Waka (poetry)
Encyclopedia
Waka or Yamato uta is a genre
of classical Japanese verse
and one of the major genres of Japanese literature
. The term was coined during the Heian period
, and was used to distinguish Japanese-language poetry from kanshi
(poetry written in Chinese by Japanese poets), and later from renga
.
The term waka originally encompassed a number of differing forms, principally tanka (短歌, "short poem") and chōka (長歌, "long poem"), but also including bussokusekika
, sedōka (旋頭歌, "memorized [head repeated] poem") and katauta (片歌, "poem fragment"). These last three forms, however, fell into disuse at the beginning of the Heian period
, and chōka vanished soon afterwards. Thus, the term waka came in time to refer only to tanka.
Japanese poet and critic Masaoka Shiki
created the term tanka in the early twentieth century for his statement that waka should be renewed and modernized. Until then, poems of this nature had been referred to as waka or simply uta ("song, poem"). Haiku
is also a term of his invention, used for his revision of standalone hokku
, with the same idea.
Traditionally waka in general has had no concept of rhyme
(indeed, certain arrangements of rhymes, even accidental, were considered dire faults in a poem), or even of line. Instead of lines, waka has the unit (連) and the phrase (句). (Units or phrases are often turned into lines when poetry is translated or transliterated into Western languages, however.)
The briefest chōka documented was made by Yamanoue no Okura
in the Nara period
, and goes:
瓜食めば子ども思ほゆ栗食めばまして思はゆ何処より来りしものそ眼交にもとな懸りて安眠し寝さぬ (Man'yōshū: 0337),
which consists of a pattern 5-7 5-7 5-7 5-7-7:
:
The 5-7-5 is called the kami-no-ku ("upper phrase"), and the 7-7 is called the shimo-no-ku ("lower phrase").
Tanka is a much older form of Japanese poetry than haiku
.
The chōka above is followed by an envoi, also written by Okura:
[English translation by Edwin Cranston
]
Even in the late Asuka period
, waka poets such as Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
made tanka as an independent work. It was suitable to express their private interest in life and expression, in comparison with chōka, which was solemn enough to express serious and deep emotion when facing a significant event.
In the early Heian period
(at the beginning of the 10th century), chōka was seldom written and tanka became the main form of waka. Since then, the generic term waka came to be almost synonymous with tanka. Side by side with the new prominence of tanka came the development of forms of tanka prose
, the melding of tanka and prose in single literary compositions. Famous examples of such works are the diaries of Ki no Tsurayuki
and Izumi Shikibu
, as well as such collections of poem tales as The Tales of Ise
and The Tales of Yamato
.
The Heian period also saw the invention of a new tanka-based game: one poet recited or created half of a tanka, and the other finished it off. This sequential, collaborative tanka was called renga
("linked poem"). (The form and rules of renga developed further during medieval times; see the renga
article for more details.)
Various forms of wordplay were commonly employed in tanka, including standardized descriptive words called makurakotoba
, puns that functioned to unite two different images called kakekotoba
, and in which the beginning and ending syllables of a poem spelled out a significant word.
and The Tale of Genji
provide us with such examples in the life of aristocrats. Murasaki Shikibu
uses 795 waka in her The Tale of Genji as waka her characters made in the story. Some of these are her own, although most are taken from existing sources. Shortly, making and reciting waka became a part of aristocratic culture. They recited a part of appropriate waka freely to imply something on an occasion.
Much like with tea
, there were a number of rituals and events surrounding the composition, presentation, and judgment of waka. There were two types of waka party that produced occasional poetry
: Utakai and Utaawase
. Utakai was a party in which all participants wrote a waka and recited them. Utakai derived from Shikai, Kanshi party and was held in occasion people gathered like seasonal party for the New Year, some celebrations for a newborn baby, a birthday, or a newly-built house. Utaawase was a contest in two teams. Themes were determined and a chosen poet from each team wrote a waka for a given theme. The judge appointed a winner for each theme and gave points to the winning team. The team which received the largest sum was the winner. The first recorded Utaawase was held in around 885. At first, Utaawase was playful and mere entertainment, but as the poetic tradition deepened and grew, it turned into a serious aesthetic contest, with considerably more formality.
and Man'yōshū. Under influence from other genres such as kanshi, Chinese poetry, novels and stories such as Tale of Genji and even Western poetry, it has developed gradually, broadening its repertoire of expression and topics.
In literary critic Donald Keene
's books, he uses four large categories:
and Nihon Shoki
, were not divided into subcategories of strict forms. Nor did the waka in the Man'yōshū have fixed forms, but poets in the late 7th century, in the time of Empress Saimei
began to create chōka and tanka in the forms extant today.
The most ancient waka were recorded in the 20 volumes of the Man'yōshū, the oldest surviving waka anthology in Japan. The editor is anonymous
, but it is believed that the final editor of the Man'yōshū was Ōtomo no Yakamochi
. He was a waka poet who belonged to the youngest generation represented in the anthology; indeed, the last volume is dominated by his poems. The first waka of volume 1 was by Emperor Ōjin
. Nukata no Ōkimi, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
, Yamabe no Akahito
, Yamanoue no Okura
, Ōtomo no Tabito
and his son Yakamochi were the greatest poets in this anthology. The Man'yōshū recorded not only the works of those royal and noble men, but also works of women and commoners whose names were not recorded. The main topics of the Man'yōshū were love, sadness (especially on the occasion of someone's death), and other miscellaneous topics.
