Japanese poetry

Japanese poetry is verse composed in Japanese, encompassing classical forms such as waka and haiku alongside modern free verse and other contemporary styles.

Mora: A unit of sound timing that can determine syllable weight and poetic meter. Traditional Japanese verse counts morae rather than English-style syllables.
Haiku: A short Japanese poetic form commonly organized in three phrases of five, seven, and five morae. It is the best-known compact form built around seasonal reference and a cut.
Man'yōshū: An eighth-century anthology of Japanese poetry, containing works from across several centuries. It preserves an early and wide-ranging record of Japanese poetic voices.
Japanese free verse: Japanese poetry that does not follow fixed traditional patterns of mora count or stanza form. It shows how modern poets wrote beyond classical constraints.
Hyakunin Isshu: A famous anthology of one waka each by one hundred Japanese poets. Its poems became a major vehicle for memorizing and circulating classical verse.
Japanese writing system: The combined use of kanji, hiragana, and katakana to write Japanese. Written poems use scripts whose visual forms shape reading and presentation.
Tanka: A five-line Japanese poetic form traditionally arranged in 5-7-5-7-7 morae. Its added closing lines allow a shift from scene to reflection or emotion.
Kokin Wakashū: A tenth-century imperial anthology of Japanese poetry compiled under Emperor Daigo. Its refined waka style became a model for later court poetry.
Waka: A genre of classical Japanese poetry, especially the five-line 5-7-5-7-7 form called tanka. Its courtly conventions differ from the looser modern category of Japanese poetry.
Poetry in The Tale of Genji: The poems embedded in Murasaki Shikibu’s eleventh-century Japanese court narrative. Waka in the narrative carry messages, reveal character, and negotiate relationships.

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