'''Haiku''' este un gen de poezie cu formă fixă, tradiţional japoneză, (limba japoneză fiind o limbă silabică), alcătuită din 17 silabe repartizate pe 3 "versuri" formate din 5, 7, 5 silabe.<br>
Încă de la început, s-au creat confuzii între cei trei termeni aflaţi în strânsă relaţie: '''Haiku''', '''Hokku''' şi '''Haikai'''.<br>
Termenul ''Hokku'' înseamnă, în limba japoneză "vers de început", fiind la origine o verigă de legătură spre un şir mai lung de versuri, cunoscut sub numele de Haikai. Deoarece ''hokku'' dădea tonul restului şirului de versuri, el a căpătat un rol privilegiat în poezia ''Haikai'', încât s-a ajuns ca unii poeţi să compună numai un ''Haikai'', renunţând la versurile următoare.<br>
Abia prin eforturile lui Masaoka Shiki această independenţă a fost oficial recunoscută prin anii 1890, prin crearea termenului '''Haiku'''. Această nouă formă de poezie avea să fie scrisă, citită şi percepută ca un poem complet, independent, şi nu ca o parte a unui şir mai lung de versuri.<br>
Practic, istoria '''Haiku''' începe în ultimii ani ai secolului al XIX-lea. <br>
Renumitele versuri ale perioadei Edo (1600-1868), scrise de maeştri precum Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson şi Kobayashi Issa, sunt în general cunoscute sub denumirea de '''Hokku''' şi trebuie percepute în perspectiva istoriei ''Haikai'', dar în prezent ele sunt citite ca '''Haikuuri''' independente. <br>

Haiku-urile trebuie să conţină cel puţin o imagine sau un cuvânt care să exprime anotimpul (kigo) în care acesta a fost scris. De obicei subiectele se referă la natură, plante, flori, insecte, etc:

:Viaţa mea toată:<br>
:Frunze purtate de vânt<br>
:În prag de toamnă.

Cel mai cunoscut haijin este Matsuo Bashō, cel care a impus haiku-ul clasic prin cartea sa, "Drumul îngust spre îndepărtatul nord". Basho s-a născut in oraşul Ueno din prefectura Mie (Japonia), unde are loc anual un popular festival de ''haiku'' şi a întreprins trei călătorii celebre.

*Un exemplu de hokku clasic scis de Bashō:

:古池や蛙飛込む水の音　

:Furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto

:balta cea veche&mdash;
:sunetul unei broaşte
:sărind în apă

Astăzi, poezia haiku este cea mai populară formă din Japonia, dar este foarte cunoscută şi în afara ei. Mulţi scriitori englezi sau americani, dar nu numai, şi-au încercat măiestria în a compune asemenea versuri. Se apreciază că astăzi numai în Japonia, sunt în jur de 10 milioane de scriitori de haiku, dar majoritatea sunt la nivel de amatori şi scriu pentru ei înşişi. Mulţi s-au întrebat de ce această formă este atât de populară, atât în Japonia căt şi în afară, mai ales că, în încercarea de a compune o asemenea poezie în altă limbă decât japoneza, haiku îşi pierde definiţia - căci în această limbă şi doar aici, toate sunetele ce formeaza alfabetul au aceeaşi lungime, iar toate poemele haiku - implicit - sunt la fel de lungi, pastrând un ritm impus din timpuri străvechi. Însă arta modernă încearcă - se pare - să elimine aceste limite, aceste reguli, lasând liberă imaginaţia artistului, iar aceştia se concentrează asupra conţinutului, nu numărului de silabe. Se poate spune că poezia haiku are un punct forte: şi anume că exprimă atât de multe prin atât de puţine cuvinte.

Unul din mulţi poeţi moderni ai Japoniei este Banya Natsuishi. Acesta încercă să îmbine poemele haiku cu imagini vizuale abstracte. 
Se poate spune că poeme haiku exprimă sentimentele poetice ale scriitorului într-o formă concisă, scurtă, care stimulează imaginaţia cititorului, descriindu-i scene pe care - astăzi - este posibil ca acesta să nu le fi văzut niciodată.
Shiki şi-a exprimat concepţia conform căreia Haiku-ul este un ''instantaneu'' al realităţii, înrudit cu fotografia.

