History of Haiku and other Japanese oriental forms of poetry

[Anna]

Hello All,

my grammar Ninjas will frown at the grammar sleight, but then I think I can invoke the poetic licence and refer to the uppercase A as a matter of reverence.


Being here is an education. I am learning to write haiku.
Which is why I wish to learn more about the origins of haiku and the timeline, the evolution and the progress made over the years.


Let us have a discussion about the historical influence on the evolution of haiku and also
the history of haiku and other oriental forms of poetry.

Thank you

[Anna]

I was always under the impression that the hokku was the  older form of haiku. Recently, however, I have learned that/ learnt that hokku was used to open the sequence of haiku called renga.

A playful response in haiku style was called - haikai.

I do not know wether these terms still hold their classic definitions or whether they have evolved further.

[AlanSummers]

Thanks Anna, I think this will be a great thread!

I was always under the impression that the hokku was the  older form of haiku. Recently, however, I have learned that/ learnt that hokku was used to open the sequence of haiku called renga.

A playful response in haiku style was called - haikai.

I do not know wether these terms still hold their classic definitions or whether they have evolved further.

In a way hokku is the older form of haiku, and its roots are in renga and renku, where Basho and others started to make hokku a standalone verse, and that started the progression that Shiki finalised with making a new form from Japanese hokku, the Western art approach of en plein air and sketching direct from nature, and the kidai seasonal greetings format that ordinary people did.

warm regards,

Alan

[whitedove]

I still can't tell the difference between hokku and haiku.  Is haiku what we called hokku after Shiki?  I think not because some poets today still refer to hokku. 

As far as the history of haiku, I've traced Japanese forms back very far into the past.  I can still remember reading a beautiful poem about a couple riding their horses to view the bushclover in bloom, and thinking how fresh and contemporary the poem seemed.  It was written in 700 A.D. in ancient Japan.  As far as the beginnings of modern haiku, though people usually go to Basho, Busson, Chiyo-ni, Issa and Shiki. I enjoyed The Essential Haiku by Robert Hass to learn about Basho, Busson, and Issa and Chiyo-ni Woman Haiku Master by Patricia Donegan and Yoshie Ishibashi which includes many translations of Chiyo-ni. I still don't have a good book on Shiki, although I've read many articles about him.  Rebecca Drouilhet

[AlanSummers]

BASHŌ'S HOKKU
David Landis Barnhill

Traditional Japanese poetry--waka, renga, and kanshi--continued to be written in the Tokugawa period, but a new genre developed that became the preeminent poetic form of the period: haiku.

Not only does it remain a principal verse form in Japan, it is now an established literary form in North America as well.

Actually what we call haiku is a modern term. The genre developed out of haikai no renga, a "comic" form of renga that became especially popular in the 17th century.

The first verse in a renga, called hokku, took on increasing importance to renga poets, and with Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694) hokku began to assume a nearly independent status as a self-sufficient poem rather than the first link in a chain of verses.

- e n d -

n.b. Tokugawa period, also called Edo period, (1603–1867)

[Jan Benson]

---Ya see, I used to know this, as my first mentor was good about historical markers in Japanese forms progression. However, the term Waka may have been used interchangeabley with hokku in my training. A bit fuzzy now.
---So is Hokku the 9 ? 9 verse Basho created, as separate from the social games of linked "haikai no renga"?
---Then we still name the works of Issa and Buson hokku?
---Then when Master Shiki up turned the cart, modernized the form to 5 7 5 in the Japsnese form, and haiku and hokku became synonymous terms?
---Or are we saying Shiki named the stand alone 5 7 5 haiku, and left the term hokku as an indicator for the first verse of renga/renku?
---and after Shiki, where do we use the term haikai no renga?

This is not a test, Alan and Anna. Just trying to clarify where my head is as we sort this out.

Jan in Texas

[Anna]

Alan,  Reb,  I am going through the responses and they have been most helpful.

Jan, this is a place to learn, so don't feel uncomfortable to ask. I look at your response as an opportunity to learn. That is the whole purpose of this thread.
What I did learn yesterday:  around 1660,  the work of  Basho is more focussed on word play,  and without commentary, someone not familiar with Japanese literature and art scene would be lost to what he had written. Nothing really compares to his much later work. That is such a revelation. I can see the progress of the poet,

Alan, how do we post excerpts from books?  Is that allowed?