. This severing of ties, combined with Japan's geographic isolation, essentially forced the court to cultivate native talent and look inward, synthesizing Chinese poetic styles and techniques with local traditions. The waka form again began flourishing, and in 905, Emperor Daigo
ordered the creation of an anthology of waka. The famous waka poets of the day (including Ki no Tsurayuki
) gathered the waka of ancient poets and their contemporaries and named the anthology "Kokin Wakashū", meaning Collection of Ancient and Modern Japanese Poems. This was the first waka anthology edited and issued under imperial auspices, and it commenced a long and distinguished tradition of imperial anthologies of waka that continued up to the Muromachi period.
and later, renga
, a form of collaborative linked poetry, began to develop. In the late Heian period, three of the last great waka poets appeared: Fujiwara no Shunzei
, his son Fujiwara no Teika
, and Emperor Go-Toba
. Emperor Go-Toba ordered the creation of a new anthology and joined in editing it. The anthology was named Shin Kokin Wakashū. He edited it again and again until he died in 1239. Teika made copies of ancient books and wrote on the theory of waka. His descendants, and indeed almost all subsequent poets, such as Shōtetsu
, taught his methods and studied his poems. The courtly poetry scenes were historically dominated by a few noble clans and allies, each of which staked out a position.
By this period, a number of clans had fallen by the wayside, leaving the Reizei
and the Nijo family
; the former stood for "progressive" approaches, the varied use of the "ten styles" and novelty, while the latter conservatively hewed to already established norms and the "ushin" (deep feelings) style that dominated courtly poetry. Eventually, the Nijo family became defunct, leading to the ascendancy of the "liberal" Reizei family. Their innovative reign was soon deposed by the Asukai family, aided by the Ashikaga shogun, Ashikaga Yoshinori.
In the Muromachi period
, renga began to be popular in the court and people around it. It spread to the priestly classes and thence to wealthy commoners. In much the same way as waka, renga anthologies were produced under the imperial aegis.
As momentum and popular interest shifted to the renga form, the tanka style was left to the Imperial court. Conservative tendencies exacerbated the loss of life and flexibility. A tradition named Kokin-denju, the heritage of Kokin Wakashū, was developed. It was a system on how to analyze the Kokin Wakashū and included the secret (or precisely lost) meaning of words. Studying waka degenerated into learning the many intricate rules, allusions, theories, and secrets, so as to produce tanka that would be accepted by the court.
There were comical waka already in the Kojiki
and the Man'yōshū, but the noble style of waka in the court inhibited and scorned such aspects of waka. Renga was soon in the same position with many codes and strictures reflecting literary tradition. Haikai no renga (also called just haikai
(playful renga)) and kyōka, comical waka, were a reaction to this seriousness. But in the Edo-period waka itself lost almost all of its flexibility and began to echo and repeat old poems and themes.
, or opening verse, haiku
was a late 19th-century revision) was the favored genre. This tendency was kept during this period, but in the late Edo period waka faced new trends from beyond the court. Motoori Norinaga
, the great reviver of the traditional Japanese literature, attempted to revive waka as a way of providing "traditional feeling expressed in genuine Japanese way". He wrote waka, and waka became an important form to his followers, the Kokugaku
scholars.
In Echigo province
a Buddhist priest, Ryōkan
, composed many waka in a naïve style intentionally avoiding complex rules and the traditional way of waka. He belonged to another great tradition of waka: waka for expressing religious feeling. His frank expression of his feeling found many admirers, then and now. In the cities, a comical, ironic and satiric form of waka emerged. It was called kyōka (狂歌), mad poem, and was loved by intellectual people in big cities like Edo
and Osaka
. It was not precisely a new form; satirical waka was a style known since ancient times. But it was in the Edo period that this aspect of waka developed and reached an artistic peak. Still, most waka poets kept to ancient tradition or made those reformation another stereotype, and waka was not a vibrant genre in general at the end of this period.
magazine were one example, but that magazine was fairly short-lived. A young high school student, Otori You, later known as Akiko Yosano, and Ishikawa Takuboku
contributed to Myōjō. In 1980, the New York Times published a representative work:
Masaoka Shiki
's poems and writing (as well as the work of his friends and disciples) have had a more lasting influence. The magazine Hototogisu, which he founded, still publishes. He is sometimes called the Father of Modern Tanka. He coined the term tanka as a replacement for waka.
In the Meiji period
, Shiki claimed the situation with waka should be rectified, and waka should be modernized in the same way as other things in the country. He praised the style of Man'yōshū, calling it manly, as opposed to the style of Kokin Wakashū, which was the ideal type of waka during a thousand-year period, which he denigrated and called feminine. He praised Minamoto no Sanetomo
, the third Shogun
of the Kamakura Shogunate
, who was a disciple of Fujiwara Teika and composed waka in a style much like that in the Man'yōshū.
Following Shiki's death, in the Taishō period
Saito Mokichi
and his friends formed a poetry circle, Araragi
, that praised the Man'yōshū. Using their magazine they spread their influence throughout the country. Their modernization aside, in the court the old traditions still prevailed. The court continues to hold many utakai both officially and privately. The utakai that the emperor holds on the first of the year is called utakai-hajime and it is an important event for waka poets; the Emperor himself releases a single tanka for the public's perusal.
After World War II
, waka began to be considered out-of-date, but since the late 1980s has revived under the example of contemporary poets, such as Tawara Machi. With her 1987 bestselling collection Salad Anniversary, the poet has been credited with revitalizing the tanka for modern Japanese audiences; the book's popularity soared to such a level that she became a national celebrity and was responsible for a surge of average citizens writing tanka.
