Haiku a phrase in the remaining 12 "on" (it may not be apparent from the English translation of the Issa that the first five "on" mean "Edo's rain"). In comparison with English verse typically characterized by syllabic meter, Japanese verse counts sound units known as ""on"" or morae. Traditional haiku consist of 17 "on", in three phrases of five, seven and five "on" respectively. Among contemporary poems "teikei" ( fixed form) haiku continue to use the 5-7-5 pattern while "jiyuritsu" ( free form) haiku do not. One of the examples below illustrates that traditional haiku masters were not always constrained by
Haiku in languages other than Japanese have written haiku in Spanish include Federico García Lorca, Antonio Machado, Juan Ramón Jiménez and Luis Cernuda. Many other writers across Latin America, including Jorge Luis Borges, have also used the form. A translation of Bashō's "Oku no Hosomichi" to Spanish was done in 1957 by the Mexican poet and Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz in collaboration with Japanese diplomat Eikichi Hayashiya. In Italy, the national haiku association was founded in Rome in 1987 by Sono Uchida, the well-known Japanese haijin and the ambassador of Japan in Vatican. Soon after, the national association called Italian Friends of the haiku (Associazione