![Learn Japanese with Haiku [3 Digital Books + Audio + Anki]](http://www.thejapanshop.com/cdn/shop/files/promo-image_small_9bbd0ce6-cee3-4d03-9843-9fb0e7b97aa0_200x.jpg?v=1789085140)
![Learn Japanese with Haiku [3 Digital Books + Audio + Anki]](http://www.thejapanshop.com/cdn/shop/files/promo-image_small_9bbd0ce6-cee3-4d03-9843-9fb0e7b97aa0_1280x.jpg?v=1789085140)
Learn Japanese with Haiku is a set of three digital books that take seventy-five Japanese poems apart line by line. Every poem comes with furigana, a word-by-word vocabulary breakdown, the seasonal word that anchors it, an explanation written in simple modern Japanese, and an English essay on what the poem is actually doing. Audio for every poem and every explanation, with the new Chiyo-ni book narrated by Yumi. Three books today, ten planned, and everything we add is yours free.
From Clay & Yumi, teaching Japanese since 2002. Every poem and every explanation is recorded, and Yumi narrates the new Chiyo-ni book herself.
Seventy-five poems, taken apart word by word
A haiku is seventeen syllables. That is short enough to read every single word of it and still finish in an afternoon. These three books do exactly that: the poem in Japanese with furigana, every word defined, the season word that anchors it, an explanation in simple Japanese you can actually read, and an essay in English on why the poem lands the way it does.
Three books today. Ten when the series is done. One price.
This bundle is just getting started. We are building it out to ten full haiku volumes, and everyone who buys it now gets every one of them at no extra charge, however far the price climbs between now and then.
The three books here sell for $6.99 each. The finished ten-book series will be worth several times what this bundle costs today.
The Method
What You Get for Every Single Poem
Not a translation with a footnote. Each of the seventy-five poems gets its own full chapter, six or seven pages long, built the same way every time.
The poem, with furigana
Every kanji carries its reading, plus a romaji line so you can feel the 5-7-5 rhythm before you can read at speed.
Four English translations
Not one "official" version. Four, from literal to literary, so you can see how much of a haiku lives in the choices a translator makes.
Every word defined
A bulleted vocabulary list for the poem, with furigana and bracketed notes on grammar and etymology. Nothing is left for you to guess at.
The kigo, named
The seasonal word and which season it signals. This is the machinery of haiku, and once you can spot it you read every poem differently.
An explanation in simple Japanese
The heart of the method: the poem explained in Japanese, at a level you can handle, with furigana throughout and its own vocabulary list. This is your graded reading practice.
Then an analysis in English
What the poem is doing, what the poet was living through when they wrote it, and why the word order matters. Written to be read aloud, so it works as an audiobook too.
Two recordings per poem
The haiku is read aloud, then the Japanese explanation. 150 MP3s across the three books, plus tap-to-listen links inside the PDFs. Yumi narrates the new Chiyo-ni book, and full native-speaker audio for the other two is coming very soon, free to everyone who owns the bundle.
Classical Japanese, explained
These are real poems, so they use けり, なり, 垂るる, old kana. The books teach those forms as they come up instead of pretending they are not there.
A quick-reference spread
All twenty-five poems in one place at the back of each book with short translations, for review once you have worked through them.
haiku, each with its own chapter
recordings, poem and explanation
vocabulary words, JLPT-tagged
Anki cards, ready to import
The Three Books
One woman who gave her life to the form, and two of Japan’s most famous novelists who wrote haiku when nobody was looking.
Chiyo-ni 千代尼 · 1703–1775
Fukuda Chiyo of Kaga, later the nun Chiyo-ni, was the rare Edo-period woman who made her name as a poet in her own right. In 1763 her domain chose her poems as the gift for a visiting Korean embassy. Twenty-five poems, including the morning-glory-and-well-bucket haiku that Japanese schoolchildren still recite, and her death poem.
月も見て 我はこの世を かしく哉
Her final poem. Kashiku was the word a woman wrote to close a letter — and she uses it to close her life.
