KATAUTA

a Japanese poetic form that consists of 17 or 19 syllables arranged in three lines of either 5, 7, and 5 or 5, 7, and 7 syllables. The form was used for poems addressed to a lover, and a single katauta was considered incomplete or a half-poem. A pair of katautas of the 5,7,7 type were called a sedoka; the 5,7,5 katauta may have been the top part of the early tanka. Exchanges of such poems made up a longer question-and-answer poem. The form was rarely used after about the 8th century AD.