Haiku is a type of short poetry that began in Japan. Traditional haiku in Japan have three parts with 17 syllables, following a 5-7-5 pattern. These poems often include a "cutting word," which separates ideas, and a "seasonal reference," which connects the poem to a time of year. However, some haiku written by famous poets like Matsuo Bashō do not always follow the 17-syllable rule or include a cutting word. Poems that do not follow these rules are usually called senryū.
Haiku originally came from a longer type of Japanese poetry called renga. The first part of a renga poem was called a hokku. Over time, hokku became their own separate poems and were renamed haiku by a Japanese writer named Masaoka Shiki in the late 1800s.
Today, people around the world write haiku in many languages, including English. These poems have different styles and traditions but still use parts of the traditional haiku form. Haiku in non-Japanese languages vary in how closely they follow traditional rules. In Japan, haiku are usually written as one line, while in English, they are often written as three lines. Some variations exist in both styles.
Other types of Japanese poetry, such as tanka, are related to haiku. Haiku also appear in other art forms, like haibun (a mix of poetry and prose) and haiga (a mix of poetry and visual art).
Traditional elements
In Japanese haiku, a kireji, or cutting word, usually appears at the end of one of the three phrases in a verse. A kireji works like a caesura in classical Western poetry or a volta in sonnets. It helps divide the rhythm of the verse. Depending on the kireji chosen and where it is placed, it may briefly pause the flow of thought, showing a connection between the phrases, or it may end the verse with a strong sense of completion.
The kireji gives the verse structural support, making it a complete poem on its own. The use of kireji helps distinguish haiku and hokku from later verses in renku, which may use differences in meaning or structure, even ending phrases with sentence-ending particles. However, renku also often use kireji.
In English, since kireji have no direct equivalent, poets sometimes use punctuation like dashes or ellipses, or suggest a break to create a contrast that invites readers to think about the relationship between parts of the poem.
In the Bashō examples "old pond" and "the wind of Mt Fuji," the kireji used is "ya" (や). Neither the other Bashō example nor the Issa example includes a kireji. However, both balance a short phrase in the first five on with a longer phrase in the remaining 12 on (this may not be clear in the English translation of the Issa example, as the first five on mean "Edo's rain").
Compared to English verse, which often uses syllabic meter, Japanese verse counts sound units called on or morae. Traditional haiku usually follows a fixed structure of 17 on, divided into three phrases of five, seven, and five on. Modern haiku may use the 5-7-5 pattern or not, depending on the style. Some traditional haiku masters did not always follow the 5-7-5 pattern. Free-form haiku, promoted by Ogiwara Seisensui and his followers, do not use this pattern.
The word "on" is sometimes translated as "syllable," but its meaning is more complex. One on 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. For example, the word "haibun" is two syllables in English but four on in Japanese (ha-i-bu-n). The word "on" itself is two on in Japanese: the short vowel "o" and the moraic nasal "n." This is shown in the Issa haiku below, which has 17 on but only 15 syllables. Some sounds, like "kyo" (きょ), may look like two syllables to English speakers but are one on in Japanese.
In 1973, the Haiku Society of America noted that English haiku writers often used 17 syllables, but they also observed a trend toward shorter poems. The society suggested that about 12 syllables in English match the length of 17 Japanese on.
A haiku traditionally includes a kigo, a word or phrase that suggests the season of the poem. Kigo comes from a saijiki, a detailed list of seasonal words. These words create images linked to specific times of the year, a type of logopoeia. Kigo are not always used in non-Japanese haiku or in modern free-form Japanese haiku.
Examples
One of the most famous Japanese haiku is Matsuo Bashō's "old pond":
古池や蛙飛び込む水の音
furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto
old pond, frog jumps in, sound of water
This is divided into syllables as:
fu-ru-i-ke ya (5) ka-wa-zu to-bi-ko-mu (7) mi-zu-no-o-to (5)
Another haiku by Bashō:
初しぐれ猿も小蓑をほしげ也
hatsu shigure saru mo komino o hoshige nari
the first cold shower, even the monkey seems to want a small straw coat
This example shows that Bashō did not always follow the 5-7-5 syllable pattern. It has 18 syllables in the pattern 6-7-5:
富士の風や扇にのせて江戸土産
fuji no kaze ya ōgi ni nosete Edo miyage
the wind of Fuji, I have brought on my fan a gift from Edo
This is divided into syllables as:
fu-ji no ka-ze ya (6) o-u-gi ni no-se-te (7) e-do mi-ya-ge (5)
This haiku was written by Kobayashi Issa:
江戸の雨何石呑んだ時鳥
edo no ame nan goku nonda hototogisu
of Edo's rain, how many mouthfuls did you drink, cuckoo?
This is divided into syllables as:
e-do no a-me (5) na-n go-ku no-n-da (7) ho-to-to-gi-su (5)
Origin and development
Hokku is the first part of a type of poem called renga, which is a collaborative linked poem, and also of its later version, renku (or haikai no renga). By the time of Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), hokku began to appear as a separate poem. It was also used in haibun, which combines prose and hokku, and in haiga, which combines painting with hokku. In the late 19th century, Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902) renamed standalone hokku to haiku. Today, the term "haiku" is used for all hokku that appear alone, regardless of when they were written. The term "hokku" is no longer used to describe standalone poems.
