Yone Noguchi’s three-line “Hokku 64” begins with a double image: “Yellow chrysanthemum, white chrysanthemum.” The comma holds the two colors side by side without a verb, so the line works almost like a title or an address. It does not say the flower is yellow or white; it simply presents them as names. Then the sentence turns inward: “Why, the other names for me / Are of no use.” The word “Why” is not really a question here but an exclamation, a small shrug or sigh before a declaration. The speaker claims that, beside these color-named chrysanthemums, whatever else he is called has no value.
The central idea is a kind of self-identification with the flower, but it is more paradoxical than sentimental. A chrysanthemum’s name tells us almost nothing—only that it is a chrysanthemum, and here only what color it is. Yet for the speaker that minimal, natural label is preferable to “other names,” which may mean his personal name, his social roles, his reputation, or all the abstract words people use to define a person. The poem suggests that those other names are clutter. When one can be named as simply and concretely as a yellow chrysanthemum or a white chrysanthemum, elaborate identity is unnecessary. This is close to the hokku spirit: the truth of a thing is not behind it or beyond it, but in the thing itself.
The construction supports that restraint. The first line is the longest, though still brief, and its internal repetition of “chrysanthemum” creates a heavy, almost incantatory rhythm. Repeating the noun twice with different colors gives the flower different appearances while keeping one essential word. The second line breaks after “Why,” isolating an interjection that could invite explanation but instead the speaker dismisses explanation. The enjambment into the final line, “Are of no use,” makes the short sentence feel even more final. The final line is the shortest, four plain monosyllables: “Are of no use.” There is no rhyme, except the echo of “chrysanthemum” with itself, and that matters: the poem does not need musical decoration because it is arguing for plainness.
The key words are all simple—“yellow,” “white,” “names,” “use”—but “chrysanthemum” is the one elaborate word, and it appears twice. It is a flower with a long, many-syllabled name; its Latinate sound stands out among the plain English words. That contrast may reinforce the poem’s point. Even the most ornate name in the poem is still just a flower name, and the speaker would rather carry that than any other label. “Other names for me” places identity under the shadow of language: names are not the same as the self, and most are useless. The word “use” is especially cold and pragmatic. The speaker does not say the other names are false, only that they are of no use—they do not help, they do not name what matters.
Significance of the poem lies in its compact turn from outer image to inner statement. It is not a nature description followed by a moral; the image and the speaker merge. The yellow and white chrysanthemums are not scenery but possible names for the one speaking. In three lines, Noguchi makes a radical claim about identity: that a person might be best addressed the way we address a flower, by what is visible and immediate, not by the accumulated labels of biography. For a school reader, the poem is a small lesson in how much a very short lyric can hold, and how a single comma or line break can shift meaning. It asks us to consider what our own “other names” are worth.