Between the Words

The first time Hana met Mr. Soto she was sitting on a bench outside of her language school in Kyoto flipping through a stack of flash cards. The summer heat was heavy in the air and her brain felt like it had been melted and fried two hours ago from the Japanese grammar skills.

He walked up to her walking with a cane and a polite bow. He was a small man with thin graying hair and a very worn satchel thrown over his left shoulder.

“You are a student?” He asked in English.

Hana nodded. “Yes. I am here for the summer immersion language program.”

He smiled. “I speak a little English. I teach haiku. You like haiku?”

She smiled. “Yes, I love haiku.”

And that is how it started.

Every Tuesday and Friday afternoon she met Mr. Sato near the maple tree beside the koi pond behind the school. He always brought a thermos full of tea and a notebook filled with handwriting. They wrote poems together sharing them in a blend of English and Japanese and sometimes gestures requiring arm and hand gestures and the occasional sketches drawn in the dirt.

One day after a few weeks, Mr. Soto handed her a page.

“Transulate this.” He said.

The haiku read:

静けさや

岩にしみ入る

蝉の声

She frowned, mouthing the syllables.

“Shizukesa ya / Iwa ni shimiiru / Semi no koe.”

“The stillness,” She said slowly. “Seeps into the rocks. The cicada’s voice?”

He laughed. “No. Not quite. Try again.”

She tried different words. “The silence sinks/into the rocks…the cicada’s voice?”

Mr. Soto smiled. He shook his head. “No, the silence is not the stone. The sound is.”

But how can sound sink into a stone?” She asked.

He tapped his notebook softly on his knee. “Not sink. Not press. Enter. The sound enters. But also there silence is there too. Together.”

She was quiet.

“So it is about how the cicada’s cry makes the silence feel louder?”

He gave her a nod. “Hai. Yes. Something like that.” Then he paused for a second, searching for words. “Feeling not thinking.”

She wrote the translation in her notebook with a star next to it.

By August, Hana’s Japanese had improved although she still fumbled with some verbs and the polite endings. On one of her last afternoons together, Mr. Sato gave her a hand bound book of their shared haiku they had written side by side in both languages.

“I hope you like this.” He said softly. “Please remember words are not always bridges. Sometimes they are shadows.”

She looked at him curiously. “ Shadows?”

He nodded. “You only understand part. Sometimes that is enough.”

She didn’t understand what he meant until years later.

Back in California, Hana continued studying Japanese. She minored in East Asian studies and wrote her thesis on classical haiku. She eventually became a translator.

A decade later she found herself working on a book of Japanese poetry for a publisher in the United States. One poem stood out. A piece by Mr. Sato whom she hadn’t seen in over a decade.

The original read:

心の鍵を

そっとかけておく

君のため

She translated it as:

“I gently lock/the door of my heart/ for your sake.”

It was elegant and poignant. The editor loved it.

But as she looked at it again something felt off. Too final. Too cold. She pulled out her notebook, the same one Mr. Sato gave her that summer. She flipped through the pages until she found a similar phrase, in the margin of a haiku draft.

“Kokoro no kagi o kakete oku” — literally To lock the heart's door…and keep it that way.”

But next to it she had scribbled a note:

“Not forever. For safety. Not waiting.”

She froze. The English translation she had chosen implied distance, rejection and emotional closure. But the original in its cultural nuance, suggested something more tender, not a rejection but preservation. It was a safeguard not a shut out. She rewrote it:

“I quietly lock/the door of my heart/waiting for you.”

And suddenly the entire mood of the poem shifted to hope. She leaned back in her chair, stunned by what was almost lost.

Later that day she e-mailed the publisher to update the final version. Then she did something she had not done in over a decade. She wrote to Mr. Sato. She didn’t even know if he was still alive or if he would remember her but she found his old address on the back on the haiku book Mr. Sato had given her that summer. She wrote:

Dear Mr. Sato-Sensei,

I wanted to thank you for teaching me more than just words. I now know what you meant when you said “words are shadows.” Your poem was almost misunderstood. I almost got it wrong. But I remembered what you taught me. I remembered to listen not just to the sound but also to the silence. I hope that you are well.

Your student,

Hana

Four months passed.

Then just before the winter came, a package arrived from Kyoto. Inside was a new book written by Mr. Sato. On the title page written in perfect calligraphy was the dedication:

“For Hana-the one who heard the silence between the words.”

Hana held the book in her hands for a long time as her fingers traced the delicate kanji inked on the title page.

“For Hana--The one who heard the silence between the words.”

Her eyes stung and then tears rolled down her cheeks. She has translated dozens of books since Kyoto. She had spoken at conferences and schools. She had taught classes and even published essays. But none of that meant as much to her as this simple and quiet message from a man who first taught her that not all meaning lives in words themselves.

That night under the soft sounds of a rainfall outside, she wrote to him again.

Dear Sato-sensei,

I received your book today. The words as always are beautiful but it was the dedication which met the most to me. I don’t think I ever felt more seen as a student or as a person.

You once told me that words are shadows and that sometimes we only understand part and that is enough. But, now I realize the silence between words is not emptiness. It is where trust lives. And I trusted your lessons even when I didn’t understand them.

Your poems reminded me to listen with my whole self and not just with my ears or my mind but with patience, care and respect all of which can not be translated. You taught me that translation is not about replacing words, one word with another on a page but it's about carrying emotion across fragile bridges. Thank you for helping me build those bridges.

With deep respect and gratitude, your student always,

Hana

She folded the letter very carefully and enclosed a maple leaf from her garden and sealed it. She didn’t know if she would ever hear back from him. She didn’t need to. The silence between their words had said enough.