Primul Simpozion internaţional contemporan de haiku s-a organizat la Tokyio, pe 11 iulie 1999, sub patronajul Asociaţiei de Haiku Modern, una din cele trei organizaţii importante din japonia. La încheiere a fost dat publicităţii '''"Manifestul Haiku din Tokyio - 1999"''', în şapte puncte, cu scopul de a reorganiza regulile tradiţionale ale Haiku-ului , pentru ca acesta să se poată adapta la cultura fiecărui popor. Iată câteva dintre acestea:
* Cuvintele sezonale pot fi înlocuite cu '''"cuvinte-cheie"''', cu caracter universal: mare, copaci, viitor, foc, apă, fără legătură cu anotimpurile;
* Criteriul esenţial pentru haiku va fi '''"originalitatea"''';
* Se vor folosi ritmul şi sunetele carcteristice fiecărei limbi, pentru a scrie un haiku, care va putea avea o structură de 3 sau 4 versuri, de câte 4, 6 sau 8 silabe;
* O importanţă deosebită le vor avea "cuvintele penetrante";
* Va fi necesar să se facă mai multe traduceri.

== Categorii estetice pentru Haiku ==

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'''''' '''' is a kind of on'' (the Japanese count morae, which differ from English-language syllables; for example, the word "haiku" itself counts as three ''on'' in Japanese (ha-i-ku), but two syllables in English (hai-ku); writing seventeen syllables in English produces a poem that is actually quite a bit longer, with more content, than a haiku in Japanese). 
Because Japanese nouns do not have different singular and plural forms, "haiku" is usually used as both a singular and plural noun in English as well. Thus, practicing haiku poets and translators refer to "many haiku" rather than "haikus".
Senryū is a similar poetry form that emphasizes irony, satire, humor, and human foibles instead of seasons, and may or may not contain a kigo or a kireji.
==kireji and kigo==
In Japanese haiku a kireji (i.e. a ''cutting word'') appears at the end of one of the three phrases. In Japanese, there are actual kireji words, which act as a sort of spoken punctuation (for example, the "ya" in Bashō's "furuike ya" poem is a kireji). In English, kireji has no direct equivalent. Instead, English-language poets often use commas, dashes, ellipses, or implied breaks to divide the three lines into two grammatical and imagistic parts. Such a division is usually placed at the end of either the first or second line; very rarely they can be found in the middle of the second line. The purpose is to create a juxtaposition, which creates space for an implication as the reader intuits the relationship between the two parts.  

A haiku traditionally contains a ''kigo'' (''season word'') which symbolises or intimates the season in which the poem is set. 

Among traditionalist Japanese haiku writers, both kireji and kigo are considered absolute requirements for the form, yet, as noted above, kireji are not in use in English. Season words (kigo), although considered by many to be essential to haiku, are not always included by modern writers of Japanese "free-form" haiku and some non-Japanese haiku.

==Syllable or "on" in haiku==

While English verse is typically characterized by meter, which counts "beats", Japanese verse instead typically counts sound units (morae), known in Japanese as "on".  The word ''on'' is often translated loosely (and somewhat inaccurately) as "syllables", but there are subtle differences between an "on" and a "syllable".  The traditional haiku consisted of a pattern of 5, 7, and 5 ''on''. 

The Japanese word ''on'', literally "sound", corresponds to a ''mora'', a phonetic unit similar but not identical to the English. (The word ''onji'' （音字; "sound symbol") is sometimes used in referring to the Japanese syllable units in English<ref>T. Kondo, "In support of onji rather than jion,"  ''[http://www.hsa-haiku.org/frogpond.htm Frogpond]: Journal of the Haiku Society of America', 1'':4, 30-31  (1978).</ref> although this word is archaic and no longer current in Japanese.<ref name="gilbert"> Richard Gilbert, [http://www.ahapoetry.com/wildonji.htm Stalking the Wild Onji] </ref>) In Japanese, the ''on'' corresponds very closely to the kana character count (closely enough that ''Moji'' (or "character symbol") is also sometimes used<ref name="gilbert"/> as the count unit). One ''on'' is counted for a short syllable, an additional one for an elongated vowel or a doubled consonant (''i.e.'', a glottal stop), and one for an added "n" at the end of a syllable. Thus, the word "sign", though one syllable in English, would be counted as three sounds if said in Japanese (si-i-n).

Because most Japanese words are polysyllabic, with very short sounds (like the syllables in the three-syllable English word "radio", but unlike the one-syllable words "thought" or "stressed"), the seventeen sounds of a Japanese haiku carry less information than would seventeen syllables. Consequently, writing seventeen syllables in English typically produces a poem that is significantly "longer" than a traditional Japanese haiku. As a result, the great majority of literary haiku writers in English write their poems using about ten to fourteen syllables, with no formal pattern.

