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
Old Japanese line of the first poem in the "Kojiki" was written with five characters: This method of writing Japanese syllables by using characters for their Chinese sounds ("ongana") was supplemented with indirect methods in the complex mixed script of the "Man'yōshū" (c. 759). In "man'yōgana", each Old Japanese syllable was represented by a Chinese character. Although any one of several characters could be used for a given syllable, a careful analysis revealed that 88 syllables were distinguished in the "Kojiki": The system has the same gaps of "yi" and "wu" found in later forms of Japanese. However, many syllables that have