Haiku byMatsuo Bashō reading "Quietly, quietly, / yellow mountain roses fall – / sound of the rapids"
Haiku (俳句;English:/ˈhaɪk.uː/,[1]Japanese:[hai.kɯ(ꜜ)]ⓘ[2]) is a type of short formpoetry that originated inJapan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases composed of 17morae (calledon in Japanese) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern;[3] that include akireji, or "cutting word";[4] and akigo, or seasonal reference. However, haiku by classical Japanese poets, such asMatsuo Bashō, also deviate from the 17-on pattern and sometimes do not contain akireji. Similar poems that do not adhere to these rules are generally classified assenryū.[5]
Haiku originated as an opening part of a larger Japanese genre of poetry calledrenga. These haiku written as an openingstanza were known ashokku and over time they began to be written as stand-alone poems. Haiku was given its current name by the Japanese writerMasaoka Shiki at the end of the 19th century.[6]
Originally from Japan, haiku today are written by authors worldwide.Haiku in English andhaiku 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 (現代俳句,gendai-haiku), supported byOgiwara Seisensui and his disciples, has varied from the tradition of 17on 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 ofJapanese poetry related to haiku, such astanka, as well as other art forms that incorporate haiku, such ashaibun andhaiga.
In Japanese haiku, akireji, or cutting word, typically appears at the end of one of the verse's three phrases. Akireji fills a role analogous to that of acaesura in classical Western poetry or to avolta insonnets.[7][better source needed] Akireji helps mark rhythmic divisions.[8] Depending on whichkireji 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.[9]
Thekireji lends the verse structural support,[10] allowing it to stand as an independent poem.[11][12] The use ofkireji distinguishes haiku and hokku from second and subsequent verses ofrenku; which may employ semantic and syntactic disjuncture, even to the point of occasionally end-stopping a phrase with a sentence-ending particle (終助詞,shūjoshi). However,renku typically employkireji.[13]
In English, sincekireji 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.
Thekireji in the Bashō examples "old pond" and "the wind of Mt Fuji" are both "ya" (や). Neither the remaining Bashō example nor the Issa example contain akireji. However, they do both balance a fragment in the first fiveon against a phrase in the remaining 12on (it may not be apparent from the English translation of the Issa that the first fiveon mean "Edo's rain").
In comparison with English verse typically characterized by syllabicmeter, Japanese verse counts sound units known ason ormorae. Traditional haiku is usuallyfixed verse that consists of 17on, in three phrases of five, seven, and fiveon, respectively. Among modern poems, traditionalist haiku continue to use the 5-7-5 pattern while free form haiku do not.[14] However, one of theexamples below illustrates that traditional haiku masters were not always constrained by the 5-7-5 pattern either. The free form haiku was advocated for byOgiwara Seisensui and his disciples.
Although the wordon is sometimes translated as "syllable", the true meaning is more nuanced. Oneon in Japanese is counted for a short syllable, two for anelongated vowel ordoubled 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 fouron in Japanese (ha-i-bu-n); and the word "on" itself, which English-speakers would view as a single syllable, comprises twoon: the short vowelo and themoraic nasaln. This is illustrated by the Issa haiku below, which contains 17on but only 15 syllables. Conversely, somesounds, such as "kyo" (きょ) may look like two syllables to English speakers but are in fact a singleon (as well as a single syllable) in Japanese.
In 1973, theHaiku Society of America noted that the norm for writers ofhaiku in English was to use 17 syllables, but they also noted a trend toward shorter haiku.[15] According to the society, about 12 syllables in English approximates the duration of 17 Japaneseon.[15]
A haiku traditionally contains akigo, a word or phrase that symbolizes or implies the season of the poem and is drawn from asaijiki, 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 oflogopoeia.[16]Kigo are not always included in non-Japanese haiku or by modern writers of Japanese free-form haiku.[16]
Hokku is the opening stanza of an orthodox collaborative linked poem, orrenga, and of its later derivative,renku (orhaikai no renga). By the time ofMatsuo Bashō (1644–1694), the hokku had begun to appear as an independent poem, and was also incorporated inhaibun (a combination of prose and hokku), andhaiga (a combination of painting with hokku). In the late 19th century,Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902) renamed the standalone hokku to haiku.[22] 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.[23]
In the 17th century, two masters arose who elevatedhaikai and gave it a new popularity. They were Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) andUejima Onitsura (1661–1738).Hokku is the first verse of the collaborativehaikai orrenku, but its position as the opening verse made it the most important, setting the tone for the whole composition. Even thoughhokku had sometimes appeared individually, they were always understood in the context ofrenku.[24] The Bashō school promoted standalonehokku by including many in their anthologies, thus giving birth to what is now called "haiku". Bashō also used hishokku as torque points[clarification needed] within his short prose sketches and longer travel diaries. This subgenre ofhaikai is known ashaibun. His best-known work,Oku no Hosomichi, orNarrow Roads to the Interior, is counted as one of the classics of Japanese literature[25] and has been translated into English extensively.
