The Birth
of Haiku Poetry
By Jonathan Adams, GS ‘02

Haiku is familiar to Americans of all age groups, and has influenced many western poets, Ezra Pound being but one notable example. The haiku form is popular for its shortness, simplicity, and access to even the lay poet. Anyone can compose an acceptable haiku with relative ease and little fear of embarrassment. Haiku is arguably the most flexible poetic form as well, for its English-speaking practitioners take liberties with both its 5-7-5 syllable count and subject matter in adapting it to the English language. For the Japanese, however, haiku has a specific historical precedent, and must conform to more stringent rules.

Setting the Stage: Japanese vs. Western Traditions
Whereas poetry in the West tends to be seen as the province of the specialist who occupies an exalted position, poetry in Japan was traditionally considered an essential means of expression and communication in which all literate members of society participated. While the Japanese poetic tradition has its great luminaries, there is no concept of the bard, such as Homer or Shakespeare in the Western tradition.

Likewise, Japanese literature does not contain epic poems, and one would be hard-pressed to come up with the Japanese Dante or Milton. There are, of course, many works of sustained brilliance in Japanese literature. One such example is The Tale of Genji. Although Genji does contain a great deal of poetry, the narrative itself is not written in verse, as is The Divine Comedy or Paradise Lost.

Classical Poetry before Haiku
Genji contains poetry in the “waka” form (known in modern days as “tanka”). This form was the canonical predecessor to the haiku form, and came into full flower in the Heian period (C.E. 794-C.E. 1185). The period was important because Japanese culture emerged as a distinct entity after a prolonged period of adhering closely to Chinese models.

The Heian period experienced an intense interweaving of art and life, and is marked by extreme refinement. Heian culture was centered on the Kyoto aristocracy, who placed the utmost value on aesthetic refinement in every possible aspect of life. Every word, gesture, and feeling partook of a high degree of aesthetic expression. Tasteful coordination of form, color, and even scent received great attention in clothing, decoration, and poetry, for one’s aesthetic sensibilities revealed one’s character. Poetry was generally written on exquisitely colored, and sometimes scented, papers, and the grace and dexterity of the handwriting was an essential clue to the character of the poet. For Heian aristocrats, who were hedged in by ritual punctilio, aesthetic practices such as poetry were an essential means of social intercourse, and often their sole means of individualized expression. The major difference between the Western and Japanese traditions is that Japanese poetry explored issues pertinent to social concerns and national identity by appealing to feeling, rather than belief, and documented an interior experience, rather than an exterior history of events.

Because poetry was a part of daily social interaction for the Japanese aristocrat of the eighth through 12th centuries, the great number of poems composed and exchanged is a phenomenon that has no equivalent in our own tradition. As a result, many of the great canonical poems in the Japanese tradition are either anonymous or by poets who were not luminaries in their day. If anything in Japanese literature might be referred to as “epic,” it is not found in a single, superlative work but in a body of work compiled over centuries. Reading even a few selections from The Tale of Genji conveys the supremacy of metaphor, literary allusion, and subtle methods of suggestion that are commonplace in Heian poetry and culture. Poetic erudition was highly valued, and presupposed a knowledge and appreciation of an enormous canon of Chinese and Japanese poetry. During this time, poetry became so self-referential that the tradition itself almost amounts to an epic.

The waka form contains 31 syllables that are divided into five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7, and seven syllables. The waka form dominated Japanese poetics for roughly a millennium, from C.E. 770 when the Manyoshu, the oldest collection of Japanese poetry, was compiled, until it was eclipsed in popularity by the advent of haiku. The first imperial anthology of poetry, the Kokinshu, The Collection of Poems in Old and New Style, was presented at court in C.E. 905, and consisted almost entirely of waka. The man who compiled this massive work, Ki no Tsurayuki (C.E. 868-C.E. 945), elucidated the nature and function of poetry in the society of his time:

Japanese poetry, taking as its seed human emotions, culminates in the myriad leaves of utterance. Because their engagements and pursuits abound, people of this world express what they feel in terms of things they see and hear. When one hears the warbler singing among the blossoms or the voice of the water-dwelling frog—is there any living being that does not sing its song? Poetry is what moves heaven and earth without effort, stirs the emotions of unseen gods and spirits, softens relations between men and women, and soothes the hearts of mighty warriors (translation mine).

