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Abstract
In this article, I revisit my earlier project on local poetry practices by Japanese ‘war brides’ from the Second World War and explore a creative, transnational home-making activity by focusing on one of my informants, Fuyuko Taira's senryu poetry. Drawing on theories of global space and diasporic home-making practices, I suggest that her engagement in senryu involves a transnational spatial practice through the use of familiar everyday language. While the experience of displacement among Taira and other so-called ‘war brides’ cannot be understood without a consideration of socio-historical and economic constraints that characterized their emigration, my aim here is not to analyse how Taira's senryu simply reflects her diasporic victimhood but to explore how she exercises her creative agency to make her new home familiar and habitable by engaging with the everyday poetry practice of alternation between ‘pause’ and ‘move’ in the midst of changing landscapes. I argue that to a member of the Japanese diaspora like Taira senryu can be thought of as a different mode of experiencing at once the local and the global in an organic way.
En este artículo vuelvo a mi proyecto previo sobre las prácticas de la poesía local de las “novias de la guerra” japonesas de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y exploro la actividad creativa transnacional de las labores de hogar centrándome en la poesía senryu de una de mis fuentes, Fuyuko Taira. Basándome en teorías del espacio global y de las prácticas de labores de hogar diaspóricas, sugiero que su involucramiento en el senryu incluye una práctica espacial transnacional a través del uso del lenguaje familiar cotidiano. Mientras la experiencia del desplazamiento para Taira y otras de las llamadas “novias de la guerra” no puede ser entendida sin consideración de las limitaciones sociohistóricas y económicas que caracterizaron su emigración, mi intención aquí no es analizar cómo el senryu de Taira simplemente refleja su victimidad diaspórica. En cambio, el artículo analiza cómo ella ejercita su agencia creativa para hacer familiar y habitable a su nuevo hogar metiéndose en la práctica poética diaria de alternar entre “pausa” y “movimiento” rodeada de paisajes cambiantes. Sostengo que el senryu, para una miembro de la diáspora japonesa como Taira, puede ser pensado como una forma diferente de vivir al mismo tiempo la experiencia local y la global de manera orgánica.
Acknowledgements
This article owes so much to Ms Fuyuko Taira who generously shared with me her knowledge about senryu and her poetry work. I am greatly indebted to Jeff Derksen who gave me the opportunity to write this article and introduced me to important theoretical fields that inspired my initial ideas. I am also grateful to Kirsten McAllister for her continuous support and encouragement. She also provided me with an opportunity to present the original version of this article and gain useful comments and questions to further develop my thoughts. I would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback that helped me strengthen my theoretical framework and analysis. Finally, I also acknowledge the Japanese Government Support for Long-Term Studying-Abroad that has supported my studies in recent years.
Notes
1. This is my translation of the original piece written in Japanese: 
(Tsuchiaisu Aseganoguwo Sabisasezu).
2. Poetry, including haiku and tanka as well as senryu, has been one of the most important social activities of Japanese immigrants of all social backgrounds in North America (Kobayashi Citation1992). Poetry was already practiced by Issei, the pre-Second World War Japanese immigrants, before and even during the Second World War when they were incarcerated in internment camps. Poetry has historically served as a way to express their emotions (delight, anger, sorrow and pleasure) at the time of oppression, and hopes towards the future (Kumei Citation2002, 243–4; see also Opler and Obayashi Citation1945; Kobayashi Citation1992).
3. Henri Lefebvre's book The Production of Space (1991) made a significant impact on North American Marxist, postmodern and feminist geographers, philosophers and cultural theorists including David Harvey, Fredric Jameson, Doreen Massey and Edward Soja, prompting the ‘spatial turn’ in critical theory in the 1980s. These scholars have taken up Lefebvre's (Citation1991a, Citation1991b) notion of space as fundamentally social having been produced through and by social power relationships, and developed theories of globalization and its relation to political economy and postmodern culture.
4. Also see Deutsche (Citation1996, 195–202).
5. In theorizing senryu in this way, I was inspired by the discussion between Roy Miki and Kirsten McAllister on Miki's collage work, which is created out of photographs taken in his neighbourhood in Vancouver, BC (McAllister and Miki Citation2008). Here McAllister suggests how Miki's collage creates a dynamic relationship with its viewers by presenting a ‘new way of seeing’ the landscape and ‘lead[ing] them into imaginary spaces that are layered into one frame’ (153).
6. For a detailed account of these stereotypes, see Yasutomi and Stout (Citation2005) and Hayashi (Citation2005).
7. This is my translation of the original piece written in Japanese: 
(Futarimita Tsukinikoyoiwa Hitoritachi).
8. This is my translation of the original piece written in Japanese: 
(Denwaberu Kyomowatashiwo Hottokazu).
9. Her original piece is the following: 
(Dokokaraka Takibinonioi Akifukami).
10. Her original piece is the following: 
(Murihamo Kikanutoshitta Kuwanoase).
11. Taira has actually made multiple short trips to Japan in recent years for personal visits and in organized tours. She also keeps personal connections with her relatives in Japan and receives information about her home country through different forms of media. See Yoshimizu (Citation2008) for a more detailed discussion of her virtual and physical travel experience.