Today there are many circles of tanka poets. Many newspapers have a weekly tanka column, and there are many professional and amateur tanka poets; Makoto Ooka
's poetry column was published seven days a week for more than 20 years on the front page of Asahi Shimbun
. More recently, as a parting gesture in his weekly email to the nation, outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
offered a tanka poem as thanks to his supporters.
, but the earliest known English-language tanka collection was Ida Henrietta Bean's Tanka, in London, 1899. The first North American tanka collection was Jun Fujita
's Tanka : Poems in Exile, in 1923. Tanka had been previously published in English by other authors, including Sadakichi Hartmann
, who was better known as an art critic than poet.
Tanka publication in English was sporadic until after WWII when various Japanese North American
tanka poets began publishing anthologies and collections in Japanese, English translation, and bi-lingual editions. These efforts apparently began immediately after the poets were released from internment camps in Canada and the United States, but the oldest known anthology is Tana and Nixon's Sounds from the Unknown, 1963, and the Kisaragi Poem Study Group's Maple : poetry by Japanese Canadians with English translation, 1975. Similar works continue to be published sporadically. Because both books were translated from the Japanese, neither was the first anthology of English-language tanka.
Tanka came to the attention of poets writing English-language haiku
in the 1980s, and during the 1990s some of the better known names in tanka and haiku publication, including Jane Reichhold, Michael McClintock, Sanford Goldstein, Michael Dylan Welch, Janice Bostok, Pat Shelley, Father Neal Lawrence, and George Swede
, published tanka collections and anthologies, or mixed collections containing tanka, haiku and other forms. Though some tanka had been published in haiku magazines, with the out-pouring of tanka in Mirrors and the beginning of the Tanka Splendor Awards and resulting yearly anthologies by AHA Books, the interest in English tanka began to blossom.
A Gift of Tanka by Jane Reichhold and the publication of Sanford Goldstein's At the Hut of the Small Mind,and Father Lawrence's Shining Moments by AHA Books opened the way for more tanka books, as did Michael Dylan Welch's anthology Footsteps in the Fog and then Jane and Werner Reichhold's anthology Wind Five Folded.
Kenneth Rexroth
's The Love Poems of Marichiko was also published. Originally presented as a translation from the Japanese, they were later shown to have been a hoax – the poems were Rexroth's own work.
Unlike Japanese poets who often write primarily or only in one poetry form, many English-language tanka poets also write other short poetry forms including haiku
, senryū
, and cinquain
. Most early English-language tanka appeared in journals that featured a variety of small poem forms (although the main American haiku magazines published only haiku and sometimes senryu). Lynx (co-editors Jane and Werner Reichhold) has since 1992 been an outlet for tanka and tanka sequences in print and now online. Michael Dylan Welch's Woodnotes journal also published tanka prominently, starting in 1990 and continuing through to its last issue in 1997, and also published winners of the annual tanka contest run by the Haiku Poets of Northern California. The HPNC tanka contest, along with the Tanka Splendor contest, was one of the earliest contests for English-language tanka and is still continuing.
Only recently have there been journals devoted exclusively to tanka, including American Tanka
(1996) in the United States, edited by Laura Maffei and Tangled Hair in Britain, edited by John Barlow. The first English-language tanka journal, Five Lines Down, began in 1994, edited by Sanford Goldstein and Kenneth Tanemura, but lasted only a few issues. The Tanka Society of America was founded by Michael Dylan Welch in April 2000. This society now publishes the tanka journal Ribbons. Tanka Canada also publishes a journal titled Gusts, and the Anglo-Japanese Tanka Society (UK) hosts a web site with tanka and articles.
Tanka publication expanded through the 1990s with the establishment of additional journals, online forums, and contests such as the Tanka Splendor Awards, but broadened in the early 21st century with the establishment of several tanka organizations working in English, and a proliferation of international sources. Various special-interest tanka groups have also sprouted, such as "Mountain Home," named for the English translation of the title of the famous collection of Saigyo's waka, the Sanka Shu ("Mountain Home Collection"). The number of literary journals (print and web) that regularly publish tanka in English now numbers in excess of twenty. Noteworthy journals not mentioned elsewhere include Modern English Tanka, Eucalypt, The Tanka Journal, Atlas Poetica, and more.
Genre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
of classical Japanese verse
Japanese poetry
Japanese poets first encountered Chinese poetry during the Tang Dynasty. It took them several hundred years to digest the foreign impact, make it a part of their culture and merge it with their literary tradition in their mother tongue, and begin to develop the diversity of their native poetry. For...
and one of the major genres of Japanese literature
Japanese literature
Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the diffusion of Buddhism in Japan...
. The term was coined during the Heian period
Heian period
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...
, and was used to distinguish Japanese-language poetry from kanshi
Kanshi (poetry)
is a Japanese term for Chinese poetry in general as well as the poetry written in Chinese by Japanese poets. It literally means "Han poetry". Kanshi was the most popular form of poetry during the early Heian period in Japan among Japanese aristocrats and proliferated until the modern period.The...
(poetry written in Chinese by Japanese poets), and later from renga
Renga
' is a genre of Japanese collaborative poetry. A renga consists of at least two or stanzas, usually many more. The opening stanza of the renga, called the , became the basis for the modern haiku form of poetry....
.
