Death poem waka. Sometimes they are written in the three-line, seventeen-syllable haiku form, although the most common type of death poem (called a "jisei" 辞世) is in the waka form called the tanka (also called a "jisei-ei" 辞世詠) which consists of five lines totaling 31 syllables (5-7-5-7-7)—a form that constitutes over half of surviving death poems.(Ogiu, 317-318). Poetry has long been a core part of Japanese tradition. Death poems are typically graceful, natural, and emotionally neutral, in accordance with the teachings of Buddhism and Shinto. Excepting the earliest works of this tradition, it has been considered inappropriate to mention death explicitly; rather,
Japanese poetry are a short, 3-line verse form, which have achieved significant global popularity, and the haiku form has been adapted from Japanese into other languages. Typical of the haiku form is the metrical pattern of 3 lines with a distribution of 5, 7, and 5 "on" (also known as morae) within those lines. Other features include the juxtaposition of two images or ideas with a "kireji" ("cutting word") between them, and a "kigo", or seasonal reference, usually drawn from a "saijiki", or traditional list of such words. Much of Japanese poetry has been transmitted historically through published anthologies, many of them