Introduction

Hatsu-kukai is the first kukai (haiku composing meeting) of the year. The World Haiku Club presents our hatsu-kukai in the year 2000 on the Internet, which starts on the New Year's Day and continues for the rest of January. We use our World Haiku Open Forum mailing list for this purpose. Anyone anywhere in the world can join in by submitting up to 10 haiku poems written in English. They can be the New Year (shin-nen) haiku, using season words or seasonal references associated with the New Year. On the other hand they can be any other forms: avant-garde, vers libres, abstract haiku etc.

• Just send your works (up to 10) to World Haiku Open Forum (haikuforum@egroups.com) with your name, country, e-mail address and a very brief account of yourself.
• Anyone who has read other people's haiku can choose what he or she judges to be the best three (not their own haiku) and send them to World Haiku Open Forum with a very brief appraisal of each.
• Guest judges will present their choices with comments.
• Susumu Takiguchi, Chairman of The World Haiku Club, will also present his choices with comments.
• Finally people will select one haiku poem which they judge to be the best from among the haiku already chosen in the above process, and vote on it. From their popular vote, we will decide the best three haiku.
• Quite apart from this hatsu-kukai, haijin in different countries in the world are encouraged to send New Year's haiku greetings and, generally, talk to each other on the Internet to create a virtual world haiku network instigated by The World Haiku Club.