Akutagawa Ryūnosuke 芥川龍之介 · 1892–1927
The author of "Rashōmon" and "In a Grove," the two stories behind Kurosawa's film, and the man Japan's most prestigious literary prize is named after. Shortly before his death at thirty-five he chose seventy-seven of his own haiku for a final collection, handed out to mourners at his memorial. Many of the poems here come from it.
青蛙 おのれもペンキ ぬりたてか
"Green frog — are you, too, freshly painted?"
Natsume Sōseki 夏目漱石 · 1867–1916
The author of I Am a Cat, Botchan, and Kokoro, whose face was on the 1000 yen note until recently. He studied haiku seriously under Masaoka Shiki, his lifelong friend. His novels get translated and studied everywhere; his haiku mostly do not.
ちらちらと 陽炎立ちぬ 猫の塚
Heat shimmer over the grave of the cat — the real one, buried under a cherry tree in 1908 with a marker reading 猫の墓.
More poets on the way 近日公開
We are building this out to ten volumes. Every new book lands in your account free, forever, no matter what the bundle costs by then.
Look Inside · Hear It Read
Here is the very first poem in the Chiyo-ni book. Listen to the haiku, then to the Japanese explanation that follows it in the book, and flip through the sample pages below.
独り寝の さめて霜夜を さとりけり
hitorine no | samete shimoya wo | satori keri
“Sleeping alone — I wake, and the frosty night enlightens me.”
Kigo: 霜夜 shimoya, a frosty night — winter. The book gives four translations of this one, then takes apart けり, the classical ending that makes the realization land.
Every one of the 75 poems is recorded, poem and explanation both.
This is the graded-reading part, and it is recorded too.
Trouble viewing? Open the Chiyo-ni sample PDF in a new tab.
What’s Included
- 3 complete digital books — Chiyo-ni, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, and Natsume Sōseki, 513 pages in total
- PDF, ePub, and a Kobo-ready .kepub of every book
- 150 audio tracks — the poem and the Japanese explanation, separately, for all 75 haiku, with Yumi narrating the Chiyo-ni book
- Anki flashcard decks — a poem deck for each book, plus vocabulary decks for Akutagawa (105 cards) and Sōseki (115 cards)
- A vocabulary cheatsheet for every book — 1,267 words in total, each tagged with its JLPT level and the poem it came from
- An unlock code in every book for your digital extras at MakotoPlus.com
- Free lifetime updates. Every new haiku volume we publish, all the way to ten, at no extra cost, plus the full native-speaker re-recording of the Akutagawa and Sōseki audio, coming very soon
Buy more, save more, no coupon needed. Add two digital bundles to your cart for an automatic 5% off your entire digital order, three for 10% off, or five or more for a full 20% off everything.
Who Is This For?
If you have finished a first textbook — Genki I, or the equivalent — you can start here. The Japanese explanations sit around N4 to N3, everything carries furigana, and every word in every poem is defined on the page.
The poems themselves are classical Japanese, which is a level nobody is at, including native speakers who have not studied it. That is the point: they are taught, not assumed. A haiku is seventeen syllables, so a form that would be forbidding in a novel is perfectly manageable one poem at a time.
Already have our Japanese Culture Bundle? These are three entirely different poets from the Bashō, Buson, Issa, and Shiki books in there, in a newer and much more detailed format.
Every one of our bundles includes:
- ✅ Multiple formats (PDF, ePub, Kobo, MP3s, plus Anki flashcard decks)
- ✅ One-time payment
- ✅ Discounted versus buying each book separately
- ✅ Free lifetime updates to this bundle
- ✅ Instant download, no waiting
- ✅ Satisfaction guaranteed. If it’s too easy or too hard, tell us and we’ll swap it for a better-suited bundle or refund you.
Instant access: your download links are ready the moment you order, and you can always come back for the newest versions by logging in here with your email and any of your order numbers.
➡️ Need help opening the eBooks? Follow the steps in our eBook guide.
俳句で日本語を学ぼう！ Let’s learn Japanese through haiku.
