
Haibun

 is a prosimetric literary form originating in Japan, combining prose and haiku. The range of "haibun" is broad and frequently includes autobiography, diary, essay, prose poem, short story and travel journal.
History.
The term "haibun" was first used by the 17th-century Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō, in a letter to his disciple Kyorai in 1690. Bashō was a prominent early writer of "haibun", then a new genre combining classical prototypes, Chinese prose genres and vernacular subject matter and language. He wrote some "haibun" as travel accounts during his various journeys, the most famous of which is "Oku no Hosomichi" ("Narrow Road to the Interior").
Bashō's shorter "haibun" include compositions devoted to travel and others focusing on character sketches, landscape scenes, anecdotal vignettes and occasional writings written to honor a specific patron or event. His "Hut of the Phantom Dwelling" can be classified as an essay while, in "Saga Nikki" ("Saga Diary"), he documents his day-to-day activities with his disciples on a summer retreat.
Traditional "haibun" typically took the form of a short description of a place, person or object, or a diary of a journey or other series of events in the poet's life. "Haibun" continued to be written by later "haikai" poets such as Yosa Buson, Kobayashi Issa and Masaoka Shiki.
In English.
"Haibun" is no longer confined to Japan, and has established itself as a genre in world literature which has gained momentum in recent years.
James Merrill's "Prose of Departure", from "The Inner Room" (1988), is an earlier example.
The first contest for English-language "haibun" took place in 1996, organized by poet and editor Michael Dylan Welch, and judged by Tom Lynch and Cor van den Heuvel. Anita Virgil won first prize, and David Cobb won second prize. The contest resulted in the publication of "Wedge of Light" (Press Here) in 1999. As credited by Welch, the first anthology of English-language "haibun" was Bruce Ross's "Journey to the Interior: American Versions of Haibun" (Tuttle), published in 1998.
Jim Kacian and Bruce Ross edited the inaugural number of the annual anthology "American Haibun & Haiga" (Red Moon Press) in 1999; that series, which continues to this day, changed its name to "Contemporary Haibun" in 2003 and sponsored the parallel creation in 2005 of "Contemporary Haibun Online", a quarterly journal that added Welsh "haibun" author Ken Jones to the founding editorial team of Kacian and Ross.
Characteristics.
A "haibun" may record a scene, or a special moment, in a highly descriptive and objective manner or may occupy a wholly fictional or dream-like space. The accompanying haiku may have a direct or subtle relationship with the prose and encompass or hint at the gist of what is recorded in the prose sections.
Several distinct schools of English "haibun" have been described, including "Reportage narrative mode" such as Robert Wilson's "Vietnam Ruminations", "Haibunic prose", and the "Templum effect".
Contemporary practice of "haibun" composition in English is continually evolving. Generally, a "haibun" consists of one or more paragraphs of prose written in a concise, imagistic "haikai" style, and one or more haiku. However, there may be considerable variation of form, as described by editor and practitioner Jeffrey Woodward.
Modern English-language "haibun" writers (aka, practitioners) include Jim Kacian, Bruce Ross, Mark Nowak, John Richard Parsons, Sheila Murphy, Nobuyuki Yuasa, Lynne Reese, Peter Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and David Cobb, founder of the British Haiku Society in 1990 and author of "Spring Journey to the Saxon Shore," a 5,000-word haibun which has been considered seminal for the English form of kikōbun (i.e., travel diary).