her father’s behest (he was the owner of a cadre of fishing boats purveying to the most respected of restaurants throughout Japan), Poopiyaki was able to avoid the obligation of teaching, and concentrate solely on her poetry.
Born January 2, 1966 in the small coastal town of Izumo, Japan, she stands barely over five feet tall, and is rarely seen in anything but a simple long-sleeved white blouse with silver buttons and one of her outlandish homemade mini-skirts. (When this interview was conducted, she was wearing a black mini with Frank Sinatra’s face emblazoned on the crotch. On the rear, above the left and right cheek, respectively, were the words, “My Way.”) Her mother, a housewife, alone most of the year due to her father’s demanding occupation, began reading poetry to the young Kakashezi long before she could walk or talk. Dropping out of university a mere eight weeks before graduation, Poopiyaki embarked on a ten-day hitch-hiking journey to Tokyo with a suitcase of clothes and toiletries, and a diary, thick with four years of poetry. She settled in a one-room studio apartment on the northwest side with a distant cousin who also worked as a waitress at a burgeoning artist’s hangout called, “Zaki’s Place,” later to become, “Kika.”
Her first collection, “My Name is Kakashezi,” caught the attention of small-house publisher George Yao, and together they launched the avant-garde publishing company, Kika Publishing. Yao would become her husband, only to initiate a divorce seven months later, claiming Poopiyaki’s “first love is her own mind.” She has never married since. Instead, “My Name is Kakashezi” earned an Honorable Mention in Youki Suda’s “Best New Voices in Japan,” and Poopiyaki went on to publish a second collection, “Sixty-Four Poems.” Soon afterward, she began to become a name amongst Kika’s artistic elite, routinely commanding the Yen equivalent of a ten-dollar cover charge for her one-of-a-kind poetry readings.
To discover what fuels this highly talented and furiously unrepentant eccentric in her writing, performing, and day-to-day life, Interviewer Mason Foxhill, one of the few enlightened American fans and Poopiyaki scholar, met Kakashezi in Chicago’s Drake Hotel, following her annual meal at Spiaggia, the city’s acclaimed Italian restaurant.
check out her provocative writings at www.poopiyaki.blogspot.com, and most importantly, laugh and enjoy!
Taken from her haiku blog: www.poopiyaki.blogspot.com (a quick 15 second read every morning)
Kakashezi Poopiyaki is one of the modern world’s most prolific writers of Haiku poetry, yet she has rarely been read outside of her native Japan, save in small cultist literary circles. She became known to the Japanese intellectual elite in the early Nineties during her highly theatrical weekly readings at the Coffeehouse Kika in downtown Tokyo. Her poetry readings often involve such diverse props as red roses and colostomy bags, staple guns and lipstick, half-melted candlesticks and blue smoke-bombs. Critic Sato Hana considers her “the perfect mixture of the odd and the accurate.” Author and Critic Duke Misako called her, “a theatre of truth; behind her props and alarming subjects, she touches on definitively human concerns: life, death, fear, loss. She must be read, and seen to be believed.”
Friends, family, and colleagues describe her as mousy, pursed, feline, intense. She is an exquisite chef, specializing in Italian cuisine, plays the harmonica and conga, and can quote American history better than most Americans. Her oft-recurring theme—excrement— has caused certain critics to declare her as too fascinated with the repulsive, and to dismiss her as taboo for taboo’s sake. Conversely, she has been praised for elevating the ugly to lovely and operatic levels, and using her themes to portray life as it really is. Her language can be playful, rough, and elegiac; she can imagine humans as nothing more than savage animals, animals as beings much more than human.
Japan’s underground “Taki” magazine calls her, “the most revolutionary and important Haiku artist to emerge in centuries.” Slowly gaining popularity in Japan, she began to give readings at numerous universities, always (as at Kika) greeted by her loyal following, often carrying one of her first two collections (“My Name is Kakashezi,” “Sixty-Four Poems”) for the signing. She has recently completed a third volume of Haiku entitled, “The Shez in My Life,” which Misako proclaims to be, “her finest hour. Her finest day. Her finest sixteen years. These poems continue along Poopiyaki’s unique thematic path, growing ever more dark, and ever more redeeming.”
After inheriting a substantial sum at her father’s behest (he was the owner of a cadre of fishing boats purveying to the most respected of restaurants throughout Japan), Poopiyaki was able to avoid the obligation of teaching, and concentrate solely on her poetry.
Born January 2, 1966 in the small coastal town of Izumo, Japan, she stands barely over five feet tall, and is rarely seen in anything but a simple long-sleeved white blouse with silver buttons and one of her outlandish homemade mini-skirts. (When this interview was conducted, she was wearing a black mini with Frank Sinatra’s face emblazoned on the crotch. On the rear, above the left and right cheek, respectively, were the words, “My Way.”) Her mother, a housewife, alone most of the year due to her father’s demanding occupation, began reading poetry to the young Kakashezi long before she could walk or talk. Dropping out of university a mere eight weeks before graduation, Poopiyaki embarked on a ten-day hitch-hiking journey to Tokyo with a suitcase of clothes and toiletries, and a diary, thick with four years of poetry. She settled in a one-room studio apartment on the northwest side with a distant cousin who also worked as a waitress at a burgeoning artist’s hangout called, “Zaki’s Place,” later to become, “Kika.”
Her first collection, “My Name is Kakashezi,” caught the attention of small-house publisher George Yao, and together they launched the avant-garde publishing company, Kika Publishing. Yao would become her husband, only to initiate a divorce seven months later, claiming Poopiyaki’s “first love is her own mind.” She has never married since. Instead, “My Name is Kakashezi” earned an Honorable Mention in Youki Suda’s “Best New Voices in Japan,” and Poopiyaki went on to publish a second collection, “Sixty-Four Poems.” Soon afterward, she began to become a name amongst Kika’s artistic elite, routinely commanding the Yen equivalent of a ten-dollar cover charge for her one-of-a-kind poetry readings.
To discover what fuels this highly talented and furiously unrepentant eccentric in her writing, performing, and day-to-day life, Interviewer Mason Foxhill, one of the few enlightened American fans and Poopiyaki scholar, met Kakashezi in Chicago’s Drake Hotel, following her annual meal at Spiaggia, the city’s acclaimed Italian restaurant.
check out her provocative writings at www.poopiyaki.blogspot.com, and most importantly, laugh and enjoy!