The social function of classical Japanese poetry
Given the key role of poetry in Japanese social interaction, it is not surprising that poetry had a significant role in the relations between the sexes. In fact, most of the Kokinshu poems are love poems. The proliferation of love poems during this period is, in fact, the primary reason that Japanese survived as a written and spoken language and was not displaced entirely by Chinese. When the Kokinshu was compiled, China was a dominant influence in Japanese culture. Japanese was considered the language of women, and Chinese that of men. It was considered unladylike for a woman to possess anything beyond a superficial ability to use Chinese, but facility in composing in the sinuous Japanese script was highly prized. Since women were confined to using Japanese, it was necessary for men to compose in Japanese to communicate with women through the exchange of poems.

The content of waka poetry might be considered both religious and psychological in nature. The sentiment of Japanese love poems is almost never an expression of the joys of love, but rather a lament over lost love or unconsummated romantic passion. An early commentator on ancient Japanese literature, Motoori Norinaga (C.E. 1730-C.E. 1801), held that the joys of love and life are not deep emotions and lack the power to move readers of literature, whereas sadness and heartbreak prove much more compelling.

Although the subject matter of waka poetry is secular in nature, it can be considered to exhibit certain religious and psychological elements. In the sixth century, the Japanese adopted the Chinese writing system as the means of conveying Buddhist doctrine. From that time on, the Buddhist emphasis on suffering became an essential facet of Japanese literary culture. Suffering, combined with the personal nature of the Japanese poetic expression, also gives the subject matter a psychological component in that the expression of one individual’s suffering might have a cathartic effect on both writer and reader. For instance, in a Manyoshu poem, Kakinomoto Hitomaro writes of his wife’s death and his vain search for her “hoping to heal my grief / Even a thousandth part.” The composition very likely soothed the poet’s grief and that of readers, for the poem assured them they were not alone in moments of intense grief.

History of the Development of Haiku
Nevertheless, though this analysis may hold true for ancient poems, from the time of the Kokinshu, poetic themes, language, and poetic associations became standardized. This resulted in a poetics that lacked the straightforward sincerity of expression that commentators typically praise in the Manyoshu poems. The rigidity of these poetic associations forced poets of later ages to compose according to the diction used by 10th-century Heian aristocrats. This left later poets little room to express the reality of their everyday lives in poetic terms. In the 17th century, however, traditional poetics began to undergo significant changes.

By 1600, the Tokugawa rulers had established a lasting peace, uniting Japan after several hundred years of continuous warfare amongst competing warlords, and this began to effect changes in the traditional social hierarchy. With no more need for a warrior elite, the Tokugawa government established educational institutions in order to funnel idle members of the samurai class into bureaucratic positions. This resulted in widespread literacy among all social classes within a relatively short time. Lasting peace also allowed the rise of a prosperous and powerful merchant class, who had traditionally been at the bottom of the social hierarchy. This rise of the merchant class, in turn, resulted in the commodification of culture. Poetry went from being the exclusive sphere of an aristocratic elite to being available to anyone who could pay for tutoring in poetics, and poets became professional teachers, correcting students’ poems for a fee. These were the historical circumstances under which haiku developed.

Basho- and the advent of Haiku
Haiku derived from a popular communal form of poetry called “haikai” in which groups of poets would celebrate the occasion of their gathering by composing “renga,” or linked verse. This began with the guest of honor composing opening verse of three lines of 5-7-5 syllable form, called the “hokku.” The next poet would cap the opening verse with a 7-7 syllable verse, forming a waka (5-7-5-7-7). Subsequent poets in the group would compose verses in alternating 5-7 syllable form, and the poem would be complete when it reached 108 verses. Haikai-linked verse had been considered a vulgar form of poetry until the 17th century when, due to the changing social order, it came to the fore as a viable means of poetic expression. The opening verse, the hokku, evolved into haiku.

