Renga

Renga (連歌, linked poem) is a genre of Japanese collaborative poetry in which alternating stanzas, or ku (句), of 5-7-5 and 7-7 mora (sound units, not to be confused with syllables) per line are linked in succession by multiple poets. Known as tsukuba no michi (筑波の道 The Way of Tsukuba) after the famous Tsukuba Mountain in the Kantō region, the form of poetry is said to have originated in a two-verse poetry exchange by Yamato Takeru and later gave birth to the genres haikai (俳諧) and haiku (俳句). The genre was elevated to a literary art by Nijō Yoshimoto (二条良基, 1320–1388), who compiled the first imperial renga anthology Tsukubashū (菟玖波集) in 1356. The most famous renga master was Sōgi (宗祇, 1421–1502), and Matsuo Bashō (松尾芭蕉, 1644–1694) after him became the most famous haikai master. Renga sequences were typically composed live during gatherings of poets, transcribed oral sessions known as rengakai (連歌会), but could also be composed by single poets as mainly textual works. The "origin" of renga is traditionally associated with a passage in the Kojiki, wherein Prince Yamato Takeru speaks to an old man and inquires, by way of a katauta poem, how many nights he had slept since passing Nabari and Tsukuba, to which the old man responds by way of another kata-uta poem, which combined form a single sedōka. Later medieval renga poets, out of reverence for this exchange, would refer to their art as "the Way of Tsukuba", and the first imperial renga anthology, the Tsukubashū, alludes to it in the title. The earliest extant renga appears in the Manyoshu (万葉集), with its 5-7-5 mora jōku (上句 first stanza) written by Ōtomo no Yakamochi (大伴家持, 718-785) and its 7-7 mora geku (下句 last stanza) written by a Buddhist nun (尼 ama) in an exchange of poems. This two-stanza form is now called tanrenga (短連歌) to differentiate it from chōrenga (長連歌), the hyakuin renga (百韻連歌 100-stanza renga) to which the general term renga refers. The tanrenga form was popular from the beginning of the Heian Period until the end of cloistered rule (院政 insei) and would sometimes appear in imperial anthologies of waka, which it closely resembled at a glance.