Five Seven Five THEORY 5 7 5

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5 - 7 - 5 ... go shichi go ... in Japanese

short-long-short ... in other languages

This is my simple advise for the problem of adapting the Japanese pattern of 5-7-5 beats to any other language:

In short: ..... NOT ... 5 7 5
in English, German, or any other language.
(Unless it feels quite natural without padding.)

But you should try to keep the symmetry of the form -
short - long - short

best as it is 5 - 7 - 5
or

2 - 3 - 2
3 - 5 - 3
4 - 6 - 4

But not for example
short - very long - very short
very short - long - short



Here is more about writing haiku in one line or three lines.



source :　kid-stuff/contests

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five seven five is the rhythm of the Japanese heart !
as Hasegawa Kai has put it:

. . . the 5 / 7 / 5 rhythm of Japanese haiku is not of seventeen syllables but seventeen beats. These seventeen beats are like the pulsing of the heart of the Japanese language.

onji 音字 sound symbols / 表音文字
beats, Japanese syllables, sound units, mora
(see the essay of Higginson, below)


Given this, two things are apparent. First, a Japanese haiku composed of seventeen beats is acceptable, even if it does not necessarily have seventeen syllables. Moreover, there are also haiku with 5 / 5 / 7 and 7 / 5 / 5 beats. However, if rhythm is considered unnecessary from the start, the result is not a haiku.
Haiku is poetry, and rhythm (beats) is the life of poetry.

Second, the 5 / 7 / 5 beats are the rhythm of Japanese haiku only, and thus the requirement does not apply to haiku written in other languages. To begin with, it is meaningless for haiku in other languages to adhere to the Japanese 5 / 7 / 5.
What should one do then, when writing haiku in another language?
It is best to determine the rhythm of the heartbeat of that particular language.
source : Simply Haiku, Spring 2009


Discussion at THF, September 2010


hyoo-on 表音 phonic representation, phonetic symbol, phonogram
jion 字音 the Japanized pronunciation of a Chinese character
on　音 unit to count kana
onsetsu　音節　syllable、syllabification　

Stalking the Wild Onji:
The Search for Current Linguistic Terms Used in Japanese Poetry Circles
"There are 17 ON 音 in a haiku."
source : RICHARD GILBERT




The traditional Seven Five Rhythm of Kabuki
. shichi go choo and Kabuki 七五調と歌舞伎 .



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Trying to imitate five-seven-five in any other language will be difficult, if not impossible.
What should be the rhythm of English short poetry, that would reflect the soul of an English-speaking culture and its people ?



A Japanese haiku comes in three sections:

kami go (the top five section)
naka shichi (the middle seven section)
shimo go (the lower five section)

Writing these three sections usually depends on the Japanese paper you are given.

On a small slip (tansaku) it goes from top to bottom.
On a square decoration sheet (shikishi) it goes in three lines, usually from right to left.
NHK Haiku writes in three lines from right to left, name of the artist most left.
Very seldom it is written in three lines from left to right, the Latinized way.
With a wordprocessor, it comes out as one line, from left to right, if not formatted differently.

So, there are many ways to write it in Japanese too, but ALWAYS the three sections are clearly discernable.

- MORE : One line, one sentence ... or three segments 　



NHK Photo Go Shichi Go 。。　フォト　五　七　五　


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Read more : To much or too little

(excessive syllables) 　jiamari　字余り
(insufficient syllables)　jitarazu　字足らず

The middle line with seven beats is like the obi of a good kimono, it must fit.
For the top and bottom five, we can change the number of beats.



Have some cultural fun here:
. Counting with your fingers
in Japanese 　
and read some examples of good 5 7 5 in English.



quote
高山伝右衛門　-　麋塒　（びじ）.
Matsuo Basho in a letter to Takayama Biji, June 20, 1682:
"Even if you have three or four extra syllables -- or as many as five or seven -- you need not worry as long as the verse sounds right.
If even one sound unit stagnates in your mouth, give it a careful scrutiny."

source : Makoto Ueda (google books)

Takayama Biji ( 1649-1718) 高山繁文 Takayama Shigefumi
©　More in the Japanese WIKIPEDIA !


月十四日今宵三十九の童部　
tsuki juuyokka koyoi sanjuu ku no warabe
. Basho at a haikai meeting with Takayama Biji .

. . . . .


Check these external links
for skillful use of 5 7 5
Haiku Poems by Richard Wright

for a general discussion on THF
THF Troutswirl : Learning about Haiku


. Japanese Syllables . the basics

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quote
Poetry’s divine origins
In a preface to the tenth-century Kokin Wakashu, the poet-courtier Ki no Tsurayuki describes the divine origins of Japanese verse.
What interests me here is the origins of the 5-7-5-7-7 syllable pattern of short verse (tanka).
As this was later adapted to the 5-7-5 of haiku, it’s a hallmark of Japanese poetry.
... snip ...
my thesis that since Chinese influence was prevalent in Japan after the sixth and seventh centuries, the likelihood is that the 5-7 syllable pattern arose from Taoist numerology and the inclination to see odd numbers as favouring ki vitality and energy flows.
source : www.greenshinto.com John Dougill


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(Image © 2010 by Michael Dylan Welch)

NaHaiWriMo on Facebook

. . . Michael Dylan Welch : Graceguts



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The following is interesting for people who try to write Haiku in Japanese.