If any single poet can be considered responsible for the elevation of haikai to the literary poetic form haiku, that poet is Matsuo Bash-o (C.E. 1644-C.E. 1694), who can be considered the father of haiku. Bash-o was educated in traditional poetics, and was intimately familiar with the canon. He was so devoted to poetry that he was unable to hold a job because of his obsession with composing poems. Bash-o eventually settled in Edo (modern-day Tokyo) and instructed poetry. His innovation was to mix the lofty and the vulgar to achieve an incongruity that was both humorous and literary. Combining the idioms of high and low culture while evincing a thorough knowledge of traditional poetry mocked its stilted, archaic language and limited poetic associations. Bash-o’s haiku created a stir in poetic circles, because it subverted the traditional rules regarding the use of words and images in poetry. One author cites Bash-o’s famous poem of the frog as an example:

An old pond
Frog jumps in
The sound of water

The frog was traditionally associated with spring, fresh mountain streams, wild flowers, and other pleasant, picturesque imagery. Bash-o, by juxtaposing the frog with the image of a stagnant old pond, placed a traditional poetic image into a new context. Bash-o is the frog making ripples in the waters of traditional poetry, which had been rendered stagnant by outmoded and stifling rules. He freed poets from that point on to exploit topics and images of contemporary daily life.

Bash-o was a man of few words, relying heavily on the power of suggestion, which is an essential element of Japanese aesthetics. A mood, place, or historical event may be evoked with a single word. For example, mentioning Mardi Gras to an American brings to mind the city of New Orleans, a festive atmosphere, and religious festivals. Similarly, mention of a bird or insect may bring to mind the season in which its song is heard. These unspoken attributes give poetry depth and meaning, but also require the reader to be active and astute in deciphering what they represent.
Bash-o took this penchant for suggesting much in few words to something of an extreme when he abandoned the waka form, with its 31 syllables, for the haiku, with 17. Compared to waka, the haiku form has 14 fewer syllables in which to express a complete poetic sentiment. The difficulties inherent in such concise expression led to a certain relaxation of the syllable count of haiku, and it is permissible to lengthen or shorten one line of a haiku by one syllable. Some haiku, then, may have an opening line of four or six syllables rather than five, or a middle line of six or eight syllables rather than seven, and so forth.

Content of Haiku
The subject matter of haiku differs from that of waka in that it is seldom about love. Instead, haiku presents expressions of fleeting sentiments that are invariably linked to a specific season. They must evoke the feelings particular to that season, so it is essential that a seasonal word be employed. Mention of a firefly, for instance, suggests the end of a long summer day and perhaps the cool of evening, as well as the sense of wonder and excitement one might have at catching a glimpse of a firefly during the twilight hours of a summer’s day. One can, of course, simply say “a summer evening,” but evoking the seasonal sentiment through suggestion certainly shows greater poetic sensitivity.

How still it is here—
Singing into the stones
The locusts’ trill.

—Bash-o (Translation, Donald Keene)
This haiku is from Bash-o’s great prose work The Narrow Road to Oku. The season is clearly established by “the locusts’ trill.” As anyone who has spent a summer in Japan can attest, the shrill drone of the cicada continues day and night throughout the summer months with an intensity that seems, as Bash-o suggests, as if it could penetrate stone. Bash-o makes a paradoxical contrast between the locusts’ whining and the tranquility and remoteness of the mountain path on which he is traveling, suggesting that the tranquility of which he speaks is not dependent on outside circumstances but an inward state that continues amidst the cacophony.

Any haiku that expresses a common irony without referring to the season is technically not a haiku, but a “senryu.” Senryu follows the 5-7-5 syllable form, but its subject matter is humorous and ironic situations common to daily life. One of my own compositions provides an example:

Could she be more vague
Than to say, “I might drop by?”
Feminine mystique.

A senryu is typically more playful than a haiku. This one, for instance, merely voices a minor gripe of the “he said/she said” variety, ending with the superficial conclusion that the vaunted “feminine mystique” amounts to no more than an irritating penchant for indecision. A senryu humorously expresses the author’s feelings with a wry and somewhat cynical humor, but with neither a clue as to the season nor any moving insights into the relation of humans with nature.

While haiku composed in English tends to blur the distinction between haiku and senryu, and tends to dispense with a strict syllable count, the discipline of maintaining these distinctions makes for a more literary poem. Although haiku was born of innovation, that innovation was nevertheless rooted in traditional precedent and, therefore, adherence to the basic rules of haiku composition upholds the spirit of tradition. With that in mind, amateur poets and laymen alike can enjoy composing their own traditional Japanese haiku in English by observing these few rules:

1. Maintain the 5-7-5 syllable count; this can be cheated by a syllable more or less in only one line per poem.
2. Evoke a seasonal feeling in haiku; this is best done through hints (be certain to distinguish between haiku and senryu).
3. Do not express feelings that are too personal; every reader of your poem should grasp the sentiment of your poem in a single flash of understanding.