Bashō was deified by both the imperial government andShinto 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.[26]
The next famous style of haikai to arise was that ofYosa Buson (1716–1784) and others such as Kitō, called the Tenmei style after theTenmei Era (1781–1789) in which it was created.
Buson is recognized as one of the greatest masters ofhaiga (an art form where the painting is combined with haiku or haikai prose). His affection for painting can be seen in the painterly style of his haiku.[27]
No new popular style followed Buson. However, a very individualistic, and at the same time humanistic, approach to writing haiku was demonstrated by the poetKobayashi Issa (1763–1827), whose miserable childhood, poverty, sad life, and devotion to thePure Land sect ofBuddhism are evident in his poetry. Issa made the genre immediately accessible to wider audiences.
Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902) 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 termtsukinami, meaning 'monthly', after the monthly or twice-monthlyhaikai gatherings of the end of the 18th century (in regard to this period ofhaikai, it came to mean 'trite' and 'hackneyed'). Shiki also sometimes criticized Bashō.[28] Like the Japaneseintellectual 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 ofplein-airpainting, which he adapted to create a style of haiku as a kind of nature sketch in words, an approach calledshasei (写生, sketching from life). He popularized his views by verse columns andessays innewspapers.
Hokku up to the time of Shiki, even when appearing independently, were written in the context of renku.[24] Shiki formally separated his new style of verse from the context of collaborative poetry. Beingagnostic,[29] he also separated it from the influence of Buddhism. Further, he discarded the term "hokku" and proposed the termhaiku as an abbreviation of the phrase "haikai no ku" meaning a verse ofhaikai,[30] although the term predates Shiki by some two centuries, when it was used to meanany verse of haikai.[citation needed] 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.[citation needed]
The earliest Westerner known to have written haiku was the DutchmanHendrik Doeff (1764–1837), who was the Dutch commissioner in theDejima trading post in Nagasaki during the first years of the 19th century.[31] One of his haiku is the following:[32]
稲妻の 腕を借らん 草枕
inazuma no kaina wo karan kusamakura
lend me your arms, fast as thunderbolts, for a pillow on my journey.
Although there were further attempts outside Japan to imitate the "hokku" in the early 20th century, there was little understanding of its principles.[citation needed] Early Western scholars such asBasil Hall Chamberlain (1850–1935) andWilliam George Aston were mostly dismissive of hokku's poetic value.[citation needed]
R. H. Blyth was anEnglishman who lived in Japan. He produced a series of works onZen, haiku, senryū, and on other forms ofJapanese and Asian literature. In 1949, with the publication in Japan of the first volume ofHaiku, the four-volume work by Blyth, haiku were introduced to the post-war English-speaking world.[citation needed] This four-volume series (1949–52) described haiku from the pre-modern period up to and includingShiki. Blyth'sHistory of Haiku (1964) in two volumes is regarded as a classical study of haiku. Today Blyth is best known as a major interpreter of haiku to English speakers.[citation needed] His works have stimulated the writing of haiku in English.
The Japanese-Italian translator and poetHarukichi Shimoi introduced haiku to Italy in the 1920s, through his work with the magazine Sakura as well as his close personal relationships within the Italian literati. Two notable influences are the haiku of his close friendGabriele d'Annunzio, and to a lesser extent, those ofEzra Pound, to whom he was introduced in the early 1930s.[33] An early example of his work appears in the 1919 novellaLa guerra italiana vista da un giapponese, which features a haiku by the Japanese feminist poetYosano Akiko:
L'autunno giovane è come un salone della Reggia, perchè in esso gli alberi, gli uccelli, i fiori e tutte le altre cose sono placcati di oro
Translation:
The young autumn is like a salon in the palace, for in it the trees, the birds, the flowers and all other things are plated with gold.
