Above is a simple poetic form called haiku that describes what Harvest Son, a story by David Mas Masumoto, is all about. However, there is much more to be read into the haiku than what a person's first reading of it allows. The history of the haiku is meant for spiritual meditation, especially that of the Japanese and Chinese religion of Taoism. Though consisting of solely three lines, each line forms some sort of scientific thinking that as a whole treats nature and humanity like an instrument. In "Harvest Son", Masumoto's auto-biography, the "heart" of the book surrounds the fact that his present family, along with his past and future families, is the machine that makes their vineyard and peach fields thrive. Haiku is also meant to express or indicate a moment in time, a sensation, impression or drama of an explicit fact of nature. In a way, it is like taking a snap shot of that specific moment of nature. The haiku included in "Harvest Son" does just that by capturing everything the Masumoto family lives for in a three line piece of prose.
             Though the verses are short, they give great details and thought to what the entirety of the book is about. In the first line, "thick hands work" leads the reader into the past generations of the Masumoto family and how their hard work in their Japanese fields got their present family to where they are today in Californian fields. With such hard work in the vineyards, blisters and "thick" calluses would be commonplace in their family. Trimming and shaping the canes of the grape vines, plowing and digging with shovels the hardpan layers that were underneath the rich soil, steering a gigantic tractor, and working through extreme cold and heat are the cause of such "thick hands".
             Without the use of "hands", as used in the first line of the haiku, the Masumoto family would likely not have been able to survive the...