The term waka originally encompassed a number of differing forms, principally tanka (短歌, "short poem") and chōka (長歌, "long poem"), but also including bussokusekika
Bussokusekika
, also known as Bussokuseki no Uta, are poems inscribed beside the stone Buddha Foot monument at Yakushi Temple in Nara.Numbering twenty one poems in total, they are divided into two sections:*Seventeen poems praising the virtue of Buddha....
, sedōka (旋頭歌, "memorized [head repeated] poem") and katauta (片歌, "poem fragment"). These last three forms, however, fell into disuse at the beginning of the Heian period
Heian period
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...
, and chōka vanished soon afterwards. Thus, the term waka came in time to refer only to tanka.
Japanese poet and critic Masaoka Shiki
Masaoka Shiki
, pen-name of Masaoka Noboru , was a Japanese poet, author, and literary critic in Meiji period Japan. Shiki is regarded as a major figure in the development of modern haiku poetry...
created the term tanka in the early twentieth century for his statement that waka should be renewed and modernized. Until then, poems of this nature had been referred to as waka or simply uta ("song, poem"). Haiku
Haiku
' , plural haiku, is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities:* The essence of haiku is "cutting"...
is also a term of his invention, used for his revision of standalone hokku
Hokku
is the opening stanza of a Japanese orthodox collaborative linked poem, renga, or of its later derivative, renku . From the time of Matsuo Bashō , the hokku began to appear as an independent poem, and was also incorporated in haibun , and haiga...
, with the same idea.
Traditionally waka in general has had no concept of rhyme
Rhyme
A rhyme is a repetition of similar sounds in two or more words and is most often used in poetry and songs. The word "rhyme" may also refer to a short poem, such as a rhyming couplet or other brief rhyming poem such as nursery rhymes.-Etymology:...
(indeed, certain arrangements of rhymes, even accidental, were considered dire faults in a poem), or even of line. Instead of lines, waka has the unit (連) and the phrase (句). (Units or phrases are often turned into lines when poetry is translated or transliterated into Western languages, however.)
Chōka
Chōka consists of 5-7 Japanese sound units phrases repeated at least twice, and concludes with a 5-7-7 ending.The briefest chōka documented was made by Yamanoue no Okura
Yamanoue no Okura
Yamanoue no Okura was a Japanese poet, the best known for his poems of children and commoners. He was a member of Japanese missions to Tang China. He was also a contributor to the Man'yōshū and his writing had a strong Chinese influence. Unlike other Japanese poetry of the time, his work...
in the Nara period
Nara period
The of the history of Japan covers the years from AD 710 to 794. Empress Gemmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō . Except for 5 years , when the capital was briefly moved again, it remained the capital of Japanese civilization until Emperor Kammu established a new capital, Nagaoka-kyō, in 784...
, and goes:
瓜食めば子ども思ほゆ栗食めばまして思はゆ何処より来りしものそ眼交にもとな懸りて安眠し寝さぬ (Man'yōshū: 0337),
which consists of a pattern 5-7 5-7 5-7 5-7-7:
| 瓜食めば | Uri hameba | When I eat melons |
| 子ども思ほゆ | Kodomo Omohoyu | My children come to my mind; |
| 栗食めば | Kuri hameba | When I eat chestnuts |
| まして思はゆ | Mashite Omowayu | The longing is even worse. |
| 何処より | Izuku yori | Where do they come from, |
| 来りしものそ | Kitarishi monoso | Flickering before my eyes. |
| 眼交に | Manakai ni | Making me helpless |
| もとな懸りて | Motona kakarite | Endlessly night after night. |
| 安眠し寝さぬ | Yasui shi nesanu | Not letting me sleep in peace? |
Tanka
Tanka consists of five units (often treated as separate lines when Romanized or translated) usually with the following pattern of onjiOnji
On is Japanese for "sound". It is used to mean the phonetic units counted in haiku, tanka and other such poetic forms. Known as "morae" to English-speaking linguists, the modern Japanese term for the linguistic concept is hyōon moji ....
:
- 5-7-5-7-7.
The 5-7-5 is called the kami-no-ku ("upper phrase"), and the 7-7 is called the shimo-no-ku ("lower phrase").
Tanka is a much older form of Japanese poetry than haiku
Haiku
' , plural haiku, is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities:* The essence of haiku is "cutting"...
.
The chōka above is followed by an envoi, also written by Okura:
| 銀も | Shirokane mo | What are they to me, |
| 金も玉も | Kugane mo tama mo | Silver, or gold, or jewels? |
| 何せむに | Nanisemu ni | How could they ever |
| まされる宝 | Masareru takara | Equal the greater treasure |
| 子にしかめやも | Koni shikame yamo | That is a child? They can not. |
[English translation by Edwin Cranston
Edwin Cranston
Edwin Augustus Cranston is a Professor of Japanese literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Harvard University. His primary research interest is the classical literature of Japan, especially traditional poetic forms.-History:...
]
Even in the late Asuka period
Asuka period
The , was a period in the history of Japan lasting from 538 to 710 , although its beginning could be said to overlap with the preceding Kofun period...
, waka poets such as Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro was a Japanese poet and aristocrat of the late Asuka period. He was the most prominent of the poets included in the Man'yōshū, and was particularly represented in volumes 1 and 2. In Japan, he is considered one of the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals...
made tanka as an independent work. It was suitable to express their private interest in life and expression, in comparison with chōka, which was solemn enough to express serious and deep emotion when facing a significant event.
In the early Heian period
Heian period
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...