The Japanese-American scholar and translatorKenneth Yasuda publishedThe Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature, History, and Possibilities in English, with Selected Examples in 1957. The book includes both translations from Japanese and original poems of his own in English, which had previously appeared in his book titledA Pepper-Pod: Classic Japanese Poems together with Original Haiku. In these books Yasuda presented a critical theory about haiku, to which he added comments on haiku poetry by early 20th-century poets and critics. His translations apply a 5–7–5 syllable count in English, with the first and third lines end-rhymed. Yasuda considered that haiku translated into English should utilize all of the poetic resources of the language.[34] Yasuda's theory also includes the concept of a "haiku moment" based in personal experience, and provides the motive for writing a haiku:"'an aesthetic moment' of a timeless feeling of enlightened harmony as the poet's nature and the environment are unified".[35] This notion of the haiku moment has resonated with haiku writers in English, even though the notion is not widely promoted in Japanese haiku.[note 1]
In 1958,An Introduction to Haiku: An Anthology of Poems and Poets from Bashô to Shiki byHarold G. Henderson was published by Doubleday Anchor Books. This book was a revision of Henderson's earlier book titledThe Bamboo Broom (Houghton Mifflin, 1934). After World War II, Henderson and Blyth worked for theAmerican Occupation in Japan and for theImperial Household, respectively, and their shared appreciation of haiku helped form a bond between the two.
Henderson translated every hokku and haiku into arhymedtercet (ABA), whereas the Japanese originals never used rhyme. Unlike Yasuda, however, he recognized that 17 syllables in English are generally longer than the 17on of a traditional Japanese haiku. Because the normal modes of English poetry depend on accentual meter rather than on syllabics, Henderson chose to emphasize the order of events and images in the originals.[37] Nevertheless, many of Henderson's translations were in the five-seven-five pattern.
In the early 20th century, Nobel laureateRabindranath Tagore composed haiku inBengali. He also translated some from Japanese. InGujarati,Jhinabhai Desai 'Sneharashmi' popularized haiku[38] and remained a popular haiku writer.[39] In February 2008, the World Haiku Festival was held in Bangalore, gatheringhaijin from all over India and Bangladesh, as well as from Europe and the United States.[40] In South Asia, some other poets also write Haiku from time to time, most notably including the Pakistani poet Omer Tarin, who is also active in the movement for global nuclear disarmament and some of his 'Hiroshima Haiku' have been read at various peace conferences in Japan and the UK.[41] Indian writer in Malayalam language,Ashitha, wrote several Haiku poems which have been published as a book.[42][43] Her poems helped popularise haiku among the readers ofMalayalam literature.[44]
In 1992 Nobel laureateCzesław Miłosz published the volumeHaiku in which he translated from English to Polish haiku of Japanese masters and American and Canadian contemporary haiku authors.
Paul-Louis Couchoud's articles on haiku in French were read by earlyImagist theoreticianF. S. Flint, who passed on Couchoud's ideas to other members of the proto-ImagistPoets' Club such asEzra Pound.Amy Lowell made a trip to London to meet Pound and learn about haiku. She returned to the United States, where she worked to interest others in this "new" form. Haiku subsequently had a considerable influence on Imagists in the 1910s, notably Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" of 1913,[49] but, notwithstanding several efforts byYone Noguchi to explain "the hokku spirit", there was as yet little understanding of the form and its history.[citation needed]
One of the first advocates of English-language hokku was the Japanese poetYone Noguchi. In "A Proposal to American Poets," published in theReader magazine in February 1904, Noguchi gave a brief outline of the hokku and some of his English efforts, ending with the exhortation, "Pray, you try Japanese Hokku, my American poets!" At about the same time the poetSadakichi Hartmann was publishing original English-language hokku, as well as other Japanese forms in both English and French.
