Kigo: Haiku Season Words (with a List)

Almost every classical haiku carries a season inside it. That season word is the kigo, and it does more quiet work than any other element of the form.

A word that carries a season

A kigo is an image that tells the reader what time of year it is: cherry blossoms for spring, a cuckoo for early summer, the harvest moon for autumn, the first snow for winter. The poet rarely names the season outright. One well-chosen image does it, and with the season comes a whole atmosphere the reader already knows.

The saijiki

Japanese poets keep a reference called a saijiki, a catalog of season words arranged by season and by category: the sky, the fields, animals, plants, human affairs, and the festivals of the year. A single kigo can carry centuries of association, so choosing one places your poem in a long conversation.

Season words by season

• Spring: plum and cherry blossom, warblers, melting snow, the return of the swallows.
• Summer: cicadas, the short night, cool water, the season's first rains.
• Autumn: the harvest moon, migrating geese, red maple leaves, the first cold wind.
• Winter: bare branches, frost, the year's end, snow falling on snow.

There is also a fifth category, the New Year, which Japanese tradition treats as its own small season with its own images.

Kigo in English

English-language haiku are looser about the season word, and some fine haiku carry none. But a kigo still earns its place. In a single concrete noun it hands the reader a setting and a sense of the time of year. When a haiku feels thin, a true season word is often what it is missing.

Season words often sit at the turn of the poem, beside the cutting word. For the whole shape, see the haiku form, and to put a kigo to work, our guide to writing a haiku.