waka, Japanese poetry, specifically the court poetry of the 6th to the 14th century, including such forms as the chōka and sedōka, in contrast to such later forms as renga, haikai, and haiku. The term waka also is used, however, as a synonym for tanka (“short poem”), which is the basic form of Japanese poetry.
The chōka, “long poem,” is of indefinite length, formed of alternating lines of five and seven syllables, ending with an extra seven-syllable line. Many chōka have been lost; the shortest of those extant are 7 lines long, the longest have 150 lines. They may be followed by one or more envoys (hanka). The amplitude of the chōka permitted the poets to treat themes impossible within the compass of the tanka.
The sedōka, or “head-repeated poem,” consists of two tercets of five, seven, and seven syllables each. An uncommon form, it was sometimes used for dialogues. Kakinomoto Hitomaro’s sedōka are noteworthy. Chōka and sedōka were seldom written after the 8th century.
The tanka has existed throughout the history of written poetry, outlasting the chōka and preceding the haiku. It consists of 31 syllables in five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7 syllables each. The envoys to chōka were in tanka form. As a separate form, tanka also served as the progenitor of renga and haiku.
Renga, or “linked verse,” is a form in which two or more poets supplied alternating sections of a poem. The Kin’yōshū (c. 1125) was the first imperial anthology to include renga, at that time simply tanka composed by two poets, one supplying the first three lines and the other the last two. The first poet often gave obscure or contradictory details, challenging the second to complete the poem intelligibly and inventively. These were tan (“short”) renga and generally light in tone. Eventually, “codes” were drawn up. Using these, the form developed fully in the 15th century, when a distinction came to be drawn between ushin (“serious”) renga, which followed the conventions of court poetry, and haikai (“comic”), or mushin (“unconventional”) renga, which deliberately broke those conventions in terms of vocabulary and diction. The standard length of a renga was 100 verses, although there were variations. Verses were linked by verbal and thematic associations, while the mood of the poem drifted subtly as successive poets took up one another’s thoughts. An outstanding example is the melancholy Minase sangin hyakuin (1488; Minase Sangin Hyakuin: A Poem of One Hundred Links Composed by Three Poets at Minase, 1956), composed by Sōgi, Shōhaku, and Sōchō. Later the initial verse (hokku) of a renga developed into the independent haiku form.
Japanese poetry has generally consisted of very small basic units, and its historical development has been one of gradual compression down to the three-line haiku, in which an instantaneous fragment of an emotion or perception takes the place of broader exposition.