(at the beginning of the 10th century), chōka was seldom written and tanka became the main form of waka. Since then, the generic term waka came to be almost synonymous with tanka. Side by side with the new prominence of tanka came the development of forms of tanka prose
Tanka prose
Tanka prose is a literary genre whose individual compositions employ two modes of writing -— verse and prose. It was first composed by Japanese poets, often in the elementary form of a prose commentary or anecdote to accompany a poem, and only later in the more extended forms of memoir and diary...
, the melding of tanka and prose in single literary compositions. Famous examples of such works are the diaries of Ki no Tsurayuki
Ki no Tsurayuki
was a Japanese author, poet and courtier of the Heian period.Tsurayuki was a son of Ki no Mochiyuki. He became a waka poet in the 890s. In 905, under the order of Emperor Daigo, he was one of four poets selected to compile the Kokin Wakashū, an anthology of poetry.After holding a few offices in...
and Izumi Shikibu
Izumi Shikibu
was a mid Heian period Japanese poet. She is a member of the . She was the contemporary of Murasaki Shikibu, and Akazome Emon at the court of Joto Mon'in.-Early life:...
, as well as such collections of poem tales as The Tales of Ise
The Tales of Ise
is a Japanese collection of tanka poems and associated narratives, dating from the Heian period. The current version collects 125 sections, with each combining poems and prose, giving a total of 209 poems in most versions....
and The Tales of Yamato
Yamato Monogatari
is a collection of tales and waka poetry from the Heian period of Japan. The exact date of the completion of the text is unknown, but it majority of the text was completed in the year 951 by an unknown author...
.
The Heian period also saw the invention of a new tanka-based game: one poet recited or created half of a tanka, and the other finished it off. This sequential, collaborative tanka was called renga
Renga
' is a genre of Japanese collaborative poetry. A renga consists of at least two or stanzas, usually many more. The opening stanza of the renga, called the , became the basis for the modern haiku form of poetry....
("linked poem"). (The form and rules of renga developed further during medieval times; see the renga
Renga
' is a genre of Japanese collaborative poetry. A renga consists of at least two or stanzas, usually many more. The opening stanza of the renga, called the , became the basis for the modern haiku form of poetry....
article for more details.)
Various forms of wordplay were commonly employed in tanka, including standardized descriptive words called makurakotoba
Makurakotoba
, literally "pillow word", are figures of speech used in Japanese waka poetry, where epithets are used in association with certain words. Their usage is akin to “grey-eyed Athena” of in the Ancient Greek epics of Homer...
, puns that functioned to unite two different images called kakekotoba
Kakekotoba
A or pivot word is a rhetorical device used in the Japanese poetic form waka. This trope uses the phonetic reading of a grouping of kanji to suggest several interpretations: first on the literal level , then on subsidiary homophonic levels...
, and in which the beginning and ending syllables of a poem spelled out a significant word.
Other forms
There are still other forms of waka. In ancient times its moraic form was not fixed – it could vary from the standard 5 and 7 to also 3, 4, 6, longer than 7 morae part in a waka. Besides that, there were many other forms like:- BussokusekikaBussokusekika, also known as Bussokuseki no Uta, are poems inscribed beside the stone Buddha Foot monument at Yakushi Temple in Nara.Numbering twenty one poems in total, they are divided into two sections:*Seventeen poems praising the virtue of Buddha....
: This form carved on a slab of slate – the Bussokuseki (silhouette of Buddha's feet stone) – at the Yakushi-jiYakushi-jiis one of the most famous imperial and ancient Buddhist temples in Japan, located in Nara. The temple is the headquarters of the Hossō school of Japanese Buddhism...
temple in NaraNara, Narais the capital city of Nara Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan. The city occupies the northern part of Nara Prefecture, directly bordering Kyoto Prefecture...
. Also recorded in Man'yōshū. The pattern is 5-7-5-7-7-7. - Sedōka (旋頭歌）: Man'yōshū and Kokin Wakashū recorded this form. The pattern is 5-7-7-5-7-7.
- Katauta (片歌）: Man'yōshū recorded this form. Katauta means 'Half song' in Japanese. The pattern is 5-7-7, just same as a half part of sedōka.
Poetic culture
In ancient times, it was a custom between two writers to exchange waka instead of letters in prose. In particular, it was common between lovers. Reflecting this custom, five of the twenty volumes of the Kokin Wakashū gathered waka for love. In the Heian period the lovers would exchange waka in the morning when lovers met at the woman's home. The exchanged waka were called Kinuginu (後朝), because it was thought the man wanted to stay with his lover and when the sun rose he had almost no time to put on his clothes on which he had lain instead of a mattress (it being the custom in those days). Works of this period, The Pillow BookThe Pillow Book
is a book of observations and musings recorded by Sei Shōnagon during her time as court lady to Empress Consort Teishi during the 990s and early 11th century in Heian Japan. The book was completed in the year 1002....
and The Tale of Genji
The Tale of Genji
is a classic work of Japanese literature attributed to the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th century, around the peak of the Heian period. It is sometimes called the world's first novel, the first modern novel, the first psychological novel or the first novel still to be...
provide us with such examples in the life of aristocrats. Murasaki Shikibu
Murasaki Shikibu
Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court during the Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1012...
uses 795 waka in her The Tale of Genji as waka her characters made in the story. Some of these are her own, although most are taken from existing sources. Shortly, making and reciting waka became a part of aristocratic culture. They recited a part of appropriate waka freely to imply something on an occasion.
