Haiku: A Heritage Through Time

Literally short, Haiku is one of those things that require a lot of understanding on its many rules, guidelines and ways of getting around it. It was not similar to any typical poetry where it needs a lot of metaphors and similes in the making that make the certain piece sounds mystical, dramatic and enchanting enough. Haiku is somewhat direct, focused and call for a huge necessity for the deep comprehension of word behavior, of which has proven to be the difficult but the beautiful part of it. It is everything of sensitivity with touches of flexibility in spite of all the rulings. There is nothing absolute in Haiku, like life itself; Haiku needs a lot of learning, experience and balance.

Besides being another pattern of poetry, Haiku is also a way of experiencing nature and the world. In the earlier times, it is closely connected to the Japanese aesthetic of Yugen and the spirituality of Buddhism. However, nowadays Haiku is being used in many areas of life as a way of expressing one’s feeling and emotion on a certain something. Haiku is short, and aim at capturing and focusing a single moment in time, of something that might be insightful and significant to the author himself.

Haiku is short, with 17-syllable form and is usually written in three lines with a 5-7-5 syllable count. Haiku can be deceptively simple yet, it will take years to master. Haiku originated from a type of Japanese court poetry called “Tanka” that was in style during the ninth through twelfth centuries and was mostly written and used as means to explore religious or courtly themes during those times. At that time, the form of Tanka was 5-7-5-7-7. The first part of it, also known as “starting verse” is called “Hokku” and is initiated by one and usually respectable person in the field, and later the poetic chain is continued by a different author by composing the 7-7 section. Then another author would build on the previous 7-7 with another 5-7-5 passage. This chain of verses is called “Renga”, could be added up to hundreds of linked Tanka.

To be exact, the history of Haiku actually began in the last years of the 19th century. The great masters of Haiku; Basho, Buson and Issa, lived during Japan’s Edo period (1600-1868) and their work still gives a great deal of influence on how Haiku is written today.

Nevertheless, the history of modern Haiku dated back in the times of Masaoka Shiki’s reform (1892), which establish Haiku as a new independent poetic form.

Time has proven to be of no obstacle to this piece of heritage for Haiku has lived through the contemporary world and emerged as one of the most popular poetic form of the 20th and 21st centuries. One of the killer factors of its popularity might have lain in the brevity and profound content of the subject itself. It can be notified that there is always a Haiku society in many countries. Evidently, there are also many books, journals, and websites that devoted to the art of writing Haiku available currently. However, these may be the due course that made Haiku is surround by so many rules and guidelines. Even in English language itself, it is difficult to conform to the 17-syllables rules. Rather, most active Haiku poets would have 11-13 syllables in their Haiku works. This has yet to be a controversial issue. If it were, Haiku in English would be too long to convey Haiku’s mystical and traditional touch and would closely approximate the Japanese form. Other ulterior motive of doing it this way is to avoid Haiku in English to be a run-on sentence that would tarnish Haiku as an art after all.

Haiku is divided into two parts, with a certain imaginative distance between the two sections, but the sections must remain, to some certain degree, independent of each other. However, both sections must enrich the understanding of the other. In a simpler way of explaining, it would be “cutting” it into two pieces, either the first or the second line ends with a colon, long dash or ellipsis.

Haiku is an art that could purely describe a fling or a slight of “in the moment” kind of feeling. The collective thoughts of every element of natures is mainly and mostly used since long time ago has became less prominent with many modern Haiku poets that opts for a more fancy subjects to express through it, whether it be lifestyles, objects, love, and even death.

Basho, also known as the father of Haiku, made many travels through Japan to get the experience himself so he could put it into words of his own, and of course, in the form of Haiku. On his last trip, he died in Osaka, and even to his last breath, he wrote a piece that indicates his thoughts and will to continue his journey and keeps on writing poetry, symbolizing his intense love towards his life so far and on what he is doing. It sounds:

Fallen sick on a journey,
In dreams I run wildly
Over a withered moor

It is wondrous what words can do, and through poetry like Haiku, it can give better impact like none other. It is an art and a heritage that should never be neglected in the first place. In the world we are living today, you can say something and forget about it tomorrow. Nevertheless, when you convey it differently even with the same intention and meaning; you may never know how it could change everything and sometime even make your heart moved a little, and the world might just moved with you.