A Brief History Of Haiku (III)

 The hokku (発句) originated as the starting verse of the renga.  Over the development of time, the hokku began to separate into its own poetic vehicle, still containing the rule of 5-7-5.

(As an interesting historical note, the hokku was renamed as haiku (俳句) - the changed first character means "actor" in the 19th century by the Japanese poet Masaoka Shiki (A.D. 1867-1902) and have since been applied retrospectively to all previous hokku written as such, although the original authors would not know the word.)

The 5-7-5 verse breaks the verse in the 17 on, the smallest grammatical Japanese language unit (typically a consonant and noun for English speakers).  The rule is strictly adhered to - except, of course, when it is not for artistic reasons (as it turns out, there is at least one whole haiku school that does not hold to it).

Rules that applied to the hokku as used in renga continued to apply:

- It needed a kireji (切れ字), a "cutting word", a word to break the stream of thought connect the previous and current verse through parallels, or give a "dignified ending".

- It needed a kigo (季語), a "season word", something to associate or imply the season of the writing of the poem

- It needed to reflect the current state of the poet when writing the poem.

One of the greatest haiku poets is the poet Bassho (A.D. 1644-1694), a master of both renga and haiku.  Likely he is the most famous haiku poet outside of Japan and certainly one of the definers of the genre.  One of his most famous works goes as follows:

古池や蛙飛び込む水の音

        furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto

Old pond,
frog leaps in,
water's sound

(Note:  Typically haiku are presented in Japanese as a single sentence, whereas in English we separate each verse.)

An alternative reading is:

Breaking the silence
of an ancient pond,
A frog jumped into water - 
A deep resonance

Reading this, likely we can all think of a moment in time like this:  a setting, an action or event, and the momentary realization of the event.  The great haiku masters became experts at this, the capturing of moments.

Sources cited:

Haiku

Basho, Matsuo:  The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (translated by Yuasa, Nobuyuki):  Penguin Classics, New York: 1966

Wilson, William Scott.  A Beginner's Guide to Japanese Haiku:  Tuttle Publishing, New York:  2022.