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Traditional Japanese Haiku School
Susumu Takiguchi, Instructor

 

Some Japanese Poetic Terms Explained

Susumu Takiguchi
Oxford, UK

 

 

waka

Old Japanese poems (one cut-off point is before the Meiji Restoration in 1868) are generically called waka (which literally means "Japanese verse". Waka is divided into choka (long verse) and tanka (short verse of 31 syllables: 5-7-5-7-7). Waka does not include haiku, or hokku however, even if the latter was derived from the former. When one talks of waka, one is by convention referring to tanka. In modern time (after 1868) waka came to be called simply tanka. (Little wonder about the confusion!)

renga

Thus waka was enjoyed in a single 31-syllable form, until linked-verse came into being. Initially, it was simply a linkage between the:

•  kami-no-ku (upper-ku of 5-7-5) composed by one person and the
  
  

• shimo-no-ku (lower-ku of 7-7) composed by another. This linkage is called
  
  

• tan-renga (short renga). Soon, more stanzas were added, creating
  
  

• cho-renga (long renga) which is what is normally known as renga.
  
  

• different renga

Haiku was not yet born. Renga became extremely popular and produced all sorts of variants. Firstly, length-wise, there came into being 36 stanzas (kasen), 44, 50, 100, and even 1,000 to 10, 000.

• haikai-no-renga (comic renga)

In addition to the traditional renga of high elegance and sincerity, a light-hearted version was contrived by the name of haikai-no-renga (comic renga).

• doku-gin renga (solo renga) Renga can be performed by one person doku-gin (solo), two persons, or by many.
  
  

• haikai-no-renga/renku

It is the haikai-no-renga that was taken up by Basho as a serious genre of literature rather than a mere yokyo (a sideshow). He not only excelled in this art, but he was also professionally taught and he disseminated it. To distinguish from the renga in waka tradition, haikai-no-renga has also come to be called renku (linked-stanzas). Today, it is better to use the word renku in this sense rather than the more ambiguous renga.

hokku

The starting stanza of the haikai-no-renga was called hokku which was normally composed by a master, a honourable guest or a senior haijin. This is because a hokku was arguably the most important of all the stanzas of a particular haikai-no-renga, setting the scene and determining the nature and overall theme. It was also hokku that had quite a few rules such as having to have seasonal reference (kigo, season word) and having to depict or at least indicate the situation in which the session was held and also having to have a kireji (cutting word) and yojo (reverberating resonance).

• The word hokku has a long history. It appeared in the oldest Japanese anthology of ancient poems, the Manyoshu (poems written for about 400 years up to AD759) when it meant the first five syllables of tanka. It then signified the kami-no-ku (5-7-5 segment) of tanka. Later, when the cho-renga came into being, it was used to mean "the opening stanza", as we have already seen.
  
  

• Hokku was thus only a part of the haikai-no-renga but because of its importance and because it could stand alone and be appreciated, it started to be composed independently of the haikai-no-renga sessions and enjoyed but mostly for being kept as a "stock" for future sessions. However, some theory says that hokku was sometimes actually composed for its sake and in its own right irrespective of the haikai-no-renga sessions.
  

haiku

It is the hokku stanza that Masaoka Shiki (1867 - 1902) severed from the rest of the haikai-no-renga, giving it a new name, haiku, in the modern sense. This is precisely the haiku as we know it today.

• The word haiku was abbreviated from haikai no ku and was originally used as a general term to mean any ku (stanza), whether it was hokku (opening stanza), or other stanzas, tsukeku, in the renku. The first haikai document to record the word haiku is thought, by general consent, to be Hattori Sadakiyo's Obaeshu, published in Kambun 3 (1663). It was not until well into the Meiji period (1868 - 1912) that haiku started to be used in the same sense as hokku. The word gained much wider currency by the 20s of Meiji (i.e. 1887 onwards). A History of Japanese Literature by Sanji Mikami and Sukisaburo Takatsu (1890), for example, gave the word haiku a proper status as a technical literary term; they consciously used it to signify an independent form of poetry previously represented by hokku. As we have seen already, it was of course Masaoka Shiki who made the term haiku popular nationally, thus subsequently allowing it to pass into world-wide circulation.
  

haikai

As discussed above, the word haiku is used in a narrow sense. Haikai is a more complex term covering not only hokku (or haiku) but also more loosely many of the literary works related to hokku such as renga (or renku), haibun and hairon, though the narrowest definition would be a form of renga. The word, haikai, itself originating in Chinese, means "comic" and had been used in Japanese literature before Basho's time. One example of this is the Haikai-ka (or Comic Verses) of the Kokinshu. In the field of renga, haikai was initially called by its full name haikai no renga (meaning "comic renga") which was first established by such people as Yamazaki Sokan and Arakida Moritake, and was then developed into a more wide-spread genre of literature by, among other people, Matsunaga Teitoku and Nishiyama Soin. However, as was mentioned before, it was Basho who elevated haikai to a height comparable to that of waka, or serious renga or any other literary form of merit.

Next: "On Toriawase"

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