Haikai no renga

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Haikai no renga (俳諧の連歌 "comic linked poem"?), the Japanese tradition of comic linked verse poetry now generally known as renku, is an offshoot of the more respectable Japanese poetic tradition of ushin renga, or orthodox collaborative linked verse. At renga gatherings participating poets would take turns providing alternating verses of 5-7-5 syllables and 7-7 syllables. Initially haikai no renga distinguished itself through vulgarity and coarseness of wit, before growing into a legitimate artistic tradition, and eventually giving birth to the haiku form of Japanese poetry.

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[edit] Development

Traditional renga was a group activity in which each participant displayed his wit by spontaneously composing a verse in response to the verse that came before; the more interesting the relationship between the two verses the more impressive the poet’s ability. The links between verses could range from vulgar to artistic, but as renga was taken up by skilled poets and developed into a set form, the vulgarity of its early days came to be ignored.

Haikai no renga, in response to the stale set forms that preceded it, embraced this vulgar attitude and was typified by contempt for traditional poetic and cultural ideas, and by the rough, uncultured language that it used. The haikai spirit, as it came to be called, embraced the natural humor that came from the combination of disparate elements. To that end haikai poets would often combine elements of traditional poems with new ones they created. Perhaps the most famous example of this early attitude is a poem by Yamazaki Sokan (1464-1552) from his Mongrel Renga Collection.

He was given the following prompt:

Kasumi no koromo
suso wa nurekeri
The garment of mist
Is damp at the hems.

And he responded:

Saohime no
haru tachinagara
shito wo shite
The Goddess Sao
now that the spring has come,
pisses while still standing.

This poem clearly derives most, if not all, of its humor from shock value. Never before in Japanese culture had anyone dared to talk of the goddess of spring in such a manner. Taking an ostensibly traditional and poetic prompt and making it funny while maintaining the connection of the damp hems and the spring mists was exactly the sort of thing that early haikai poets were famous for.

[edit] Basho and Haikai

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) was one of the most famous poets in the Edo period.

He defined “haikai spirit” as following[citation needed]: first of all, haikai spirit implied the interaction of diverse languages and subcultures, particularly between the new popular culture and the poetic tradition, and the humor and interest resulting from the sociolinguistic incongruity or difference between the two. Second, haikai spirit meant taking pleasure in recontextualization: defamiliarization, dislocating habitual, conventionalized perceptions, and their refamiliarization, recasting established poetic topics into contemporary language and culture, the haikai spirit was also marked by a constant search for novelty and new perspectives. Finally, the haikai imagination implied the ability to interact in a playful, lively dialogue that produced communal art.

While Basho was influenced by classical Chinese poetry and prose and pursued spiritual or poetic inspirations of literature, he was also haikai poetic whose nature was satirical, humorous and combined in popular culture. The contradiction between two dominating literary cultures, Japanese and Chinese, in 17th country, contributed to emergence of Mitate[citation needed].

However, Basho’s haikai was different from general mitate in that his poetry and prose was dealing with ordinary, everyday lives of commoners. He portrayed the trivial figures like the beggar, the traveler, the farmer that one could see in everywhere. He contributed the new popular genre (haikai) to find poetic and spiritual values in common lives, played significant role in giving birth to modern Haiku, which reflected the common culture.

[edit] Formats of Haikai no Renga

Here follows a listing of the most commonly used formats for writing Haikai no renga[1]

Name of format Number
of stanzas		 Number of kaishi
(writing sheets)		 Number
of sides		 Originator Date of origin
Hyakuin[2] 100 4 8 unknown 13th century
Kasen 36 2 4 unknown 17th century
Han-kasen (i.e. half-kasen) 18 1 2 unknown 17th century
Shisan 12 2 4 Kaoru Kubota 1970's
Jûnichô 12 1 1 Shunjin Okamoto 1980's
Nijûin 20 2 4 Meiga Higashi 1980's
Triparshva[3] 22 1 3 Norman Darlington 2005

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Carley, John E. Common types of renku sequence. [1]
  2. ^ Carter, Steven D. The road to Komatsubara, Harvard University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-674-77385-3.
  3. ^ Darlington, Norman. Triparshva, A trilateral pattern for renku, in Simply Haiku vol. 3, no. 2, 2005

[edit] See also

  • Renga
  • Kigo
  • Winter Days - a 2003 animated film, based on one of the renku in the collection of the same name by the 17th-century Japanese poet Bashō.

[edit] External links