In the 17th century, two poets, Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) and Uejima Onitsura (1661–1738), helped make haikai more popular. Hokku is the first verse of a collaborative haikai or renku poem. Its position as the opening verse made it the most important part, as it set the tone for the whole poem. Even though hokku sometimes appeared alone, they were always connected to renku. Bashō's school promoted standalone hokku by including many in their collections, leading to the creation of what is now called "haiku." Bashō also used hokku in his prose sketches and travel writings, a style called haibun. His most famous work, Oku no Hosomichi (Narrow Roads to the Interior), is considered a classic of Japanese literature and has been translated into English.
One hundred years after his death, Bashō was honored by the imperial government and Shinto religious leaders because he raised haikai from a playful game to serious poetry. He is still respected in Japan as a great poet and is the most well-known name from classical Japanese literature worldwide.
A later style of haikai, called the Tenmei style, was developed by Yosa Buson (1716–1784) and others during the Tenmei Era (1781–1789). Buson is known for his work in haiga, which combines painting with haiku or haikai prose. His love for painting influenced the artistic style of his haiku.
After Buson, no new popular style of haikai emerged. However, Kobayashi Issa (1763–1827) created a unique and human-centered approach to haiku. His difficult childhood, poverty, and connection to the Pure Land sect of Buddhism are reflected in his poetry, making haiku more accessible to many people.
Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902) was a writer who wanted to modernize haiku. Despite being sick for much of his life, Shiki criticized the old style of haikai writers, who were called "tsukinami" (meaning "monthly" due to their frequent gatherings). He also sometimes criticized Bashō. Influenced by Western culture, Shiki favored the painting style of Buson and the European idea of plein-air painting, which he used to create a new style of haiku called shasei (sketching from life). He shared his ideas through newspaper articles and essays.
Before Shiki, hokku were still connected to renku even when written alone. Shiki separated his new style of poetry from renku and from Buddhist influences. He also changed the name "hokku" to "haiku," short for "haikai no ku," meaning "a verse of haikai." The term "haiku" has been used since then for all standalone poems, regardless of when they were written. Shiki's changes greatly affected renku and other haikai schools. Today, "hokku" is mainly used to describe the first verse of a renku, and rarely to refer to haiku written before Shiki's time.
Exposure to the West
The earliest Westerner known to have written haiku was the Dutchman Hendrik Doeff (1764–1837). He worked as a Dutch commissioner at the Dejima trading post in Nagasaki during the early years of the 19th century. One of his haiku is:
inazuma no kaina wo karan kusamakura
lend me your arms, fast as thunderbolts, for a pillow on my journey.
Although some Westerners tried to copy the "hokku" in the early 20th century, they did not fully understand its principles. Early Western scholars, such as Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850–1935) and William George Aston, mostly did not value the hokku's poetic qualities.
R. H. Blyth was an Englishman who lived in Japan. He wrote books about Zen, haiku, senryū, and other forms of Japanese and Asian literature. In 1949, the first volume of his four-volume work Haiku was published in Japan. This series introduced haiku to English-speaking readers after World War II. The books covered haiku from Japan’s pre-modern period up to the work of Shiki. Blyth’s History of Haiku (1964), a two-volume book, is considered a classic study of haiku. Today, Blyth is best known for helping English speakers understand haiku. His writings inspired many people to write haiku in English.
Harukichi Shimoi, a Japanese-Italian translator and poet, introduced haiku to Italy in the 1920s. He worked with the magazine Sakura and had close relationships with Italian writers. His friend Gabriele d’Annunzio and, to a lesser extent, poet Ezra Pound influenced his work. An early example of his work appears in the 1919 novella La guerra italiana vista da un giapponese, which includes a haiku by the Japanese feminist poet Yosano Akiko:
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.
Kenneth Yasuda, a Japanese-American scholar and translator, published The Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature, History, and Possibilities in English, with Selected Examples in 1957. His book includes translations of Japanese haiku and original poems he wrote in English. Yasuda developed ideas about haiku, including the concept of a "haiku moment" based on personal experiences. He believed haiku in English should use all the tools of the English language. His theory describes a "haiku moment" as a timeless feeling of harmony between the poet and the environment. This idea influenced many English-speaking haiku writers, even though it is not widely discussed in Japan.
In 1958, Harold G. Henderson published An Introduction to Haiku: An Anthology of Poems and Poets from Bashō to Shiki by Doubleday Anchor Books. This book was a revised version of Henderson’s earlier work, The Bamboo Broom (1934). After World War II, Henderson and Blyth both worked for the American Occupation in Japan and the Imperial Household, respectively. Their shared love of haiku created a strong connection between them.
