Haiku
Haiku is a type of short form poetry that originated in Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases composed of 17 morae in a 5, 7, 5 pattern; that include a kireji, or "cutting word"; and a kigo, or seasonal reference. However, haiku by classical Japanese poets, such as Matsuo Bashō, also deviate from the 17-on pattern and sometimes do not contain a kireji. Similar poems that do not adhere to these rules are generally classified as senryū.
Haiku originated as an opening part of a larger Japanese genre of poetry called renga. These haiku written as an opening stanza were known as hokku and over time they began to be written as stand-alone poems. Haiku was given its current name by the Japanese writer Masaoka Shiki at the end of the 19th century.
Originally from Japan, haiku today are written by authors worldwide. Haiku in English and haiku in other languages have different styles and traditions while still incorporating aspects of the traditional haiku form. Non-Japanese language haiku vary widely on how closely they follow traditional elements. Additionally, a minority movement within modern Japanese haiku, supported by Ogiwara Seisensui and his disciples, has varied from the tradition of 17 on as well as taking nature as their subject.
In Japanese, haiku are traditionally printed as a single line, while haiku in English often appear as three lines, although variations exist. There are several other forms of Japanese poetry related to haiku, such as tanka, as well as other art forms that incorporate haiku, such as haibun and haiga.
Traditional elements
''Kiru'' and ''kireji''
In Japanese haiku, a kireji, or cutting word, typically appears at the end of one of the verse's three phrases. A kireji fills a role analogous to that of a caesura in classical Western poetry or to a volta in sonnets. A kireji helps mark rhythmic divisions. Depending on which kireji is chosen and its position within the verse, it may briefly cut the stream of thought, suggesting a parallel between the preceding and following phrases, or it may provide a dignified ending, concluding the verse with a heightened sense of closure.The kireji lends the verse structural support, allowing it to stand as an independent poem. The use of kireji distinguishes haiku and hokku from second and subsequent verses of renku; which may employ semantic and syntactic disjuncture, even to the point of occasionally end-stopping a phrase with a sentence-ending particle. However, renku typically employ kireji.
In English, since kireji have no direct equivalent, poets sometimes use punctuation such as a dash or ellipsis, or an implied break to create a juxtaposition intended to prompt the reader to reflect on the relationship between the two parts.
The kireji in the Bashō examples "old pond" and "the wind of Mt Fuji" are both "ya". Neither the remaining Bashō example nor the Issa example contain a kireji. However, they do both balance a fragment in the first five on against a phrase in the remaining 12 on.
''On''
In comparison with English verse typically characterized by syllabic meter, Japanese verse counts sound units known as on or morae. Traditional haiku is usually fixed verse that consists of 17 on, in three phrases of five, seven, and five on, respectively. Among modern poems, traditionalist haiku continue to use the 5-7-5 pattern while free form haiku do not. However, one of the [|examples below] illustrates that traditional haiku masters were not always constrained by the 5-7-5 pattern either. The free form haiku was advocated for by Ogiwara Seisensui and his disciples.Although the word on is sometimes translated as "syllable", the true meaning is more nuanced. One on in Japanese is counted for a short syllable, two for an elongated vowel or doubled consonant, and one for an "n" at the end of a syllable. Thus, the word "haibun", though counted as two syllables in English, is counted as four on in Japanese ; and the word "on" itself, which English-speakers would view as a single syllable, comprises two on: the short vowel o and the moraic nasal n. This is illustrated by the Issa haiku below, which contains 17 on but only 15 syllables. Conversely, some sounds, such as "kyo" may look like two syllables to English speakers but are in fact a single on in Japanese.
In 1973, the Haiku Society of America noted that the norm for writers of haiku in English was to use 17 syllables, but they also noted a trend toward shorter haiku. According to the society, about 12 syllables in English approximates the duration of 17 Japanese on.