Scholar Richard Iadonisi writes in his article, "I Am Nobody" that novelistRichard Wright is considered, "the first noteworthy American minority writer" to produce haiku.[50] There is much scholarly debate over why Wright became interested with the haiku form. It is known that he had begun to study haiku while battlingdysentery.[51] While Wright was purportedly an avid reader of Ezra Pound— whose Imagist poetry was based on the haiku form— Iadonisi suggests that Wright was not interested in American style haiku.[50] Instead, Wright opted to study the techniques of British writerReginald Horace Blyth.[52] He also studied classical haiku poets such asKobayashi Issa andMatsuo Bashō.[53] Wright began writing a series of haiku in the summer of 1959, completing it in 1960. He had written thousands of haiku during that time span. Wright titled his workHaiku: This Other World and submitted it to William Targ of World Publishing, who rejected it.[50][51][53] In 1998, thirty-eight years after Wright's death,This Other World was finally published.[50]
Probably one of the first Italian encounters with Japanese poetry took place through the literary magazineL'Eco della Cultura (founded in 1914), which published texts of Japanese poetry edited by Vincenzo Siniscalchi.[citation needed] From 1920 to 1921, theUniversity of Naples published a magazine,Sakura, on the study of Japanese culture, with the collaboration of the Japanese scholarHarukichi Shimoi. An Italian translation of a haiku byAkiko Yosano is included in Shimoi's 1919 novellaLa guerra italiana vista da un giapponese.Gabriele D'Annunzio also experimented with the haiku in the early twentieth century.[54]
In 1921 the magazineLa Ronda published a negative critique of the Japanese "Hai-kai" fashion that was spreading in France and Spain, while in the following years many futurists appreciated the fast haiku style.[55] In Italy, the national haiku association was founded in Rome in 1987 by Sono Uchida, the well-known Japanese haijin and the ambassador of Japan in Vatican. Soon after, the national association called Italian Friends of the haiku (Associazione Italiana Amici dell'Haiku) was established, and then the Italian Haiku Association. The poet Mario Chini (1876–1959) published the book of haiku titled "Moments" (Rome, 1960). Later, Edoardo Sanguineti published some of his haiku. The famed poet Andrea Zanzotto also published a collection of haiku in English, which he translated back into his native Italian (Haiku for a Season / Haiku per una stagione, Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2021).
In Spain, several prominent poets experimented with haiku, includingJoan Alcover,Antonio Machado,Juan Ramón Jiménez andLuis Cernuda.[56]Federico García Lorca also experimented with and learned conciseness from the form while still a student in 1921.[57] The most persistent, however, was Isaac del Vando, whoseLa Sombrilla Japonesa (1924) went through several editions.[58] The form was also used in Catalan by the avant-garde writers Josep Maria Junoy (1885–1955) andJoan Salvat-Papasseit, by the latter notably in his sequenceVibracions (1921).[59]
The Mexican poetJosé Juan Tablada is credited with popularising haiku in his country, reinforced by the publication of two collections composed entirely in that form:Un dia (1919),[60] andEl jarro de flores (1922).[61] In the introduction to the latter, Tablada noted that two young Mexicans, Rafael Lozano and Carlos Gutiérrez Cruz, had also begun writing them. They were followed soon after byCarlos Pellicer,Xavier Villaurrutia, and byJaime Torres Bodet in his collectionBiombo (1925).[62] Much later,Octavio Paz included many haiku inPiedras Sueltas (1955).[63]
The first publication in Yugoslavia treating haiku wasMiloš Crnjanski'sPoezija starog Japana (Poetry of Ancient Japan), published in 1925. He was attracted to the aesthetics ofaioi-no-matsu - the eternal - and Buddhist empathy, in common with his poetic theme of connecting distant things and concepts through affection.[66]
In socialist Yugoslavia, development of haiku poetry began during the 1960s, when the first haiku books were written, starting withLeptirova krila (The Butterfly's Wings) byDubravko Ivančan in 1964. Other writers includeVladimir Zorčić (1941–1995),Milan Tokin's (1909–1962) unpublished collectionGodišnja doba (Seasons),Desanka Maksimović,Alexander Neugebauer (1930–1989), andZvonko Petrović (1925–2009).Vladimir Devide (1925–2010) published the first book on haiku theory in 1970, titled Japanese Poetry and its Cultural and Historical Context, with many translations of Japanese classics. Dejan Razić (1935–1985) published two books on haiku in 1979, The Development of Haikai Poetry from its Beginning to Basho, and The Peak of Haikai Poetry. The journal Haiku ran from 1977 to 1981.[66]
The Haiku Marathon (1982) and the Yugoslav Haiku Competition (1985) were organised in the 1980s by Slavko Sedlar. The first Serbian haiku journal Paun started being published in 1988 with Milijan Despotović as an editor. The journal Kulture istoka (1983–1992) gave further impetus to the study of Japanese and other oriental cultures. In 1991, the Belgrade-based haiku club Šiki was formed, named after Masaoka Shiki. In 1999, Anakiev together with Serge Tome created the web site Haiku Association of Southeastern Europe.[67] The Haiku Association of Yugoslavia was formed in 2000. The multilingual "Knots- The Anthology of Southeastern European Haiku Poetry" was published in 1999 with poems from writers all over southeastern Europe. The 2000 conference of the World Haiku Federation was held in Slovenia.[66]
In addition to its traditional aesthetic functions, haiku has also been adapted globally as a form for social commentary and critique. A 2025 academic study fromSalahaddin University highlighted this trend, arguing that poets from diverse cultural backgrounds, including the United States, Japan, andIraq, have used the concise form to address social reform and critique issues such as racial capitalism, post-war alienation, and the trauma of conflict.[68][69][70]
Haibun is a combination of prose and haiku, often autobiographical or written in the form of atravel journal. Well-known examples of haibun includeOku no Hosomichi by Bashō andOra ga Haru by Issa.