Much like with tea
Japanese tea ceremony
The Japanese tea ceremony, also called the Way of Tea, is a Japanese cultural activity involving the ceremonial preparation and presentation of matcha, powdered green tea. In Japanese, it is called . The manner in which it is performed, or the art of its performance, is called...
, there were a number of rituals and events surrounding the composition, presentation, and judgment of waka. There were two types of waka party that produced occasional poetry
Occasional poetry
Occasional poetry is poetry composed for a particular occasion. In the history of literature, it is often studied in connection with orality, performance, and patronage. As a term of literary criticism, "occasional poetry" describes the work's purpose and the poet's relation to subject matter...
: Utakai and Utaawase
Utaawase
, poetry contests or waka matches, are a distinctive feature of the Japanese literary landscape from the Heian period. Significant to the development of Japanese poetics, the origin of group composition such as renga, and a stimulus to approaching waka as a unified sequence and not only as...
. Utakai was a party in which all participants wrote a waka and recited them. Utakai derived from Shikai, Kanshi party and was held in occasion people gathered like seasonal party for the New Year, some celebrations for a newborn baby, a birthday, or a newly-built house. Utaawase was a contest in two teams. Themes were determined and a chosen poet from each team wrote a waka for a given theme. The judge appointed a winner for each theme and gave points to the winning team. The team which received the largest sum was the winner. The first recorded Utaawase was held in around 885. At first, Utaawase was playful and mere entertainment, but as the poetic tradition deepened and grew, it turned into a serious aesthetic contest, with considerably more formality.
History
Waka has a long history, first recorded in the early 8th century in the KojikiKojiki
is the oldest extant chronicle in Japan, dating from the early 8th century and composed by Ō no Yasumaro at the request of Empress Gemmei. The Kojiki is a collection of myths concerning the origin of the four home islands of Japan, and the Kami...
and Man'yōshū. Under influence from other genres such as kanshi, Chinese poetry, novels and stories such as Tale of Genji and even Western poetry, it has developed gradually, broadening its repertoire of expression and topics.
In literary critic Donald Keene
Donald Keene
Donald Lawrence Keene is a Japanologist, scholar, teacher, writer, translator and interpreter of Japanese literature and culture. Keene was University Professor Emeritus and Shincho Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature at Columbia University, where he taught for over fifty years...
's books, he uses four large categories:
- Early and Heian Literature (KojikiKojikiis the oldest extant chronicle in Japan, dating from the early 8th century and composed by Ō no Yasumaro at the request of Empress Gemmei. The Kojiki is a collection of myths concerning the origin of the four home islands of Japan, and the Kami...
to past The Tale of GenjiThe Tale of Genjiis a classic work of Japanese literature attributed to the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th century, around the peak of the Heian period. It is sometimes called the world's first novel, the first modern novel, the first psychological novel or the first novel still to be...
to 1185) - The Middle Ages ('chūsei' from 1185, including the KamakuraKamakura periodThe is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura Shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first shogun Minamoto no Yoritomo....
and Muromachi periodMuromachi periodThe is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate, which was officially established in 1338 by the first Muromachi shogun, Ashikaga Takauji, two years after the brief Kemmu restoration of imperial...
s) - Pre-Modern Era (1600–1867, then subdivided into 1600–1770 and 1770–1867)
- Modern Era (post 1867, divided into MeijiMeiji periodThe , also known as the Meiji era, is a Japanese era which extended from September 1868 through July 1912. This period represents the first half of the Empire of Japan.- Meiji Restoration and the emperor :...
(1868–1912), TaishōTaisho periodThe , or Taishō era, is a period in the history of Japan dating from July 30, 1912 to December 25, 1926, coinciding with the reign of the Taishō Emperor. The health of the new emperor was weak, which prompted the shift in political power from the old oligarchic group of elder statesmen to the Diet...
(1912–1926) and ShōwaShowa periodThe , or Shōwa era, is the period of Japanese history corresponding to the reign of the Shōwa Emperor, Hirohito, from December 25, 1926 through January 7, 1989.The Shōwa period was longer than the reign of any previous Japanese emperor...
(from 1927)).
Ancient
The earliest waka recorded in the KojikiKojiki
is the oldest extant chronicle in Japan, dating from the early 8th century and composed by Ō no Yasumaro at the request of Empress Gemmei. The Kojiki is a collection of myths concerning the origin of the four home islands of Japan, and the Kami...
and Nihon Shoki
Nihon Shoki
The , sometimes translated as The Chronicles of Japan, is the second oldest book of classical Japanese history. It is more elaborate and detailed than the Kojiki, the oldest, and has proven to be an important tool for historians and archaeologists as it includes the most complete extant historical...
, were not divided into subcategories of strict forms. Nor did the waka in the Man'yōshū have fixed forms, but poets in the late 7th century, in the time of Empress Saimei
Empress Kogyoku
, also known as , was the 35th and 37th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.Kōgyoku's reign spanned the years from 642-645. Her reign as Saimei encompassed 655-661...
began to create chōka and tanka in the forms extant today.
The most ancient waka were recorded in the 20 volumes of the Man'yōshū, the oldest surviving waka anthology in Japan. The editor is anonymous
Anonymous work
Anonymous works are works, such as art or literature, that have an anonymous, undisclosed, or unknown creator or author. In the United States it is legally defined as "a work on the copies or phonorecords of which no natural person is identified as author."...
