On (Japanese prosody) On (Japanese prosody) The term On (rarely "Onji") refers to counting phonetic sounds in Japanese poetry. In the Japanese language, the word ""on"" (音) means "sound". It is used to mean the phonetic units counted in haiku, tanka, and other such poetic forms. Known as "morae" to English-speaking linguists, the modern Japanese term for the linguistic concept is either "haku" () or "mōra" (). Ji (字) is Japanese for "symbol" or "character". The concatenation of the two words ""on"" and ""ji"" into ""onji"" (音字) was used by Meiji era grammarians to mean "phonic character" and was translated into English by
Haiku in English the one-line form can create a variety of ambiguities involving the perceived placement of cuts and the grammatical status of individual words, thereby allowing for multiple readings of the same haiku. A variation of the format breaks the line at the "caesura" or pause. At its most minimal, a single word may occasionally be claimed to be a haiku: The first was printed alone on an otherwise blank page and arguably only "works" in that context. The second example is an allusion to the first and also depends on its placement at the center of a haiku collection. Haiku of