Haiku Trivia
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59 free Haiku trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This haiku trivia quiz covers the world's shortest famous poetic form from its structure to its history. The easy end asks what most people half-remember from school: the 5-7-5 pattern, the country it comes from, the season word and the great name Bashō. From there it digs into what the form actually is: why Japanese on are not quite syllables, what a cutting word does, how a hokku that opened a linked-verse renga became a stand-alone poem, and which reformer coined the name haiku barely a century ago. The four masters get their due. Bashō's ninja-family origins, his banana-tree pen name and the 2,400-kilometre journey behind The Narrow Road to the Deep North; Buson the painter; Issa the farmer's son who wrote 20,000 poems, hundreds of them about flies, fleas and frogs; and Shiki, the tuberculosis patient who took his pen name from a bird said to cough blood and who is also in Japan's baseball hall of fame. The last stretch follows haiku out of Japan: the Dutchman who wrote the first Western haiku, Ezra Pound's Metro poem, Richard Wright's thousands of late haiku, the Beats and the societies and journals that made English-language haiku a movement. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on haiku, its related forms and its major poets, and each question links to the page that establishes it. Fifty-two questions, free, with an explanation after every answer.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A traditional Japanese haiku is arranged in which pattern?
5-7-5
5-7-5: though Bashō himself broke it now and then, and his verse about carrying Mount Fuji's wind home on a fan opens with six beats instead of five.
Q 02Which older Japanese verse form has 31 on to a haiku's 17?
Tanka
Tanka: each January the emperor hosts a palace reading of them, and anyone in Japan may send one in on that year's set theme.
Q 03What does on, the name of the unit counted in Japanese haiku, literally mean?
Sound
Sound: an on is briefer than an English syllable, so translators reckon about twelve English syllables last as long as seventeen on, and many English haiku now run short.
Q 04What is a kigo?
A season word
A season word: the approved lists keep growing, and Christmas, a foreign festival, now counts as a winter kigo.
Q 05What is a kireji in a haiku?
A cutting word
A cutting word: it makes a verse complete in itself, which is why the opening verse of a linked poem had to carry one and could later stand alone.
Q 06Which kireji appears in Bashō's famous 'old pond' haiku?
ya
Ya: English has no such word, so translators of 'Furu ike ya' have tried a dash, a semicolon, an exclamation mark or nothing at all.
Q 07In Japanese haiku, the word 'moon' with no other clue places a poem in which season?
Autumn
Autumn: the air is clearest then and the moon at its loveliest, so a poet who means another season has to say so, as with spring's 'hazy moon'.
Q 08What is a saijiki?
A list of season words
A list of season words: the name first meant an almanac of the year's festivals and customs, and haiku poets later took it over for their handbooks.
Q 09Japanese haiku almanacs sort their season words into the four seasons and which fifth section?
New Year
New Year: it used to fall at the start of spring, but when Japan adopted the Western calendar in 1873 it landed in midwinter, so its words were given a section of their own.
Q 10Haiku began as the opening stanza of which longer collaborative form?
Renga
Renga: it grew from a court pastime in which one poet began a short poem and another finished it, then swelled into chains of a hundred verses.
Q 11What was the term for the opening verse of a linked poem, later renamed haiku?
Hokku
Hokku: at a linked-verse gathering the guest of honour composed it, and was expected to greet the host and nod to the season.
Q 12Which staple of English verse did Japanese haiku never use?
Rhyme
Rhyme: the Japanese originals have none, yet mid-century translators such as Harold Henderson and Kenneth Yasuda rhymed the first and third lines of their English versions.
Q 13Which satirical cousin of haiku keeps the 17 on but needs no kigo or kireji?
Senryū
Senryū: it is named after Karai Senryū, an 18th-century contest judge whose pick of the wittiest entries was printed and sold in popular collections.
Q 21Bashō's haiku at the ruins of Hiraizumi calls the summer grasses all that remains of whose dreams?
Warriors
Warriors: standing where the hero Yoshitsune had died five centuries before, Bashō laid his hat on the ground and wept, by his own account, before writing it.
Q 22Bashō's most famous haiku, composed in early 1686, features which creature?
A frog
A frog: that spring his circle held a verse contest on nothing but frogs, and the old-pond poem was given first place in the printed collection.
Q 23What is the English title of Bashō's masterwork Oku no Hosomichi?
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Q 14Haibun combines haiku with what?
Prose
Prose: Bashō wrote up his journeys this way, and the pattern stuck, with a paragraph of travel diary rounded off by a single verse.
Q 15Which Japanese art form pairs a haiku with a simple painting, often by the poet's own hand?
Haiga
Haiga: verse and picture came from the same brush and ink, so poets from Bashō onward often added a quick, unshowy sketch to their own haiku.
Q 16A kuhi is a monument that preserves a famous haiku in what way?
Carved into natural stone
Carved into natural stone: disciples and later admirers raise them at places tied to the poet, often the very spot where the verse was composed.
Q 17Japanese haiku served as a model for which movement in poetry in English, founded in the 1910s?
Imagism
Imagism: its poets set out to cut every unnecessary word and leave one hard, clear picture, taking haiku as a model for how little a poem needs.
Q 18Bashō wrote in the late 1600s under which shoguns?
Tokugawa
Tokugawa: they ruled from Edo, the shogun's capital, where Bashō made his name as a poetry teacher before turning his back on city life to travel.
Q 19Bashō's pen name comes from which plant, given to him by his disciples?
A banana tree
A banana tree: planted beside his new hut in Fukagawa, it gave the place its name, the Bashō hut, and before long the poet was called Bashō too.
Q 20Bashō was born in Iga, a province famous in Japan as a homeland of which fighters?
Ninja
Ninja: the link fed a popular theory that Bashō spied for the shogun on his travels, but his father was probably a landowning farmer with a few samurai privileges.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North: Oku was the name of Japan's remote northern provinces and also means 'interior', so some translators prefer The Narrow Road to the Interior.
Q 24At a silent mountain temple on his 1689 journey, Bashō wrote that the cry of which creature sinks into the rocks?
The cicada
The cicada: he doubled back to see Yamadera only because people urged him to, and the temple is now best known for his verse.
Q 25Bashō covered most of the five-month journey behind Oku no Hosomichi by what means?
On foot
On foot: before setting out at 45, by his own account, he patched his trousers and had moxa burned on his shins to strengthen his legs.
Q 26Bashō quotes which Chinese poet's line 'The state is destroyed, but the mountains and rivers remain' in Oku no Hosomichi?
Du Fu
Du Fu: Bashō revered the Tang poet and reached for this line as he looked over the grassed-over ruins of a once-great provincial capital.
Q 27Which principle of 'lightness' did Bashō adopt in his last years?
Karumi
Karumi: he urged his followers to find beauty in plain, everyday things and say it simply, and built his 1694 anthology A Sack of Charcoal on the idea.
Q 28In which city did Bashō die in 1694?
Osaka
Osaka: he had gone there to patch up a quarrel among his followers, fell ill with a stomach complaint and died with his disciples around him.
Q 29Besides poetry, Yosa Buson was celebrated in which art?
Painting
Painting: it was his main income, and he paid tribute to his idol Bashō by copying out Oku no Hosomichi as illustrated scrolls and screens.
Q 30In Chiyo-ni's most famous haiku, which flower has wound itself round her well-bucket?
Morning glory
Morning glory: rather than tear the vine free, she goes to ask a neighbour for water.