, but it is believed that the final editor of the Man'yōshū was Ōtomo no Yakamochi
Otomo no Yakamochi
was a Japanese statesman and waka poet in the Nara period. He is a member of the . He was born into the prestigious Ōtomo clan; his grandfather was Ōtomo no Amaro and his father was Ōtomo no Tabito. Ōtomo no Kakimochi was his younger brother, and Ōtomo no Sakanoe no Iratsume his aunt...
. He was a waka poet who belonged to the youngest generation represented in the anthology; indeed, the last volume is dominated by his poems. The first waka of volume 1 was by Emperor Ōjin
Emperor Ojin
, also known as Homutawake or , was the 15th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.No firm dates can be assigned to this emperor's life or reign, but he is conventionally considered to have reigned from 270 to 310....
. Nukata no Ōkimi, Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro was a Japanese poet and aristocrat of the late Asuka period. He was the most prominent of the poets included in the Man'yōshū, and was particularly represented in volumes 1 and 2. In Japan, he is considered one of the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals...
, Yamabe no Akahito
Yamabe no Akahito
Yamabe no Akahito was a poet of the Nara period in Japan. The Man'yōshū, an ancient anthology, contains 13 choka and 37 tanka of his. Many of his poems were composed during journeys with Emperor Shōmu between 724 and 736...
, Yamanoue no Okura
Yamanoue no Okura
Yamanoue no Okura was a Japanese poet, the best known for his poems of children and commoners. He was a member of Japanese missions to Tang China. He was also a contributor to the Man'yōshū and his writing had a strong Chinese influence. Unlike other Japanese poetry of the time, his work...
, Ōtomo no Tabito
Otomo no Tabito
was a Japanese poet, best known as the father of Ōtomo no Yakamochi, who contributed to compiling the Man'yōshū alongside his father. Tabito was a contemporary of Hitomaro, but lacked his success in the Imperial Court...
and his son Yakamochi were the greatest poets in this anthology. The Man'yōshū recorded not only the works of those royal and noble men, but also works of women and commoners whose names were not recorded. The main topics of the Man'yōshū were love, sadness (especially on the occasion of someone's death), and other miscellaneous topics.
Heian revival
During the Nara period and the early Heian period, the court favored Chinese-style poetry (kanshi) and the waka art form stagnated. But in the 9th century, Japan stopped sending official envoys to Tang dynasty ChinaTang Dynasty
The Tang Dynasty was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire...
. This severing of ties, combined with Japan's geographic isolation, essentially forced the court to cultivate native talent and look inward, synthesizing Chinese poetic styles and techniques with local traditions. The waka form again began flourishing, and in 905, Emperor Daigo
Emperor Daigo
was the 60th emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.Daigo's reign spanned the years from 897 through 930. He is named after his place of burial.-Traditional narrative:...
ordered the creation of an anthology of waka. The famous waka poets of the day (including Ki no Tsurayuki
Ki no Tsurayuki
was a Japanese author, poet and courtier of the Heian period.Tsurayuki was a son of Ki no Mochiyuki. He became a waka poet in the 890s. In 905, under the order of Emperor Daigo, he was one of four poets selected to compile the Kokin Wakashū, an anthology of poetry.After holding a few offices in...
) gathered the waka of ancient poets and their contemporaries and named the anthology "Kokin Wakashū", meaning Collection of Ancient and Modern Japanese Poems. This was the first waka anthology edited and issued under imperial auspices, and it commenced a long and distinguished tradition of imperial anthologies of waka that continued up to the Muromachi period.
Kamakura to Muromachi Periods
After the Heian period, during the Kamakura periodKamakura period
The is a period of Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura Shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura by the first shogun Minamoto no Yoritomo....
and later, renga
Renga
' is a genre of Japanese collaborative poetry. A renga consists of at least two or stanzas, usually many more. The opening stanza of the renga, called the , became the basis for the modern haiku form of poetry....
, a form of collaborative linked poetry, began to develop. In the late Heian period, three of the last great waka poets appeared: Fujiwara no Shunzei
Fujiwara no Shunzei
was a noted Japanese poet and nobleman, son of Fujiwara no Toshitada. He was also known as Fujiwara no Toshinari or Shakua ; in his younger days , he gave his name as Akihiro , but in 1167, changed to Shunzei...
, his son Fujiwara no Teika
Fujiwara no Teika
Fujiwara no Teika , also known as Fujiwara no Sadaie or Sada-ie, was a Japanese poet, critic, calligrapher, novelist, anthologist, scribe, and scholar of the late Heian and early Kamakura periods...
, and Emperor Go-Toba
Emperor Go-Toba
was the 82nd emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. His reign spanned the years from 1183 through 1198....
. Emperor Go-Toba ordered the creation of a new anthology and joined in editing it. The anthology was named Shin Kokin Wakashū. He edited it again and again until he died in 1239. Teika made copies of ancient books and wrote on the theory of waka. His descendants, and indeed almost all subsequent poets, such as Shōtetsu
Shotetsu
Shōtetsu was a Japanese poet during the Muromachi period, and is considered to have been the last poet in the courtly waka tradition ; a number of his disciples were important in the development of the renga art form, which led to the haiku....
, taught his methods and studied his poems. The courtly poetry scenes were historically dominated by a few noble clans and allies, each of which staked out a position.
By this period, a number of clans had fallen by the wayside, leaving the Reizei
Reizei family
The Reizei family is a branch of the clan Fujiwara.For eight centuries, the family secretly preserved, under imperial order, an important collection of documents. On April 4, 1980, this collection of about 200,000 pieces was made public by Tametō Reizei . The following year, a library in Tokyo was...
and the Nijo family
Nijo family
The was one of five regent houses, branches of the Fujiwara clan, a powerful noble family that monopolized regent positions Sesshō and Kampaku in Japan. The family was founded by Kujō Michiie's second son Nijō Yoshizane, while his third son Ichijō Sanetsune founded Ichijō family.-External links:* ...
