Haiku

A haiku is a traditional Japanese poem divided into seventeen phonic units, the equivalent of syllables. The English version of a haiku is an unrhymed poem with seventeen syllables, arranged in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, in that order. As early as 1157, the scholar-poet Fujiwara no Kiyosuke made mention of renga, then a new form of poetry consisting of an indeterminate number of linked verses composed in a verse-capping game. In the sixteenth century, the initial stanza of the renga, called the “hokku,” broke away to become a separate poem. In the next century, Matsuo Bashō became the recognized master of the hokku. The term “haiku,” a combination of hokkuwith the term haikai, referring to an often humorous type of renga dealing with mundane, everyday subjects, was coined in the late nineteenth century. The haiku became the most popular Japanese poem. Western poets have worked to adapt the qualities of the haiku to their poetry and, in some cases, to write haiku. In the twenty-first century, writers from schoolchildren to dedicated poets are engaged in writing haiku throughout the world.

Brief History

Fujiwara’s twelfth-century reference to renga was not to the full linked-verse sequence of one hundred verses that later became a respected poetic form but rather to the less defined kusari renga. At the time of Fujiwara’s writing, the thirty-one-syllable uta, which followed the syllabic pattern 5-7-5-7-7, was the dominant poetic form in Japan. Likely reflecting the practice of his day, Fujiwara indicated that the kusari renga sequence should begin not with the final two lines of the uta but with the first three, 5-7-5. He further noted that the first verse, the hokku, should be carefully composed and the verse should be complete within itself. Thus, some scholars view the kusari renga as the beginning of the haiku tradition.

Although gaining in popularity, renga continued to be dismissed by elitists as little more than a social activity on par with drinking sake. By the mid-fourteenth century, this attitude was changing; the first anthology was compiled in 1356. Poets interested in the continued elevation of renga determined that a focus on hokku was required. The hokku set the tone of a renga or haikai by describing elements of the scene including the landscape, the season, and the time of day. Beginning in the 1400s, hokku became part of mainstream poetic discourse, and professional renga poets such as Iio Sōgi (1421–1502), considered the greatest master of the form, were winning fame. Until the early sixteenth century, all hokku were attached to a sequence of verses. The practice remained common beyond the sixteenth century, and even many of the most famous hokku of Matsuo Bashō were written as the initiating verse of a sequence.

Bashō (1644–94) began writing at a time when the hokku was beginning to be used as the model for independent poems that would later be named haiku. Bashō soon proved to be a master of the form, although his early work was published under several names. It was not until 1680 when his students built a home for him in Fukagawa and planted a banana tree nearby that he adopted the name Bashō, meaning “banana tree.” Around 1682, Bashō began the first of a series of long journeys on foot. From these journeys emerged a new poetic form called haibun, a form that combines haiku and prose to represent the poet’s double journey: the physical journey and the journey of the mind. Bashō’s haibun sequences include Nozarashi kikō, (late 1600s; The Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton, 1960s) ; Oi no kobumi (late 1600s; Knapsack Notebook); Sarashina kikō (1704; A Visit to Sarashina Village, 1966), and the best known, Oku no kosomichi (early 1700s; Narrow Road to the Deep North), which describes Bashō’s last trip, a walk of 1,200 miles that he completed with his disciple Sora, beginning in May 1689.

Other influential haiku poets include Yosa Buson, whose poems with their rich details reflect his painter’s vision; Kobayashi Issa, who like Bashō wrote hybrids that intertwined prose and poetry and whose haiku show his awareness of the humble and ordinary; and Masaoka Shiki, who revised the form, wrote about both Bashō and Buson, and coined the term “haiku” as the name of the independent poem.

Haiku Today

In the early twentieth century, Ezra Pound, one of the founders of imagism, became interested in the haiku poets’ use of compelling images to provoke and illuminate in so few words. It was the influence of haiku that spurred Pound to cut his thirty-line poem “In a Station of the Metro” to two lines. The Beat poets of the 1950s, most notably Gary Snyder (b. 1930), were drawn to haiku by their interest in Zen Buddhism. Snyder spent a dozen years abroad, most of it in Japan, where his first collection of poetry was published. Richard Wright (1908–1960) became fascinated by the haiku in 1959 and wrote more than four thousand over a few months. Equally important are Harold G. Henderson and R. H. Blyth, who introduced much of the Western world to haiku through their translations in the 1950s. Free verse haiku gained popularity in Japan through the work of poets such as Ozaki Hosai (1885–1926) and Santoka Taneda (1882–1940).

Contemporary Western poets who have been influenced by haiku include American Robert Hass (b. 1941), who has translated Bashō, Buson, and Issa; Irish poet Paul Muldoon (b. 1951), who has published substantial sequences of haiku and haiku-like poems; Finnish poet Anselm Hollo (1934–2013), a comic “anti-laureate” who published Near Miss Haiku (1990); and American Sonia Sanchez (b. 1934), who published Morning Haiku in 2010. As the work of these poets and many others shows, the haiku continues to evolve, breaking away from traditional form and subject matter while remain true to the power of image and the reader’s role in making meaning.

Bibliography

Blyth, Reginald Horace. A History of Haiku. 2 vols. Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1963. Print.

Haiku before Haiku: From the Renga Masters to Bashō. Trans. by Steven D. Carter. New York: Columbia UP, 2011. Print.

Hirsch, Edward. A Poet’s Glossary. New York: Houghton, 2014. Print.

Kacian, Jim, Philip Rowland, and Allan Burns, eds. Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years. New York: Norton, 2013. Print.

Kerkham, Eleanor, ed. Matsuo Bashō’s Poetic Spaces: Exploring Haikai Intersections. New York: Macmillan, 2006. Print.

Ueda, Makoto, ed. Far Beyond the Field: Haiku by Japanese Women—An Anthology. New York: Columbia UP, 2003. Print.

Ueda, Makoto. Zeami, Bashō, Yeats, Pound: A Study in Japanese and English Poetics. London: Mouton, 1965. Print.

Yasuda, Kenneth. The Japanese Haiku, Its Essential Nature, History, and Possibilities in English. Rutland: Tuttle, 1973. Print.

Zheng, Jianqing, ed. The Other World of Richard Wright: Perspectives on His Haiku. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2011. Print.