Notes on Japanese Poetry

Japanese poetry has three main forms, tanka, choka, haiku.

• A tanka is made up of thirty-one syllables, five, seven, five, seven, seven
• A choka is of unlimited length being alternately 5,7,5,7 but the last two phrases must end seven and seven.
• A haiku is a seventeen syllable poem made up of five, seven, and five

The tanka and choka are collectively known as waka.

A famous example of a haiku is by Matsuo Basho, and translates as:

An old pond, a frog jumps in, a splash of water.

Often a couplet of seven and seven is added to the end of a haiku on the same theme.
This is then known as a renga and the original haiku part of the renga is referred to as the hokku.

There is a lot of information about haiku on the web

There are many excellent books on the subject of calligraphy.

---

This document was last updated 22 July 2019

---

© 2019 Graham G Hawker
Privacy Policy