Haiga is a style of Japanese painting based on the aesthetics ofhaikai, and usually including a haiku. Today, haiga artists combine haiku with paintings, photographs and other art.
The carving of famous haiku on natural stone to make poem monuments known askuhi (句碑) has been a popular practice for many centuries. The city ofMatsuyama has more than two hundredkuhi.
^NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute, ed. (24 May 2016).NHK日本語発音アクセント新辞典 (in Japanese). NHK Publishing.
^Lanoue, David G.Issa, Cup-of-tea Poems: Selected Haiku of Kobayashi Issa, Asian Humanities
^Hiraga, Masako K. (1999)."Rough Sea and the Milky Way: 'Blending' in a Haiku Text," in Computation for Metaphors, Analogy, and Agents, ed. Chrystopher L. Nehaniv. Berlin: Springer. p. 27.ISBN978-3540659594.
^Shirane, Haruo (March 2016) [2015]. "Satiric poetry: Kyōshi, Kyōka, and Senryū". In Shirane, Haruo; Suzuki, Tomi; Lurie, David (eds.).The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature.Cambridge University Press. p. 509.doi:10.1017/CHO9781139245869.ISBN9781107029033.Many English haiku composed outside Japan, which do not require a seasonal word, are in fact senryū.
^Otterspeer, W.Leiden Oriental connections, 1850-1940, Volume 5 of Studies in the history of Leiden University. Brill, 1989,ISBN9789004090224. p360
^Livio Loi, A Flower With Many Stems: Tradition and Innovation in the Poetry of Sandro Penna[1]
^Yasuda, Kenneth, Introduction 'The Japanese Haiku' Charles Tuttle Co Rutland 1957ISBN0804810966
^Otsuiji(Seiki Osuga) Otsuji Hairon-shu 'Otsuiji's Collected Essays on Haiku Theory' ed.Toyo Yoshida, 5th edn Tokyo, Kaede Shobo 1947
^Hirai, Masako ed.Now to be! Shiki's Haiku Moments for Us Today' (Ima, ikuru!Shiki no sekai) U-Time Publishing, 2003ISBN4860100409[2]
^Henderson, Harold G. (1958).An introduction to haiku : an anthology of poems and poets from Bashō to Shiki. Anchor Books. pp. viii.ISBN9780385052252.OCLC857309735.{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
^Article on Sneh Rashmi on website ofGujarati Sahitya Parishad (Gujarati Literary Council). In it, we read: "જાપાની કાવ્યપ્રકાર હાઈકુને ગુજરાતીમાં સુપ્રતિષ્ઠિત કરી તેમણે ઐતિહાસિક પ્રદાન કર્યું છે" ("By pioneering and popularizing the famous form of Japanese poetry called Haiku in Gujarati, he has gained a place in history").
^abcPajin, Dušan (2018)."Haiku na Balkanu"(PDF).Projekat Rastko: Biblioteka srpske kulture.Archived(PDF) from the original on 29 November 2021. Retrieved11 April 2023.
^The site is offline, but can be accessed through theInternet Archive
