A Brief History of Haiku

By: Kevin Kizer

During the Heian period of Japanese culture (700-1100), it was a social requirement to be able
to instantly recognize, appreciate and recite Japanese and Chinese poetry. It was around this period that
short forms of poetry (tanka) grew in popularity over long forms of poetry (choka). The rigid lifestyles of
the time carried over into art; every poem had to have a specific form. The approved form was the 5-7-5
triplet followed by a couplet of seven syllables (this was the Japanese equivalent to the iambic
pentameter of Shakespeare's England).

From this form developed the renga (linked verse) and the kusari-no-renga (chains of linked
verse). These forms were used almost as parlor games for the elite. However, in the mid-sixteenth
century there began a rise in "peasant" poetry. It was then that Japanese poetry underwent a rebirth in
which the staid forms of the past were replaced with a lighter, airier tone. This new form was called
haikai and was later named renku.

Haikai consisted of a beginning triplet called a hokku. The hokku was considered the most
important part of the poem. It had two principal requirements: a seasonal word (kireji) and a "cutting
word" or exclamation.

The poet Basho infused a new sensibility and sensitivity to this form in the late seventeenth
century. He transformed the poetics and turned the hokku into an independent poem, later to be
known as haiku. Basho's work focused around the concept of karumi (a feeling of lightness) -- so much
so that he abandoned the traditional syllabic limitations to achieve it.

In "On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho", Lucien Stryk wrote:

Basho also was one of the earliest proponents of spontaneous prose. He believed in and
preached the concept of Shasei (on-the-spot composition and tracing the subject to its origin). To give
an idea of his influence, a contemporary school of haiku, Tenro, is popular all over Japan. It includes
some two thousand members all over the country who meet at designated temples to write as many
one hundred haiku a day. The goal is to attempt to enter objects and share the "delicate life and
feelings."
 Since the time of Basho, the history of haiku mirrors the Zen ideal that it oftentimes relates.
While it has gone through many transformations, developments, and revisions, good haiku today is
surprisingly similar as to when Basho developed the form in the seventeenth century.

So what should haiku accomplish? What should it provide the reader? According to the classic
haiku poets of Japan, haiku should present the reader with an observation of a natural, commonplace
event, in the simplest words, without verbal trickery. The effect of haiku is one of "sparseness". It's a
momentary snatch from time's flow, crystallized and distilled. Nothing more.

Of all the forms of poetry, haiku perhaps is the most demanding of the reader. It demands the
reader's participation because haiku merely suggests something in the hopes that the reader will find "a
glimpse of hitherto unrecognized depths in the self." Without a sensitive audience, haiku is nothing.

Two other major haiku poets, both of whom followed in the tradition of Basho, were Buson and Issa.