A Bullet-Point History of Haiku,
with a Few Personal Interjections

• The story of haiku stretches back 1,300 years.

• In Japan, poetry began as the uta, which means song, written in borrowed Chinese characters.

• As Japan developed its own written language, poetry developed into waka, which means Japanese song, in a pattern of 5-7-5-7-7 sounds (not the same as syllables).

• Waka evolved into what is now known as tanka, which in English is a five-line form that tends to be more overtly emotional than what we now call haiku.

• Two other related genres are haibun, which mixes prose with haiku, and haiga, which combines a painting with the calligraphy of a haiku on the painting, with the painting and calligraphy showing “the hand of the poet.”

• A popular pastime, originally in the Imperial Court, was renga, a series of linked verses alternating in sound patterns of 5-7-5 and 7-7, now known as renku.

• Each renga verse had to link to the previous one yet also needed to shift away.

• The starting verse in a renga, known as the hokku, had nothing to link and shift with, so it was constructed to have two parts that linked and shifted within the verse itself (unlike the following verses), and it also usually referred to the season, using a kigo, or season word.

• In the 17th century, Bashō greatly popularized hokku, later called haiku, making it more commonplace and colloquial, and not restricted to the Imperial Court and its limited formal diction.

• Bashō’s most famous poem is this:

古池や蛙飛こむ水の音

furuike ya kawazu tobikomu mizo no oto

old pond—

a frog jumps in

the sound of water

• Over the centuries, Japan has had many masters of haiku, such as Bashō, Chiyo-ni, Buson, Issa, and Shiki.

• In 1894, Shiki proposed that hokku should be appreciated as an independent verse form, separate from renga, and he named it “haiku.”

• In the 20th century, haiku began to split into more sharply defined schools, such as Kyoshi’s more traditional approach, and Hekigoto’s more avant-garde preference.

• Haiku are written in a single vertical line in Japanese, such as when written on tanzaku, or poem strips, and when published in books or magazines, but may sometimes be presented artistically in three vertical lines, especially when calligraphed onto a shikishi or square poem card or when part of a haiga.

• In Japan, haiku is traditionally written in a pattern of 5-7-5 sounds, but because of language differences, these are not the same as syllables, so the way most of us have been taught, that haiku is a poem of 5-7-5-syllables, is actually incorrect, or at least misleading, producing a poem that’s significantly longer than haiku in Japanese.

• To demonstrate the linguistic difference, the word “haiku” itself is two syllables in English but counts as three sounds in Japanese.

• The Western presumption of counting syllables obscures more important targets such as seasonal reference, primarily objective sensory imagery, and giving the poem two juxtaposed parts (a structure taken from hokku and how it linked and shifted within the verse, employing a kireji or cutting word).

• A related genre of poetry is the senryu, which takes the same form as haiku but focuses more on human foibles rather than seasonal experiences. Where haiku is like a finger pointing at the moon, senryu is often like a finger poking you in the ribs.

• Haiku was first translated into English in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and began to be written in French, English, and other European languages.

• In the early 1900s, haiku strongly influenced Ezra Pound and the Imagist movement in poetry.

• Harold Henderson, Kenneth Yasuda, R. H. Blyth, and other translators helped to popularize haiku in the 1930s through 1950s.

• Beat poets in the 1950s, such as Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, and Allen Ginsberg, were heavily influenced by the Zen stance of R. H. Blyth, and also helped to popularize haiku.

• The first haiku journal to be published outside Japan was American Haiku, which began in Wisconsin in 1963.

• In 1964, Japn

• The Haiku Society of America was founded in New York City in 1968, Haiku Canada in Toronto in 1977, and the British Haiku Society in London in 1990.

• Many dozens of English-language haiku journals have flourished in the last fifty to sixty years, and many smaller organizations have been established, such as Haiku Northwest, which was founded in the Seattle area in 1988.

• Cor van den Heuvel edited three editions of The Haiku Anthology, in 1974, 1987, and 1999.

• The third edition contains 20 of my haiku.

• William J. Higginson published The Haiku Handbook in 1978, and it is still the best book available to learn the history of haiku and how to write haiku in English.

• Haiku activity has ballooned internationally through the Internet, with many organizations and online journals around the world that promote haiku as a literary art.

• My own experience with haiku may serve as an indicator of what has become possible in English-language haiku.

• Specifically, I edited the haiku journal Woodnotes from 1989 to 1997. Since 2021 I’ve been coediting First Frost.

• I also cofounded the Haiku North America conference in 1991 and the American Haiku Archives (at the California State Library in Sacramento) in 1996.

• I founded the Tanka Society of America in 2000, the Seabeck Haiku Getaway in 2008, and National Haiku Writing Month (www.nahaiwrimo.com) in 2010.

• NaHaiWriMo is held every February (the shortest month for the shortest genre of poetry), where the goal is to write at least one haiku a day for the entire month.

• In 2012 one of my translations from the Japanese was published on the back of 150 million U.S. postage stamps.

• In 2013 I was keynote speaker for the Haiku International Association conference in Tokyo.

• I’m a longtime officer of Haiku Northwest and have edited many of its publications.

• I also write longer poetry, served as poet laureate for the City of Redmond, Washington, was president for more than a decade of the Redmond Association of Spokenword, and also curate SoulFood Poetry Night, which I’ve been doing every month for 20 years.

• My website, www.graceguts.com, features hundreds of essays and reviews about haiku, and thousands of poems.

• Here’s a haiku of mine, which won first prize in the Haiku Society of America’s Henderson Awards in 2000 (with a Japanese translation by Emiko Miyashita):

meteor shower . . .

a gentle wave

wets our sandals

流星群二人のサンダル濡らす波

ryūseigun futari no sandaru nurasu nami

• I hope you will be inspired to explore haiku in English and in translation from the Japanese, and will try to write haiku of your own.