Zen Haiku Database

The Zen Haiku Database (lit. Complete Haiku Database)contains a database of all 631134233006543551770782470703125 possible 5-7-5 poems.

• For example, さみだれを　あつめてはやし　もがみがわ is haiku No. 77016092317948049706681803472219

Haiku Encoding

Rather than storing all possible haikus, the Haiku Database can be thought of Japanese text into a numerical value. There are a few limitations on the encoding:

• Only 17 character haikus are allowed (omitting haikus with Jiamari and Jitarazu)
• Multi-character syllables are not properly encoded (this is fixed in Version 2)
• The numbering starts at one

The encoding works like this:

• Each kana is assigned a value with あ starting at 0 and ん being 84
• The haiku is treated as a base 85 number and converted to decimal
  • The ordering is lexicographic, not the Hiragana Unicode block order.
• Add one to the haiku number for 1-based indexing

Since there are 85 possible kana and 17 positions, there are 85\^17 = 6.3*10³² total haiku.

• あああああ　あああああああ　あああああ is haiku #1.
• あああああ　あああああああ　あああいあ is haiku #86.
  • (10)₈₅ = (85)₁₀, and 1 is added to get 86.

Notes

• In a blog post the creator says that the inspiration came from G Panpanda's routine on a poet writing haikus by brute forcing every syllable combination
• The website design is a reference to Abe Hiroshi's Homepage
• The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C Clarke also features using a computer to list every combination of symbols

Created 2024-04-03.

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