Is there some idea of Japan as this hermetically sealed bubble that poetry sometimes filters out of but never back into? Last I checked, the Japanese were very fond of playing with Western concepts, including Western concepts based on Eastern concepts and not so much lost as mutated in the translation.
Look at, oh, say, Sailor Moon. We have a Japanese cartoon about a blond girl with magical powers and a penchant for wearing Japanese schoolgirl interpretations of Western children's sailor suits circa 1910, which were of course interpretations of ADULT sailor costumes of that era, and then the cartoons are translated into English and little American blond girls--and occasionally adult women and even men into kos-play--are getting outfits based on a Japanese interpretation of a Western costume based on a Western costume, and, um, are they wearing sailor suits anymore? Do you actually have to dig clams to wear clamdiggers? Is a haiku only haiku if written in Japanese in the style that Basho set down?
If Basho were around today, I think he'd both be having a conniption fit and being tickled pink by seeing what he started. I'm perfectly fine with folk calling the little 5-7-5 thingies haiku, the same as I'm fine with folk calling a hamburger a hamburger, even though it was not invented in Hamburg, nor are french fries French--they're what the Belgian's decided to do with something the Incas domesticated. Though I'm certain you can now get a hamburger in Hamburg, french fries in Peru, and even hear English-haiku-influenced haiku in Japan.
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