These two books provide a view of the interconnected and expanding haiku world. Born in a silkworm-growing community in Kyushu, 1928, Kiyoko Tokutomi was separated from her native tongue after she met her future husband, Kiyoshi.
Raised in the United States, where he had been born, Kiyoshi Tokutomi had been sent to Japan to study, and was forced to remain there for the duration of the Pacific War. When it ended, and he returned to the U.S., he invited Kiyoko, then a teacher in Nagasaki, to go with him, and they settled in California. This was the beginning of the poet's life between two worlds. Her serious pursuit of haiku came a little later.
When Kiyoko's husband became deaf as a side effect of medication he received, she tried to interest him in haiku, to foster communication with those around him. The result of their joint efforts was the formation of the Yuki Teikei Haiku Society, which has been influential in the development of haiku practice in California.