''Kigo''
A haiku traditionally contains a kigo, a word or phrase that symbolizes or implies the season of the poem and is drawn from a saijiki, an extensive but prescriptive list of such words. Season words evoke images that are associated with the same time of year, making it a kind of logopoeia. Kigo are not always included in non-Japanese haiku or by modern writers of Japanese free-form haiku.Examples
One of the best-known Japanese haiku is Matsuo Bashō's "old pond":Translated:
This separates into on as:
Another haiku by Bashō:
Translated:
As another example, this haiku by Bashō illustrates that he was not always constrained to a 5-7-5 on pattern. It contains 18 on in the pattern 6-7-5.
Translated:
This separates into on as:
This haiku example was written by Kobayashi Issa:
Translated:
This separates into on as,
Origin and development
From hokku to haiku
is the opening stanza of an orthodox collaborative linked poem, or renga, and of its later derivative, renku. By the time of Matsuo Bashō, the hokku had begun to appear as an independent poem, and was also incorporated in haibun, and haiga. In the late 19th century, Masaoka Shiki renamed the standalone hokku to haiku. The latter term is now generally applied retrospectively to all hokku appearing independently of renku or renga, irrespective of when they were written, and the use of the term hokku to describe a stand-alone poem is considered obsolete.Bashō
In the 17th century, two masters arose who elevated haikai and gave it a new popularity. They were Matsuo Bashō and Uejima Onitsura. Hokku is the first verse of the collaborative haikai or renku, but its position as the opening verse made it the most important, setting the tone for the whole composition. Even though hokku had sometimes appeared individually, they were always understood in the context of renku. The Bashō school promoted standalone hokku by including many in their anthologies, thus giving birth to what is now called "haiku". Bashō also used his hokku as torque points within his short prose sketches and longer travel diaries. This subgenre of haikai is known as haibun. His best-known work, Oku no Hosomichi, or Narrow Roads to the Interior, is counted as one of the classics of Japanese literature and has been translated into English extensively.Bashō was deified by both the imperial government and Shinto religious headquarters one hundred years after his death because he raised the haikai genre from a playful game of wit to sublime poetry. He continues to be revered as a saint of poetry in Japan, and is the one name from classical Japanese literature that is familiar throughout the world.
Buson
The next famous style of haikai to arise was that of Yosa Buson and others such as Kitō, called the Tenmei style after the Tenmei Era in which it was created.Buson is recognized as one of the greatest masters of haiga. His affection for painting can be seen in the painterly style of his haiku.
Issa
No new popular style followed Buson. However, a very individualistic, and at the same time humanistic, approach to writing haiku was demonstrated by the poet Kobayashi Issa, whose miserable childhood, poverty, sad life, and devotion to the Pure Land sect of Buddhism are evident in his poetry. Issa made the genre immediately accessible to wider audiences.Shiki
was a reformer and modernizer. A prolific writer, even though chronically ill during a significant part of his life, Shiki disliked the 'stereotype' of haikai writers of the 19th century who were known by the deprecatory term tsukinami, meaning 'monthly', after the monthly or twice-monthly haikai gatherings of the end of the 18th century. Shiki also sometimes criticized Bashō. Like the Japanese intellectual world in general at that time, Shiki was strongly influenced by Western culture. He favored the painterly style of Buson and particularly the European concept of plein-air painting, which he adapted to create a style of haiku as a kind of nature sketch in words, an approach called. He popularized his views by verse columns and essays in newspapers.Hokku up to the time of Shiki, even when appearing independently, were written in the context of renku. Shiki formally separated his new style of verse from the context of collaborative poetry. Being agnostic, he also separated it from the influence of Buddhism. Further, he discarded the term "hokku" and proposed the term haiku as an abbreviation of the phrase "haikai no ku" meaning a verse of haikai, although the term predates Shiki by some two centuries, when it was used to mean any verse of haikai. Since then, "haiku" has been the term usually applied in both Japanese and English to all independent haiku, irrespective of their date of composition. Shiki's revisionism dealt a severe blow to renku and surviving haikai schools. The term "hokku" is now used chiefly in its original sense of the opening verse of a renku, and rarely to distinguish haiku written before Shiki's time.