Renku Renku , or , is a Japanese form of popular collaborative linked verse poetry. It is a development of the older Japanese poetic tradition of "ushin" renga, or orthodox collaborative linked verse. At renku gatherings participating poets take turns providing alternating verses of 17 and 14 morae. Initially "haikai no renga" distinguished itself through vulgarity and coarseness of wit, before growing into a legitimate artistic tradition, and eventually giving birth to the haiku form of Japanese poetry. The term "renku" gained currency after 1904, when Kyoshi Takahama started to use it. The oldest known collection of haikai linked verse appears
Mora (linguistics) moraic system of writing. For example, in the two-syllable word "mōra", the "ō" is a long vowel and counts as two morae. The word is written in three symbols, モーラ, corresponding here to , each containing one mora. Such scholars also argue that the 5/7/5 pattern of the haiku in modern Japanese is of morae rather than syllables. The Japanese syllable-final "n" is also said to be moraic, as is the first part of a geminate consonant. For example, the Japanese name for "Japan", 日本, has two different pronunciations, one with three morae ("Nihon") and one with four ("Nippon"). In