Saijiki
Quick answer: Saijiki meaning: the haiku almanac that organises season words by time of year, how its categories work, and how to build a personal saijiki of your own.
A saijiki is a haiku almanac: a reference book that collects season words, or kigo, organises them by season and category, and illustrates each with definitions and example poems showing the word in use. For Japanese haiku poets it is a standard desk companion, part dictionary, part anthology, part calendar of the physical world.
The saijiki exists because haiku's seasonal system is too rich to memorise. Thousands of terms qualify as kigo, each assigned to early, mid or late spring, summer, autumn, winter or the New Year, and each trailing its own history of classic poems. Consulting a saijiki is less like checking a rulebook and more like joining a very long conversation about what February actually feels like.
How It Works
A full saijiki divides the year into five seasons, the four you expect plus the New Year, which holds its own ceremonial vocabulary. Within each season, entries sort into standard categories: the season itself (climate and light), the heavens (sky and weather), the earth (fields, rivers, mountains), humanity (clothes, food, work), observances (festivals and rites), animals and plants. Each entry gives the word, its precise seasonal placement, a short gloss of its associations and a handful of exemplary haiku. A slimmer cousin, the kiyose, lists the words with minimal commentary.
Where You Will See It
Japanese publishers keep multi-volume saijiki in print the way English publishers keep dictionaries, and serious poets often own several, since editors disagree about borderline words. Regional saijiki exist for Okinawa and Hokkaido, whose seasons ignore Kyoto's schedule, and specialist compilations now cover city life and even the southern hemisphere. English-language projects, including online kigo databases, have adapted the idea for poets whose winters arrive in June or barely arrive at all.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Use a saijiki in two directions. Reading forward, browse the current fortnight's entries before a walk and notice how much more you see when the almanac has primed you. Reading backward, when a draft feels thin, look up its season word and read the classic examples: they show what associations your poem is inheriting, competing with or wasting. Building a personal saijiki, ten or twenty entries from your own postcode with notes on their feelings, is one of the fastest ways to deepen a haiku practice.
What poets can take from this
- Browse the current season's entries weekly; a saijiki is for reading, not just checking.
- Compare your draft against the classic poems under its kigo to avoid tired repeats.
- Start a personal saijiki with local entries a Japanese almanac could never contain.
- Note early, mid and late placements; precision of timing is half the art.
- Use a simple kiyose-style word list when drafting fast, and the full almanac when revising.
Try it yourself
Spend one month building a twenty-entry saijiki for your neighbourhood: five words per current season week, each with a two-line note on its associations and one original haiku as its example poem.
Questions
What is the difference between a saijiki and a kiyose?
A saijiki gives full entries: definitions, associations and example poems for each season word. A kiyose is the lightweight version, essentially a categorised list of kigo with little or no commentary, handy for quick drafting.
Why do saijiki include a fifth season?
The New Year period carries its own dense cluster of customs, foods and images in Japanese culture, so haiku tradition treats it as a separate season with its own kigo rather than folding it into winter.
Do I need a saijiki to write haiku in English?
Need, no; benefit from, yes. Online kigo databases and regional lists serve the same purpose, and building your own local version teaches seasonal attention faster than any rule can.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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