Gogyohka (pronounced in four syllables with all hard g's, as in "good") literally translates as "five-line verse". It is an evolution of the great Japanese tradition of short verse, but unlike its predecessors Haiku and Tanka, it has no fixed syllable pattern. There are also no conventions governing content and no assumptions about what is considered to be appropriately "poetic" language. Indeed Gogyohka's accessibility and its power to speak directly to the heart and mind stem from the simplicity of its form, its frequent use of the everyday vernacular and the unwritten rule that almost any subject matter is game.

The great strength of the Gogyohka form is this simplicity. It is intended to be easy for people to write. While this by no means precludes the possibility that great works can be written in this style, its power to communicate at a universal level and the clarifying effect that the act of writing it has on some people is born from its active engagement with everyday life. Its brevity matches the brevity of a fleeting moment, or the distillation of some complex issue into a single, clarifying form.

-Matthew Lane, translator of Enta Kusakabe's booklet, Gogyohka.


The single most important thing for people is their central axis--the part of them that constitutes their very essence--and the most important thing for the self is to recognize and understand that inner, central axis. Once you are aware of what is most important to you, then you are able to build your own system of values in relation to it. This allows you to create a standard by which you can judge the relative importance of the various aspects of your life and the world around you. When you are able to do this, the stress in your life naturally falls away. This is because stress comes from the inability to distinguish between what is and is not important; if you treat everything in your life with equal importance, then you become upset when, inevitably, some things do not go as well as you would like them to.

-Enta Kusakabe, from Gogyohka