Haiku

Haiku is a traditional Japanese poetry form essentially consisting of three lines of 5-7-5 syllables, respectively. In modern localizations, the people from towns modeled after Japan, such as Jipang and Hotto, tend to speak almost exclusively in it.

As accents are used liberally in modern localizations (Romarians speak with Italian accents and Portogans speak with Portuguese accents), the invention of haiku speech may have been intended to avoid evoking the history of anti-Japanese propaganda in the West, which used exaggerated Japanese accents and caricatures to portray Japanese people as racially and culturally inferior.

Terminology

Technically, not every 5-7-5 poem in Japanese is a haiku; such a poem is broadly called a hokku, which also includes forms such as the senryu. Hokku originated as the first stanza of a type of collaborative Japanese poem called a renga. However, 5-7-5 poems are best known as haiku internationally.

"Haiku speech" in Dragon Quest localizations usually lacks seasonal references and "cutting," a two-way division that is introduced in Japanese with special words called kireji (cutting words). In faithful Western haiku, cutting tends to either be implied or expressed with a dash.

Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation

Haiku speech is the norm for people from Jipang in modern localizations of Dragon Quest III, including that of the Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake. A couple from Jipang moves to the underworld and migrates to Kol, where the husband picks up the local dialect while the wife continues to speak in haiku.

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age

Haiku speech is typical of adults from Hotto in the localization of Dragon Quest XI, while the children slip between haiku speech and non-poetic speech.

See also

• Mermaids, who speak in rhyme in localization.

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