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
Japanese abbreviated and contracted words be commonly used, or they may be specific to a particular group of people. For example, the is known as by its employees, but this terminology is not familiar to most Japanese. Japanese words are spelled using characters that represent syllables (morae), rather than individual phonetic units (phonemes) as in the English alphabet. These characters are compiled into two syllabaries: hiragana and katakana. Japanese also makes extensive use of adopted Chinese characters, or kanji, which may be pronounced with one or more syllables. Therefore, when a word or phrase is abbreviated, it does not take the form of initials, but