Seventeen syllables, two generations

Ask someone about haiku and they might think of Bashō, a frog leaping into a pond, or a child’s scribbled poem about cherry blossoms. Matsumoto thought of something else: the link formed when a conversation begins between two people from different generations. She turned to haiku to answer a simple but profound question: What do people need to feel connected?

Haiku are brief, image-driven, and forgiving—no need for perfect memory or logic. “Older people with cognitive challenges may worry about not producing a logical sentence, and younger people may feel awkward talking across generations,” Matsumoto says. “But with haiku, neither group knows quite what to expect. They start on equal ground.”

In those first pandemic Zoom sessions, those older adults and the Stanford students began trading lines about plants, rivers, or birds; in so doing, they also began trading stories. A line about leaves changing color could open into an exchange about family gatherings. Another about “whitecaps in the sun,” misheard as “white cats in the sun,” might prompt partners to swap stories about pets. “You don’t need every fact to line up,” Matsumoto says. “Conversation isn’t a lecture. It’s weaving yourself into another’s world.”

When either participant approached the haiku simply as a task—something to complete—the conversation faltered. When they listened for the feelings conveyed in their partner’s words and responded with their own experience, the exchange came alive.

Matsumoto was surprised by the participants’ enthusiasm: Not only did they enjoy the activity, they wanted to continue. One student formed such a close bond with her haiku partner that, when the older adult eventually passed away, she delivered a eulogy at the funeral.

Matsumoto and her students have since brought their project into additional contexts, recently piloting bilingual haiku sessions with a local Japan-focused adult day services program. She is now seeking additional partners and funding to explore how this model can extend into classrooms, senior centers, and even across cultures. The idea: Help people step beyond their own perspectives to connect with those who initially seem very different. 

“Haiku makes you notice things you might overlook—a leaf, a shadow, a birdcall,” she says. “And in noticing together, you see the world through someone else’s eyes.”

Yoshiko Matsumoto is the Yamato Ichihashi Professor of Japanese History and Civilization in Stanford’s Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures in the School of Humanities and Sciences.