Haiku.

The focus of this website, as you may have noticed.

So what exactly are haiku? You all probably are aware that it is a form of poetry with a self-imposed syllable count: just how many syllables, you might be fuzzy on. Seventeen is the original rule: five and then seven and then five again. Which makes seventeen. See? Very logical. In modern haiku, people often write fourteen syllables of poetry rather than seventeen; basically any number less than seventeen is acceptable nowadays.

Except, if that seems a little constricting, you probably will find the other rules of haiku even more rigid. You technically can't just write a seventeen syllable poem and call it a haiku. There are certain requirements of content that must be met to call your poem a haiku. First of all, a master of haiku will paint a clear portrait, usually of a natural setting, within his or her seventeen-syllable limit. Thus the stereotypical haiku that you would call to mind would be one that contains phrases about ponds and flowers. This rule is a little more flexible than that of the seventeen syllables, but only to the point at which you are allowed to escape describing flowers floating on a pond, just so long as you compare the natural world to human emotions.

This is where the depth of a haiku will come into play. The subtle methods of comparison between nature and the state of humanity, whether it is how the poet feels at the moment, a memory evoked by the scenery in front of the poet, or a comment on the way one should treat life: this is the quality of haiku that makes it more than a short and pretty play on words. The most famous haiku involve intricacies that one doesn't see at first glance.

Once you have figured all of that out, you have to remember to go back and check your poem over. Why? There is a device called kigo that has to do with the description of nature you have fit into your poem. Roughly translated, kigo means "season words". It is traditional for the author of a haiku to indicate the season in which he or she is writing the poem. Indeed, many books of traditional haiku are grouped by the seasons they were written in. This can be a simple as mentioning snow (winter, people). However, it can also be much more complex. Some kigo have to do with different sorts of animals and plants, and what season each would be seen in. There are also words that have come to denote certain seasons for no particular reason, but which can be used to satisfy this requirement: for example, referencing deer in your poem means that the season is autumn.

So. Was that complicated enough for you? Luckily (or not, depending how you look at it), English-speakers are excluded from the requirement of kireji, or "cut-words". These are words used in haiku in the place of punctuation - you can imagine that this would make your syllable counting a little more difficult. One of the most common "cut-words" is kana, which denotes the end of a haiku. If I am giving you the Japanese for the haiku in the following pages, I'll be sure to point these out.

(At this point, ladies and gentlemen, one should refer to the menu at one's bottom, er, left, and select whether to move on to reading some poetry by the Japanese masters of haiku or reading some modern day haiku. Or both. Preferably not at the same time.)