The haiku is one of the world’s oldest regularly written forms of poetry, and it evolved from haikai (linked verse) written in Tokugawa period. They seem to be incomplete because they were taken from linked verse poems, where the second stanza answers the first. The beginning verse of haikai, also called hokku, was written in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables (17 total). This was then adapted and refined to become the haiku. Haikai was part of the renga "oral poem," which were generally 100 stanzas long. Renga was considered a way for some poets to relax and compose less serious poems than that of the Waka (Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan). This was around the 13th century, and haiku broke away from the renga in the 16th century. “The haiku first emerged in Japanese literature during the 17th century...though it did not become known by the name haiku until the 19th century.” This means that it took about a hundred years after it broke away to become recognized. A hundred years later, Matsuo Bashō mastered the haiku. Bashō was the most adept regarding the haiku, but he didn't actually create it. He is, however, credited with increasing its popularity. “Originally, the haiku form was restricted in subject matter to an objective description of nature suggestive of one of the seasons, evoking a definite, though unstated, emotional response.” (Encyclopedia Britannica) However, after Bashō, the subject of many haiku expanded beyond only nature, “but the haiku remained an art of expressing much and suggesting more in the fewest possible words.” (Encyclopedia Britannica).
The haiku was made officially separate from hokku in the 1890s by Masaoka Shiki, who was a journalist, writer, and poet. Shiki wrote many essays on the subject of haiku and was influential in the development of the Japanese haiku. It existed long before the 1980s but has just been introduced to the West. The Japanese were fascinated to see the different interpretations of the West, caused by varying sources of inspiration. “Jack Kerouac published The Dharma Bums in 1958, and Trip Trap: Haiku along the Road from San Francisco to New York, with Albert Saijo and Lew Welch, on a car trip across the U.S. in 1959.” (What is a Haiku?). Kerouac believed that “A ‘Western Haiku’ need not concern itself with 17 syllables since Western languages cannot adapt themselves to the fluid syllabic Japanese. [Kerouac] propose[s] that the ‘Western Haiku’ simply say a lot in three short lines in any Western language.” The haiku was favored by many samurai as a form of poetry because of its brevity yet meaningfulness. The samurai focused on different topics than other classes, which shows us that even without foreign stimuli, Japan emerged to be a diversely cultured and richly creative society. During the late 19th century, Haikai rapidly gained popularity (Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan p. 467), leading to even more variation within the country. Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiga |
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