[Anna]

I still can't tell the difference between hokku and haiku.   Rebecca Drouilhet

Reb,  this is what I have learnt/learned yesterday.

Hokku was usually the opening haiku for a renga sequence.

Is haiku called hokku after Shiki?

Can you explain that please, Reb?

thanks

edited to correct style

[Anna]

As an afterthought,  Alan mentioned zoka w.r.t. hokku, and here is a good link to read about Zoka:
http://simplyhaikujournal.com/past-issues/summer-2012/features/zoka.html

esp.

even in Kyoto
hearing the cuckoo's cry
I long for Kyoto

~Basho translated by Robert Hass



I kind of land straight into the zoka.  It is one example that I will recall each time I want to find zoka in my work.

And pertaining to this thread, I would make a bold guess and say that this haiku, and not hokku, is from the later works of Basho. It is a mature write, the poet had been through some life before he wrote this. Which is why I hazard the guess that it is much later than 1660, much much later, ...

[AlanSummers]

Hi Jan

---Ya see, I used to know this, as my first mentor was good about historical markers in Japanese forms progression. However, the term Waka may have been used interchangeabley with hokku in my training. A bit fuzzy now.

Waka is the precursor to tanka.

---So is Hokku the 9 ? 9 verse Basho created, as separate from the social games of linked "haikai no renga"?

I don't know what the 99 thing is but I can solve all your problems by suggesting this remarkable book:

The Haiku Handbook by Bill Higginson and Penny Harter.

It seems the earlier edition has lots of cheap prices:
http://www.amazon.com/Haiku-Handbook-Write-Share-Teach/dp/4770014309/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1446717312&sr=8-2&keywords=The+Haiku+Handbook

The history of haiku in Japan and examples of haiku up to the 1980s, and so much more, including waka and tanka history.   I love the book!

---Then we still name the works of Issa and Buson hokku?

I personally would as haiku came about in the 1860s onwards but others don't alas.

---Then when Master Shiki up turned the cart, modernized the form to 5 7 5 in the Japsnese form, and haiku and hokku became synonymous terms?

Old traditional haikai was regularly 575-on (sound units) so haiku carried on with 17-on.  Of course we aren't from Japan so that bit isn't necessary for us. ;)

He didn't upturn the cart as such but hoped he would save the vestiges of traditional Japanese haikai literature under the onslaught of Western free verse.

---Or are we saying Shiki named the stand alone 5 7 5 haiku, and left the term hokku as an indicator for the first verse of renga/renku?

At first Shiki didn't like renga/renku but grew to love it, although that is rarely mentioned.   Basho had already started the move to make hokku a standalone poem so the move to create haiku was a logical progression.

/quote]
---and after Shiki, where do we use the term haikai no renga?
[/quote]

Renga was an old term, and Basho created the new term renku which most of us get involved in, but often call it renga as it sounds easier to say if we work with the public at large.

This is not a test, Alan and Anna. Just trying to clarify where my head is as we sort this out.

Jan in Texas

No worries!   The thread here will form its own nature, and because we were taught wrongly that haiku was all about numbers (pesky 575) a lot of people get those numbers mixed up.   

enjoy!

[AlanSummers]

Thanks Anna for starting this thread, and bringing in comments and links.

As an afterthought,  Alan mentioned zoka w.r.t. hokku, and here is a good link to read about Zoka:
http://simplyhaikujournal.com/past-issues/summer-2012/features/zoka.html

esp.

even in Kyoto
hearing the cuckoo's cry
I long for Kyoto

~Basho translated by Robert Hass



I kind of land straight into the zoka.  It is one example that I will recall each time I want to find zoka in my work.

And pertaining to this thread, I would make a bold guess and say that this haiku, and not hokku, is from the later works of Basho. It is a mature write, the poet had been through some life before he wrote this. Which is why I hazard the guess that it is much later than 1660, much much later, ...

You bring up a fascinating issue over translation.   Robert Hass, a former USA Poet Laureate, was in contact with Haiku Society of America members, but went his own way in covering Basho, Buson, and Issa:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Essential-Haiku-Versions-Basho/dp/0880013516

Robert Hass:
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/haas/haiku.htm
http://gracecavalieri.com/poetLaureates/robertHaas.html

I do love the book, and bought it within days of it coming out.  I was surprised, many years ago, that Issa also wrote haibun, so that was an extra pleasant surprise.

