Japanese poetry the "honored guest" composing a few beginning lines, often in the form of the "hokku" (which, as a stand-alone piece, eventually evolved into the haiku). This initial sally was followed by a stanza composed by the "host." This process could continue, sometimes with many stanzas composed by numerous other "guests", until the final conclusion. Other collaborative forms of Japanese poetry also evolved, such as the "renku" ("linked-verse") form. In other cases, the poetry collaborations were more competitive, such as with "uta-awase" gatherings, in which Heian period poets composed "waka" poems on set themes, with a judge deciding the winner(s). Haiku
Japanese pitch accent that of Kōchi in Shikoku. Japanese pitch accent also varies in how it interacts with syllables and morae. Kagoshima is a purely syllabic dialect, while Osaka is moraic. For example, the low-tone unaccented noun "shimbun" 'newspaper' is in Kagoshima, with the high tone spread across the entire final syllable "bun," but in Osaka it is , with the high tone restricted to the final mora "n". In Tokyo, accent placement is constrained by the syllable, though the downstep occurs between the morae of that syllable. That is, a stressed syllable in Tokyo dialect, as in "kai" 'shell' or "san" 'divining