Henderson translated every hokku and haiku into rhymed tercets (ABA), but Japanese originals did not use rhyme. Unlike Yasuda, he noted that 17 syllables in English are longer than the 17 on (sound units) in traditional Japanese haiku. Because English poetry often uses rhythm based on accents rather than syllables, Henderson focused on the sequence of events and images in the originals. However, many of his translations followed the five-seven-five syllable pattern.
Haiku in other languages
In France, Paul-Louis Couchoud introduced haiku around 1906.
In the early 1900s, Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote haiku in Bengali. He also translated some haiku from Japanese. In Gujarati, Jhinabhai Desai’s book Sneharashmi helped spread haiku and made him a well-known haiku writer. In February 2008, the World Haiku Festival was held in Bangalore, India. It brought together haiku writers from India, Bangladesh, Europe, and the United States. In South Asia, some poets also write haiku occasionally. One example is the Pakistani poet Omer Tarin, who is involved in the movement for global nuclear disarmament. His haiku about Hiroshima have been shared at peace conferences in Japan and the UK. An Indian writer named Ashitha, who writes in Malayalam, created several haiku poems. These poems were published in a book and helped make haiku more popular among Malayalam readers.
In 1992, Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz published a book called Haiku. In it, he translated haiku from Japanese masters and modern haiku writers from America and Canada into Polish.
Herman Van Rompuy, the former president of the European Council, is a haiku writer. He is known as "Haiku Herman." He published a book of haiku in April 2010.
Paul-Louis Couchoud wrote articles about haiku in French. These articles were read by F. S. Flint, an early Imagist poet. Flint shared Couchoud’s ideas with other members of the proto-Imagist Poets’ Club, including Ezra Pound. Amy Lowell traveled to London to meet Pound and learn about haiku. She returned to the United States and encouraged others to try this new form. Haiku had a strong influence on Imagist poets in the 1910s, such as Pound’s poem In a Station of the Metro from 1913. However, even though Yone Noguchi tried to explain the spirit of hokku, many people did not yet understand haiku or its history.
One of the first people to promote hokku in English was the Japanese poet Yone Noguchi. In 1904, he wrote an article titled A Proposal to American Poets for the Reader magazine. He encouraged American poets to try writing hokku. Around the same time, the poet Sadakichi Hartmann wrote hokku in English and French.
Scholar Richard Iadonisi wrote that Richard Wright, a novelist, was the first American minority writer to produce haiku. Scholars debate why Wright became interested in haiku. It is known that he studied haiku while recovering from dysentery. Although Wright admired Ezra Pound’s Imagist poetry, which was inspired by haiku, Iadonisi says Wright focused on the work of British writer Reginald Horace Blyth and classical haiku poets like Kobayashi Issa and Matsuo Bashō. Wright began writing haiku in 1959 and finished them in 1960. He wrote thousands of haiku during this time. He titled his collection Haiku: This Other World and sent it to a publisher, who rejected it. In 1998, thirty-eight years after Wright’s death, the book was finally published.
In Italy, the first encounter with Japanese poetry likely happened through the magazine L’Eco della Cultura, which was founded in 1914. It published Japanese poetry edited by Vincenzo Siniscalchi. From 1920 to 1921, the University of Naples published a magazine called Sakura about Japanese culture with help from the Japanese scholar Harukichi Shimoi. An Italian translation of a haiku by Akiko Yosano appeared in Shimoi’s 1919 novella La guerra italiana vista da un giapponese. Gabriele D’Annunzio also experimented with haiku in the early 1900s.
In 1921, the magazine La Ronda published a negative review of the Japanese "Hai-kai" style that was becoming popular in France and Spain. Later, many futurist poets in Italy admired the fast, concise style of haiku. In 1987, the national haiku association in Italy was founded in Rome by Sono Uchida, a Japanese haiku writer and Japan’s ambassador to the Vatican. Soon after, the Italian Friends of the Haiku (Associazione Italiana Amici dell’Haiku) was created, followed by the Italian Haiku Association. The poet Mario Chini published a book of haiku titled Moments in 1960. Later, Edoardo Sanguineti and Andrea Zanzotto also wrote haiku. Zanzotto translated his haiku into English and then back into Italian for his book Haiku for a Season / Haiku per una stagione (2021).
In Spain, several famous poets experimented with haiku, including Joan Alcover, Antonio Machado, Juan Ramón Jiménez, and Luis Cernuda. Federico García Lorca studied haiku while he was a student in 1921. The most consistent writer of haiku in Spain was Isaac del Vando, whose book La Sombrilla Japonesa (1924) had multiple editions. Catalan writers like Josep Maria Junoy and Joan Alcover also wrote ha
Related forms
Haibun is a mix of prose and haiku, often written about the writer's own life or as a travel journal. Famous examples include Oku no Hosomichi by Bashō and Ora ga Haru by Issa.
Haiga is a style of Japanese painting inspired by the art of haikai. It often includes a haiku. Today, artists create haiga by combining haiku with paintings, photographs, and other forms of art.
For many centuries, people have carved famous haiku onto natural stone to make poem monuments called kuhi. The city of Matsuyama has more than two hundred kuhi.