Sanki Saitō (1900–1962) was a Japanese writer, most famous for his haiku, which he began writing in his thirties while practicing dentistry and for which he was imprisoned during the Second World War. His four major collections are Flags (1940), Night Peaches (1948), Today (1952), and Transformations (1962). Sanki is a nom de plume that means “Three Demons.”
Ryan C. K. Choi lives in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he was born and raised. His work has appeared in Harper’s, BOMB, Yale Review, Asymptote, and elsewhere.
May/June 2019
Three Demons:
Sanki Haiku I
Read a micro-conversation with the translator here. Translated from Japanese by Ryan C. K. Choi Machine guns between their brows— blood flowers bloom. Child of summer dawn— tracing horses […]
Getting and Spending
Nov/Dec 2018
“Three Demons”: Sanki Haiku I
From the Japanese. Money Flesh- colored spring moon, flaring above the graves. Hitched to the North Star, the pillar of ice grows fat. Airstrip, yellowing, terminates in the […]