Zsolt L. Rakusz Essay Traces How Japanese Senryū Became Hungarian Haiku

In a blog post for Asymptote, Hungarian poet Zsolt L. Rakusz delves into how Japanese short-form poetry has been assimilated into Hungarian literature. He observes that inquiries about senryū in Budapest bookstores often result in puzzled looks, whereas haiku are widely accessible. Rakusz attributes this phenomenon to Dezső Kosztolányi's 1931 anthology Kínai és japán versek, which first introduced Japanese poetry to Hungarians, along with his 1933 publication in Nyugat featuring thirty Japanese poems through intermediary translations. Scholar Judit Vihar characterizes senryū as the humorous counterpart to haiku. Rakusz also examines works by Ákos Fodor and others, noting the impact of mid-twentieth-century censorship. Additionally, he mentions that since the 1980s, the Haiku Society of America has presented senryū awards and references the 2009 establishment of the journal Prune Juice.