DHG

It is a great pleasure for me to be given the opportunity of personally extending to Mr. Martin Berner and the other participants of “The Inaugural European Haiku Conference” a brief address of welcome.
I am very delighted that a meeting like this is to be held here in Bad Nauheim. The German Haiku Society, which is going to play a central role during this meeting, was found already in 1988. Since then its members have shown a very eager activity in the field of German haiku, and now this Society has about 230 members from all over the world.
Haiku is one of the inherited forms of traditional Japanese poetry, and still today numerous people all over the world enjoy its charming power of expression. Haiku is, indeed, supposed to have some rules, but under these rules, you are free to compose your own haiku as you like. Haiku will not demand any specific objects, you may choose as its content whatever you may see with your own eyes every day. In fact, many Japanese write haiku as a kind of diary. Therefore it can be said that the spirit of haiku is very close to our daily life. Even if the language is not Japanese, this charm of haiku will remain and exert an extraordinary attraction to its writers as well as to its readers.
The essence of haiku is independent of the art of languages. Actually, we have different cultural backgrounds in the world in which we live. Generally speaking, it is not always easy for people from different nations to understand each other. If you have made the acquaintance of haiku, however, you will feel the “Japanese spirit” pouring out of these poems. For the deepening of our understanding of a different culture a kind of poetry like haiku may perhaps be as much important as the learning of a foreign language.
The globalization causes a considerable number of problems, which the governments and the citizens of all nations will have to deal with in constant cooperation. Activities like this meeting surely play an unmistakably important role in this respect. For this reason, it will be a pleasure for us to assist this meeting and the activities of its participants with our willing support.
I sincerely hope that this “The Inaugural European Haiku Conference” may be going to be a full success.