Choka
Quick answer: Choka definition: the long poem of classical Japan, alternating five and seven sound units and closing with an envoy, explained with craft advice for today.
A choka is the long poem of classical Japanese poetry: it alternates phrases of five and seven sound units for as many pairs as the poet needs, then closes with an extra seven-unit phrase, and is usually followed by one or more short envoy poems called hanka. The name means simply long song, in contrast to tanka, short song.
The choka is where early Japanese poetry did its heavy lifting: public elegies, poems on partings and processions, laments for drowned wives and starving villagers. It flourished in the eighth-century Man'yoshu and then faded, outcompeted by the fashionable brevity of the tanka, which makes it one of poetry's great extinct giants, still visible in the fossil record and occasionally revived.
How It Works
The pattern is five-seven, five-seven, repeated at whatever length the material demands, closing five-seven-seven. Because the alternation is hypnotic, choka poets built momentum through parallelism and repetition, then used the hanka, a complete tanka appended at the end, to condense the long poem's emotion into a single glance back. Think of the choka as the procession and the hanka as the figure who turns at the gate. A brief original passage in the manner:
The steady two-beat alternation carries grief the way walking carries it, which is why the form suits elegy so naturally.
Where You Will See It
The master of the choka is Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, active around 700, whose laments for a dead wife and for princes of the realm remain pinnacles of Japanese literature. Yamanoue no Okura used the form for social conscience, most famously in a dialogue poem on poverty that gives voice to a shivering, tax-hounded household. After the Man'yoshu era the choka nearly vanished, though poets have periodically revived it, and modern long-poem sequences in Japanese sometimes nod to its alternating pulse.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Borrow the architecture even if you ignore the counts: a long poem built on a steady alternating rhythm and unashamed parallelism, followed by a small poem that answers it. The hanka principle alone is worth stealing. Next time a long draft refuses to end, stop it, and write a separate five-line poem as its envoy; very often the envoy turns out to be what the whole poem was walking toward.
What poets can take from this
- Let parallel phrases do the accumulating; the choka is a form of gathered weight.
- Alternate short and long lines audibly, whatever your exact counts.
- Reserve the poem's sharpest image for the closing seven-seven movement.
- Always write the hanka: a short envoy poem that distils the long one.
- Choose subjects with duration, journeys, mourning, seasons of work, that deserve length.
Try it yourself
Write a choka-style elegy for a place that no longer exists, a shop, a school, a demolished house, alternating short and long lines for at least twenty lines. Then close with a separate five-line envoy spoken at the site today.
Questions
What is the difference between a choka and a tanka?
Length and function. A tanka is fixed at five phrases totalling thirty-one sound units, while a choka extends its five-seven alternation indefinitely before closing with a seven-unit phrase, and traditionally handles larger public and elegiac subjects.
What is a hanka?
A hanka is the envoy: one or more tanka appended to a choka that echo, condense or answer the long poem. It functions like a coda, giving the reader a compact place for the emotion to land.
Why did the choka die out?
Court taste after the Man'yoshu period swung decisively toward the tanka's elegant brevity, and the long form lost its occasions and its audience. It survives through its masterpieces and through periodic revivals.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
Enter a Writory poetry contest
Enter the September contest and have your own poem read and scored. That first entry makes you a Writorian.