==Examples==
*Possibly the best known Japanese haiku is Bashō's "old pond" haiku:
::

:This separates into ''on'' as:

::furuike ya
::(古池 &nbsp;&nbsp;や)
::(fu/ru/i/ke ya): 5

::kawazu tobikomu
::(蛙 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;飛込む)
::(ka/wa/zu to/bi/ko/mu): 7

::mizu no oto
::(水 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;の &nbsp;音)
::(mi/zu no o/to): 5

:Roughly translated:<ref>see: [http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/basho-frog.htm Matsuo Bashō: Frog Haiku (Thirty Translations and One Commentary)], including commentary from Robert Aitken’s ''A Zen Wave: Bashô’s Haiku and Zen'' (revised ed., Shoemaker & Hoard, 2003). </ref>
::old pond
::a frog jumps
::the sound of water

*Another example of classic hokku by Matsuo Bashō:<ref>Etsuko Yanagibori, BASHO'S HAIKU ON THE THEME OF MT. FUJI: FROM THE PERSONAL NOTEBOOK OF Etsuko Yanagibori, [http://www.worldhaikureview.org/5-1/whcj/basho_fuji.htm link]</ref>
:
:fuji no kaze ya oogi ni nosete Edo miyage

:the wind of Mt. Fuji
:I've brought on my fan!
:a gift from Edo

*And yet another Bashō classic:
:
:hatsu shigure saru mo komino wo hoshige nari

:the first cold shower
:even the monkey seems to want
:a little coat of straw
(At that time, Japanese rain-gear consisted of a large, round cap and a shaggy straw cloak.)

==Origin and evolution  ==
===From renga to renku to haiku===
Hokku is the opening stanza of the orthodox collaborative linked poem renga, or of its later derivative renku (haikai no renga). By the time of Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), the hokku had begun to appear as an independent poem, and was also incorporated in haibun (a combination of prose and hokku), and haiga (a combination of painting with hokku). In the late 19<sup>th</sup> century, Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902), renamed the standalone hokku to haiku,<ref>Higginson, William J. ''The Haiku Handbook'', Kodansha International, 1985, ISBN 4-7700-1430-9, p.20</ref> and the latter term is now generally applied retrospectively to all hokku appearing independently of renku or renga, irrespective of when they were written.

===Basho and the appearance of haiku===
In the 1600s, two masters arose who elevated ''haikai'' and gave it a new popularity. They were Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) and Ueshima Onitsura (1661–1738). Hokku was only the first verse of ''haikai'', but its position as the opening verse made it the most important, setting the tone for the whole composition. Even though hokku sometimes appeared individually, they were understood to always be in the context of ''haikai'', as they were part of the verses of a renga. Bashō and Onitsura were thus writers of ''haikai'' of which hokku was only a part. Many more of these ‘stand-alone’ haikai verses were written and then used in renga. Basho also used his haiku as torque points for his short prose sketches and longer travel diaries which combined prose and haiku. This sub-genre of haikai is known as haibun<ref>[http://haibuntoday.blogspot.com/2007/12/haibun-defined-anthology-of-haibun.html ''Haibun Defined: Anthology of Haibun Definitions'']</ref>). His best-known book, ''Oku no Hosomichi'', or ''Narrow Roads to the Far North'', is one of the most famous literary works in Japan and has been translated into English extensively.

Basho was deified by both the imperial government and Shinto religious headquarters one hundred years after his death because he raised the genre from a playful game of wit to sublime poetry. During his lifetime he was the most famous poet in Japan, and still is today.

===The time of Buson===
thumb|250px|right|Grave of Yosa Buson
The next famous style of haikai to arise was that of Tenmei Era (1781–1789) in which it was created. Buson attempted to revive the values of Bashō, and rescue haiku and renku from the stultified condition into which it had sunk since Bashō's day.<ref>Toshiko Yokota, ''What Does It Mean to Read Haikai Linked Verse? A Study of the Susuki mitsu Sequence in Kono hotori ichiya shi-kasen'', in [http://simplyhaiku.com/SHv5n1/features/Yokota.html ''Simply Haiku'' v5n1 2007]</ref> 

Buson is recognised as one of the greatest masters of haiga (an art form where painting is combined with haiku or haikai prose). He was better known in his day as a painter than as a writer of ''haikai'', but today that is reversed. His affection for painting can be seen in the painterly style of his hokku, and in his attempt to deliberately arrange scenes in words. Hokku was not so much a serious matter for Buson as it was for Bashō. The popularity and frequency of haikai gatherings in this period led to greater numbers of verses springing from imagination rather than from actual experience.

