Haiku, Aging, and the Aha Moment

This week in Tokyo, I had the privilege of spending time with two Haiku masters, Emiko Miyashita and Kyoko Uchimura. We shared dinner, exchanging thoughts on poetry, aging, and life in Japan. The following day I sat in on their workshop during a conference on the Humanities and the Arts organised by the International Academic Forum.

Many of the older people I meet in Japan’s longevity hotspots practice haiku, and I wanted to understand more.

To many outsiders, haiku can appear quaint, an artistic pastime for retirees with time on their hands. At first glance, it can also seem deceptively simple. Seventeen syllables. Five-seven-five. In my own occasional attempts at haiku, I became stressed by trying to rigidly adhere to the beat.

Listening carefully to Emiko and Kyoko, I gained a deeper appreciation of haiku, not simply as a literary form, but as a way of training attention and shaping how we experience aging itself, and that haiku is deeply connected to what I have come to call the “Aha Moments” of this journey.

My current book, Longevity and the Art of Community: Lessons from Japan, has emerged through such moments. Not through dramatic revelations or grand theories announced at conferences, but through subtle recognitions. A 92-year-old woman is climbing aboard a boat with four generations of family. An old farmer told me she had “never fretted.” The disappearance of Yakult Ladies from rural streets. A village karaoke night. A tsunami stone on a hillside.

Each moment carried a small tingle of insight. A sudden sharpening of focus. An awareness that something important was hiding in plain sight. That, I think, is what haiku captures.

The Japanese concept mono no aware is often translated as a sensitivity to impermanence, an awareness of the fleeting nature of things. Haiku lives inside that space. It notices what others rush past. A reflection in water. The silence after cicadas stop singing. The first cold breeze of autumn. Tiny moments, yet loaded with meaning because they point beyond themselves.

Haiku sits at the intersection of the temporary and the seasonal. It links fleeting moments to recurring cycles. The leaf falls, the blossom fades, summer passes, yet the seasons return. The aha moment is temporary, but it is placed within a larger circle that continues. That matters deeply.

The structure of haiku matters too. The rhythm is not merely restrictive formality. Its cadence slows observation. It demands compression and precision. In an age of endless scrolling, fractured attention, and constant stimulation, haiku requires presence.  

Research increasingly suggests that this kind of attentiveness may matter profoundly as we age. Studies in psychology and neuroscience have shown that mindfulness practices, reflective writing, creative engagement, and sustained observation can improve emotional regulation, cognitive flexibility, memory retention, and even reduce stress markers associated with aging.¹ Creative engagement in later life is also associated with lower rates of loneliness and depression, stronger social connections, and a heightened sense of purpose.²

But I suspect something even deeper is occurring in Japan’s relationship with haiku.

Haiku is not simply a cognitive exercise. It is perceptual training.

It encourages people to remain curious. To continue noticing. To seek meaning in ordinary life rather than withdrawing from it. It reinforces a circular awareness of time and seasonality, where aging is not viewed as a fall from relevance but as another stage within the cycle.

This stands in contrast to the highly linear model common in the modern West: education, career, retirement, decline. The same linear framework that helped produce the isolated nuclear family often removes older people from the daily flow of intergenerational life.

Haiku resists the idea that life is a conveyor belt moving toward irrelevance. Instead, it subtly reinforces that each person remains part of the circle. Summer is passing, but summer will come again. The older person is not outside the rhythm of life, slowly being set aside, but still within the cadence of season, family, memory, and community.

That may help explain why so many older Japanese take up haiku later in life. Not simply to stay busy. Not merely to keep mentally active. But to keep seeing.

So what is my takeaway from my time with Emiko and Kyoko? That rhythm can bring discipline to observation. That aging well may depend partly on remaining open to those small aha moments where the fleeting intersects with something enduring. And perhaps most importantly, that haiku quietly reinforces a worldview in which we remain part of the circle, connected to season, place, and one another.

And perhaps that too is a reminder that it is never too late to learn, to notice, and to keep seeing the world afresh.

Endnotes

1. Emiko Miyashita is a prominent and widely published haiku poet, award-winning translator, and a councilor for the Haiku International Association. She has lectured and conducted workshops internationally and serves as secretary of the Haiku Poets Association International Department in Tokyo. A two-time Fulbright scholar, she has conducted research at Stanford University and Wellesley College.

2. Kyoko Uchimura is a Tokyo-born haiku poet and councilor of the Haiku International Association. She studied Art History at International Christian University in Japan and at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. She previously worked for Christie’s auction house for over twenty years and now works in editorial and international haiku promotion roles.

3. The workshop attended by the author formed part of the Humanities and Arts program organized by The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), an interdisciplinary academic organization based in Japan that convenes international conferences and research collaborations across the humanities, arts, social sciences, education, and public policy.

4. The Haiku Workshop at the conference was led by Emiko Miyashita and Kyoko Uchimura on behalf of the Haiku International Association and focused on the cultural, literary, and perceptual dimensions of haiku practice.

5. Ellen Langer, Mindfulness (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1989). Langer’s work on mindfulness and attention has influenced later studies on aging, cognition, and emotional well-being.

6. Gene D. Cohen, The Creative Age: Awakening Human Potential in the Second Half of Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2000). Cohen explored the relationship between creativity, cognitive vitality, social connection, and emotional health in later life.

7. Donald Keene, Japanese Aesthetics and Culture (Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, various editions). Keene’s work provides important context regarding Japanese ideas of impermanence, seasonality, and aesthetic sensitivity.

8. The Japanese phrase mono no aware is often translated as “the pathos of things” or sensitivity to impermanence. It refers to an awareness of the transience of life and is deeply embedded in Japanese literature, poetry, and aesthetics, especially in haiku traditions.

9. Research in psychology and neuroscience increasingly suggests that mindfulness practices, reflective writing, creative engagement, and sustained attention may contribute positively to emotional regulation, cognitive flexibility, stress reduction, and healthy aging. See also Ellen Langer’s later work on mindful aging and creativity studies associated with Gene Cohen.

Lowell Sheppard is an author, explorer, and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society who has lived and worked in Japan for nearly three decades. He is the founder of the Never Too Late Academy and co-founder of HOPE International Development Agency Japan. Lowell has traveled extensively throughout Japan by bicycle, sailboat, train, and on foot, including cycling across 39 prefectures and sailing to more than 80 ports.

He is currently researching longevity, healthy aging, and community in Japan’s longevity hotspots for his upcoming book, Longevity and the Art of Community: Lessons from Japan. Lowell also serves as a Senior Advisor to The International Academic Forum (IAFOR) and sits on its International Academic Board and the organizing committee for the Asian Conference on Aging & Gerontology in Tokyo.

Through his writing and field notes, Lowell explores the intersection of aging, culture, community, place, and purpose, asking what Japan’s rapidly aging society can teach the rest of the world about living long and living well.