Haiku the 17 "on" of a traditional Japanese haiku. Because the normal modes of English poetry depend on accentual meter rather than on syllabics, Henderson chose to emphasize the order of events and images in the originals. Nevertheless, many of Henderson's translations were in the five-seven-five pattern. The first haiku written in English was arguably by Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro", published in 1913. Since then, the haiku has become a fairly popular form among English-speaking poets. English haiku can follow the traditional Japanese rules, but are frequently less strict, particularly concerning the number of syllables and subject
On (Japanese prosody) transliterated into hiragana. In cases where a hiragana is represented by a pair of symbols each pair (or "digraph" e.g. "kyo" (きょ)) equates to a single "on". When viewed this way, the term ""ji"" ("character") is used in Japanese. In English-language discussions of Japanese poetry, the more familiar word "syllable" is sometimes used. Although the use of "syllable" is inaccurate, it often happens that the syllable count and the "on" count match in Japanese-language haiku. The disjunction between syllables and "on" becomes clearer when counting sounds in English-language versions of Japanese poetic forms, such as haiku in English. An English