===Kobayashi Issa and a humanistic approach to haiku===
No new popular style followed Buson. However, a very individualistic, and at the same time a very humanistic, or even "democratic", approach to ''haikai'' demonstrated the writer Kobayashi Issa (1763–1827) whose miserable childhood, poverty, sad life, and devotion to the Pure Land sect of Buddhism are easily traceable in his hokku. Issa made hokku immediately accessible for wider audiences.

===The appearance of Shiki===
After Issa, ''haikai'' entered a period of decline in which it reverted to frivolity and uninspired mediocrity.  The writers of this period in the 19th century are known by the deprecatory term ''tsukinami'', meaning ‘monthly’, after the monthly or twice-monthly ''haikai'' gatherings of the end of the 18th century. But in regard to this period of ''haikai'', it came to mean ‘trite’ and ‘hackneyed’.

This was the situation until the appearance of plein-air'' painting, which he adapted to create a style of reformed hokku as a kind of nature sketch in words, an approach called ''shasei'', literally ‘sketching from life’. He popularized his views by verse columns and essays in newspapers.

All hokku up to the time of Shiki, even when appearing independently, were written in the context of ''renku'', but Shiki formally separated his new style of verse from wider contexts. Being agnostic, he also separated it from the influence of Buddhism with which hokku had very often been tinged. And finally, he discarded the term "hokku" and called his reformed verse form "haiku". His revisionism dealt a severe blow to ''renku'', as well as to surviving ''haikai'' schools. Though the word ''hokku'' is still in use, it is now used only in its original sense, of the opening verse of a renku.

===Haiga===
Haiga, the combination of haiku and art, is nearly as old as haiku itself. Haiga began as haiku added to paintings, but included in Japan the calligraphic painting of haiku via brushstrokes, with the calligraphy adding to the power of the haiku. Earlier haiku poets added haiku to their paintings, but Bashō is noted for creating haiga paintings as simple as the haiku itself. Yosa Buson, a master painter, brought a more artistic approach to haiga. It was Buson who illustrated Basho's famous travel journal, ''Oku no Hosomichi - Narrow Road to the Far North.'' 

Today, artists combine haiku with paintings, photographs and other art.

===Kuhi===

The carving of famous haiku on natural stone to create poem monuments known as kuhi (句碑) has been a popular practice for many centuries.  The city of Matsuyama has more than two hundred kuhi.

==Haiku in India==
Indian languages that follow Indic (Bengali. He also translated some from Japanese. In Gujarati, Geena JOSEPH 'Sneharashmi' popularized haiku and remains the most popular haiku composer. In the traditional syncratic spirit of Gujarati literature, poets like Bhagavatikumar Sharma and Bhushit Joshipura have composed shers formed as haiku. This type of poetry is called ''Haiku Ghazal''.
Urdu (which is written in abjad alphabetical system) interprets 5-7-5 structures counting long syllables. Dr. Rehmat Yusufzai has composed a number of haiku in Urdu.

==Haiku in the West==
Although there were attempts outside Japan to imitate the old hokku in the early 1900s, there was little genuine understanding of its principles. Early Western scholars such as Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850&ndash;1935) and William George Aston were mostly dismissive of hokku's poetic value. One of the first advocates of English-language hokku was the Japanese poet Yone Noguchi. In "A Proposal to American Poets," published in the ''Reader'' magazine in February 1904, Noguchi gave a brief outline of the hokku and some of his own English efforts, ending with the exhortation, "Pray, you try Japanese Hokku, my American poets!"  At about the same time the poet Sadakichi Hartmann was publishing original English-language hokku, as well as other Japanese forms in both English and French.

In France, hokku was introduced by Paul-Louis Couchoud around 1906.  Couchoud's articles were read by early Imagist theoretician F. S. Flint, who passed on Couchoud's(somewhat idiosyncratic) ideas to other members of the proto-Imagist Poets' Club such as Ezra Pound. Amy Lowell made a trip to London just to meet Pound and find out about haiku. She returned to the United States where she worked to interest others in this "new" form. Haiku subsequently had a considerable influence on Imagists in the 1910s, notably Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" of 1913, but, notwithstanding several efforts by Yone Noguchi to explain "the hokku spirit," there was as yet little understanding of the form and its history.

An early translation of a haiku book to a western language, in this case, to Spanish, was realized by the Mexican poet and Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz with the collaboration of Eikichi Hayashiya. In 1956, they published "Sendas de Oku," the famous book by Matsuo Basho, "Oku no Hosomichi." Octavio Paz wrote an essay about this translation work, and published it in the book "El signo y el garabato."

===Blyth===