Waka, a Japanese verse form of five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7 moras, respectively, was once the most common form of Japanese poetry, but after the compilation in the eighth century of the first poetic anthology, the Man'yoshu, waka lost ground to poetry in Chinese until the beginning of the tenth century. Yet waka survived as an indispensable means of courtly communication, and with the compilation in the early tenth century of the first imperial anthology, the Kokinshu, waka regained popularity. In the process, poets tried to separate waka from private life so that it could gain status as a prestigious public art form, and by the early eleventh century waka had come to be composed by the aristocracy on public occasions such as excursions and parties. Behind this movement was a contrast between two ways of practicing waka: waka as the product of a socially oriented poetics, by which poems were judged in large part in relation to the situations in which they were actually composed, and waka as the product of a more artistically oriented poetics.
The characteristics of what we might call waka's social poetics are situational dependency and timing, or timeliness. Waka in its social mode was often used as a means of sending a message, in a larger communicative context. Such compositions were motivated by some aspect of the situation in which they were composed by the author, and read or heard by the addressee or recipient. Another characteristic of waka's social poetics is a response that is timely, that is, composing a waka at the right moment. The ability to present, at the right moment, a poem that somehow fit a certain situation was highly admired. Sometimes this meant composing on the spot, and sometimes the poet had a bit of time to plan his or her lines for an anticipated opportunity. In either case, the point appreciated was the use of those lines at an apt time.
The more artistically oriented poetics, on the other hand, tended to approach waka expression as something that could be practiced at any time, in any place, not so much as a response to immediate social context as to an imagined context. It developed due to the prevalence of composing waka on pre-specified topics such as seasons, the moon, flowers, or love. This thematic focus tended to separate the content of the poem from the social circumstances in which it was composed, and typically gave the poet more time to contemplate while composing. Moreover, the timing of the poem's presentation was not part of its appeal. Of course, any courtly audience for the more artistic approach could be expected to be familiar with the tradition of waka's social poetics. As the thematic treatments of the artistic approach became established, they in turn became fair game for the aptly timed occasional composition.
In these ways, waka's socially oriented poetics and its artistically oriented poetics can be seen to differ. Nonetheless, the former survived alongside the latter, and continued to thrive as a means of discourse in court life. Indeed, the circumstances of composition were still considered a crucial element in a poem's effect on an audience even after poets came to regard waka as a vehicle for artistic expression.
The karonsho, treatises on composing waka, focus on poetry as an art form, with rules to be observed, effects to be evoked, and so on. As the more thematically oriented compositions and their artistic poetics came to be considered more important than the more socially oriented poetics, descriptions in karonsho of how to compose a skillful poem on a topic became more detailed and technical. However, many karonsho writers touch on the social side of waka poetics as well. In fact, they often take up socially oriented waka and evaluate them positively for their success as such. In more than one case, this was done to provide knowledge of the more social poetics and its masterworks to an audience that was relatively new to the practice of waka -- people from the class of provincial governors, military families, and their like.