More about the haikai verse:
http://lilliputreview.blogspot.no/2010/08/even-in-kyoto-i-long-for-kyoto-basho-by.html

Matsuo Bashô (松尾芭蕉)

Season: Summer 
Subject: Cuckoo 

Japanese:

京にても
京なつかしや
時鳥

Romanisation:

Kyou nitemo
kyou natsukashi ya
hototogisu

Translation:

Even in Kyôto—
hearing the cuckoo's cry—
I long for Kyoto

Source: http://www.carlsensei.com/classical/index.php/text/view/54

Translations are only personal versions of a Japanese haikai verse, and it does feel like haiku, although there's a more poetic bent to it, so it feels like a cross between hokku and haiku.

As the Classic Haiku Masters never wrote in English, and the same applies to Tohta Kaneko, we can only conjecture what the original verse was like.  So beware of translations, they are only versions.

Zoka is a useful device not only for hokku, but to consider it for haiku too. 

I'm away from my resources, so if anyone can fill in the original year of composition that would be great!

Thanks Anna!

[Jan Benson]

Alan
--- THANK YOU for taking the step by step approach to help get my mind back to old (stored and scrambled now) data, and reshuffling in a way i can best relate.

-- I did, actually, cut my teeth on the Higginson Haiku Handbook, a gift from my first mentor, Cliff Roberts.
I have since gifted it to another promising poet.
That I had a mental scrambling in 2014 often has me patching together what once was ...

--- Fyi, as a history major, in the school of humanities, I became adept at the gestalt process.
*** But for we who accumulate information/data as it comes, a basic time line of who the players are and their most important contribution helps, especially when foreign words ARE the markers for change and events ***.

Alan and Anna
--- Robert Hass, yes, I have taken online classes at the international writer's institute thingy in Illinois (see link below)
They love Hass, and for good reason.
He has had a cameo or two in their curriculum for poets.
Done great works in translating Czeslaw Milosz.

But when he dabbled into Basho translations, I hesitated at him being exacting about the 5/7/5 construct as it relates to English language haiku ...

http://iwp.uiowa.edu/

-- Alan
The 9/7/9 construct reference must have come from what the aliens implanted in 2014, apologies for that side track.
OH OH OH, ALAN, after I read something you wrote online (11/06/15) about haikai beginning as 5/9/5 (19 syllable) structure solved the mystery; that piece of my memory has been restored.

-- Alan and Anna
-- Zoka. Absolutely unknown term.
-- Zoka. My new friend.
-- Could only read half the article at one sitting, but isn't that Zoka stuff just the fish plopping in the pond, so to speak? The place one hopes to write from, always?
-- Being Zoka, now that is it!

Jan in Texas

[Anna]

Alan, 
thanks a trillion times over, so much to learn from your response.
So many terms, so many links.

Jan,
yep, I am in a Zoka frame of mind, even off FB until I begin to understand a little more :-]

this is a fun kind of learning...eh?

Oh, Jan,  what is fish plopping in the pond?  Your own version of old frog, or is there a haiku?  Do share, and also mention the timeframe, the school, and the master.

[Jan Benson]

Anna:
  ...  fish plopping in the pond...
---  Should be ...  "frog" plopping "into" the pond
--- Anna that was my way of turning the phrase
  . .isn't that just the cat's meow ... using a reference to the "water sound" Master Basho wrote in his famous haiku.
(In recovering my brain synapses, I often say the wrong word, and now I am typing out wrong words and not catching them, so thanks for making me look at what I typed)
-- time frame ,,, school ,,,
So, it's going to be like that, huh? (grin).

I am sure those pieces can be found online.
You might want to Google:
  Basho old pond.

Jan

[Anna]

Alan

I'm away from my resources, so if anyone can fill in the original year of composition that would be great!

I am out of resources at the moment, but by reading the work and reflecting on the style of writing and the zoka  found in there ( I seem to be obsessed with zoka as of now, this too will pass...:-] )

may I hazard the guess that it is 1684 and beyond?  It is not the style of the early years, there is no contrast, it is more of identifying with the subject here, a deeper understanding and experience of the emotion,  an excellent extrapolation, which can also perhaps be called as drawing a parallel.

Am I right in guessing the  year of  composition to be between 1684- 1694?

Thank you