It is essential to know the Japanese language to understand the natural flow of this pattern of 5 -7 - 5.

It is not so mysterious as some want to make us believe, it is really quite a natural flow of Japanese word beats and the <> one breath, onji <> is to some extend the explanation of foreigners (non-Japanese, I should say) and theoreticists which are non-native speakers, trying to grapple with this.
After 10 years in Japan, something like <> yamakaze no <> will flow out of your mouth without even knowing a thing about haiku.

I will try to give you some examples.

In the Japanese alphabet, one hiragana character comprises a sound like a beat, a syllable, for example
ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, sa, shi, su, se, so,
and so on.

Many Japanese words are made of just two of these beats, like SORA for sky, YAMA for mountain, KAWA for river, HIMA for time and so on, you see the point.

Joining two of these words makes another word, like ARA KAWA, wild river, YAMA KAZE wind in the mountain.
Now add a kireji and you got the first line of a Japanese haiku.

Ara kawa ya <> Oh, you wild river
yamakaze ya <> Oh, you wind of the mountains

You can also join two beat words with NO to make one new meaning.
For example,
kiku no hana, the chrysanthemum
ama no kawa, the milky way
And these can now go in the first or last line of a haiku with five beats.
Voila, no mystery.

Next we have many words made up of three beats, like
KAWAZU, frog
WARAJI, straw sandals
Put these in the last line of a haiku and add the kireji KANA to get the 5 beats of the last line. KANA is always used in the last line of a haiku.

In the middle line we use three words with two beats each, using MARU as an example word, you can have

marumaru no maru
maru no marumaru
marumi no marumi
marumi no maru ya

>>> And so on with seven natural beats

Are you now perplexed with so much MARU?

It is the sound we usually use if we can not pronounce a Chinese character (and that is quite often !). That is another pleasure of learning Japanese, you can with some effort understand the meaning of a Chinese character, but you still cannot pronounce the word. Here, MARU is handy.

All I am trying to say, in my experience, the flow of words with short beats like the basic Japanese words brings forth the natural flow of lines with five or seven beats. It is not such a big poetical mystery. And it can hardly be reproduced naturally in any other language.

And the haiku poets make good use of this natural flow, elevate the everyday talk to the poetry level, so to speak, with the introduction of the kireji.

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5-7-5 derives ultimately from the 5-7/5-7/5-7 etc. rhythm of early Japanese poetry. This unit of 12 (5+7) is as natural to Japanese as pentameter is to English.

Japanese poets count their “syllables” (which they usually call on, a word that means simply “sound[s]”), and that is all they count. These on are very short, usually just one initial consonant sound with one clipped vowel following, or just a single clipped vowel.

Still other Japanese words that mean the same thing in a haiku context include onji (“sound-symbol”), a technical term from linguistics, and moji (“writing symbol”), a term sometimes also used by Japanese haiku poets. On top of this, Japanese professors of linguistics have recently taken up the Latin word mora, which appears in some technical texts on poetry in English.

In the Japanese context, a mora is essentially the same as an on or “sound”.)

For translating haiku, we can use a 2-3-2 beat rhythm in English.

More details about this by William J. Higginson
.. Haiku by the Numbers, Seriously .
. copy

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Robin D. Gill: The 5th Season

It is wrong to count syllables in English.
Our first failure - when we tried to mimic our own Classic (romance language) poetry - should have taught us better centuries ago. English syllables are hopelessly irregular and, on average, half-again longer than the Japanese syllabet.

If we would strive for some uniformity in our haiku, we must utilize something that we do have: a good beat. Japanese beat is so weak that some say the syllabets are always equally stressed and / or identical in length. Our beat, if we would teach it (or, them), can even be recognized by children.

I noticed, independently of Blyth - that Japanese haiku, even when the syllabet count exceeds the ideal - usually have 7-8 beats; and, so, I think, should ours."


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From 5-7-5 to 8-8-8
Haiku Metrics and Issues of Emulation --
New Paradigms for Japanese and English Haiku Form
RICHARD GILBERT and JUDY YONEOKA


Abstract
The question of how English-language haiku form may best emulate Japanese 5-7-5 haiku (or whether it even should at all) has been hotly debated for decades. A recent trend in Japanese poetic analysis, however, interprets haiku in terms of 3 lines of 8 beats each onto which the 5-7-5 -on are mapped.

This paper presents an overview of this trend, supported both by theory from metrical phonology and by observed experimental data of subjects reading haiku in Japanese. It was found that the 8-8-8 metrical pattern is indeed verifiably present in haiku reading, and that this pattern serves to map both haiku with 5-7-5 -on and other -on counts. Based on these findings, implications for English haiku form, especially with respect to emulation, lineation, and metricality are discussed within the context of the North American haiku movement.

It is proposed that haiku in both Japanese verse and English free verse may naturally fit into a similar metrical form. It is hoped that a metrical analysis, operating across both languages, may help clear up some misconceptions regarding the Japanese haiku in the West, while providing an impetus to bridge the gap between the Japanese and world haiku movements.

source : Richard Gilbert, Kumamoto, 2000


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While we are counting :

one haiku, two haiku
one saijiki, two saijiki
one kigo, two kigo

There is no plural S for these words coming from Japanese.



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Read more about the CUT, kireji, in haiku.


BACK TO
. . . BASICS of my Haiku Theory


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