; the former stood for "progressive" approaches, the varied use of the "ten styles" and novelty, while the latter conservatively hewed to already established norms and the "ushin" (deep feelings) style that dominated courtly poetry. Eventually, the Nijo family became defunct, leading to the ascendancy of the "liberal" Reizei family. Their innovative reign was soon deposed by the Asukai family, aided by the Ashikaga shogun, Ashikaga Yoshinori.
In the Muromachi period
Muromachi period
The is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate, which was officially established in 1338 by the first Muromachi shogun, Ashikaga Takauji, two years after the brief Kemmu restoration of imperial...
, renga began to be popular in the court and people around it. It spread to the priestly classes and thence to wealthy commoners. In much the same way as waka, renga anthologies were produced under the imperial aegis.
As momentum and popular interest shifted to the renga form, the tanka style was left to the Imperial court. Conservative tendencies exacerbated the loss of life and flexibility. A tradition named Kokin-denju, the heritage of Kokin Wakashū, was developed. It was a system on how to analyze the Kokin Wakashū and included the secret (or precisely lost) meaning of words. Studying waka degenerated into learning the many intricate rules, allusions, theories, and secrets, so as to produce tanka that would be accepted by the court.
There were comical waka already in the Kojiki
Kojiki
is the oldest extant chronicle in Japan, dating from the early 8th century and composed by Ō no Yasumaro at the request of Empress Gemmei. The Kojiki is a collection of myths concerning the origin of the four home islands of Japan, and the Kami...
and the Man'yōshū, but the noble style of waka in the court inhibited and scorned such aspects of waka. Renga was soon in the same position with many codes and strictures reflecting literary tradition. Haikai no renga (also called just haikai
Haikai
Haikai is a poetic genre that includes a number of forms which embrace the aesthetics of haikai no renga, and what Bashō referred to as the "poetic spirit" , including haiku, renku , haibun, haiga and senryū ."Haikai" is sometimes used as an abbreviation for "haikai no...
(playful renga)) and kyōka, comical waka, were a reaction to this seriousness. But in the Edo-period waka itself lost almost all of its flexibility and began to echo and repeat old poems and themes.
Tokugawa shogunate period
In the early Edo period, waka was not a fashionable genre. Newly created haikai no renga (of whose hokkuHokku
is the opening stanza of a Japanese orthodox collaborative linked poem, renga, or of its later derivative, renku . From the time of Matsuo Bashō , the hokku began to appear as an independent poem, and was also incorporated in haibun , and haiga...
, or opening verse, haiku
Haiku
' , plural haiku, is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities:* The essence of haiku is "cutting"...
was a late 19th-century revision) was the favored genre. This tendency was kept during this period, but in the late Edo period waka faced new trends from beyond the court. Motoori Norinaga
Motoori Norinaga
was a Japanese scholar of Kokugaku active during the Edo period. He is probably the best known and most prominent of all scholars in this tradition.-Life:...
, the great reviver of the traditional Japanese literature, attempted to revive waka as a way of providing "traditional feeling expressed in genuine Japanese way". He wrote waka, and waka became an important form to his followers, the Kokugaku
Kokugaku
Kokugaku was a National revival, or, school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Tokugawa period...
scholars.
In Echigo province
Echigo Province
was an old province in north-central Japan, on the shores of the Sea of Japan. It was sometimes called , with Echizen and Etchū Provinces. Today the area is part of Niigata Prefecture, which also includes the island which was the old Sado Province. This province was the northernmost part of the...
a Buddhist priest, Ryōkan
Ryokan
was a quiet and eccentric Sōtō Zen Buddhist monk who lived much of his life as a hermit. Ryōkan is remembered for his poetry and calligraphy, which present the essence of Zen life.-Early life:...
, composed many waka in a naïve style intentionally avoiding complex rules and the traditional way of waka. He belonged to another great tradition of waka: waka for expressing religious feeling. His frank expression of his feeling found many admirers, then and now. In the cities, a comical, ironic and satiric form of waka emerged. It was called kyōka (狂歌), mad poem, and was loved by intellectual people in big cities like Edo
Edo
, also romanized as Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868...
and Osaka
Osaka
is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...
. It was not precisely a new form; satirical waka was a style known since ancient times. But it was in the Edo period that this aspect of waka developed and reached an artistic peak. Still, most waka poets kept to ancient tradition or made those reformation another stereotype, and waka was not a vibrant genre in general at the end of this period.
Modern
The modern revival of tanka began with several poets who began to publish literary magazines, gathering their friends and disciples as contributors. Yosano Tekkan and the poets that were associated with his MyōjōMyojo
' was the title of a monthly literary magazine first published in Japan between February 1900 and November 1908.The name Myōjō can be translates as either Bright Star or Morning Star. It was the organ of a poetry circle called Shinshisha which had been founded by Yosano Tekkan in 1899...
magazine were one example, but that magazine was fairly short-lived. A young high school student, Otori You, later known as Akiko Yosano, and Ishikawa Takuboku
Ishikawa Takuboku
was a Japanese poet. He died of tuberculosis. Well known as both a tanka and 'modern-style' or 'free-style' poet, he began as a member of the Myōjō group of naturalist poets but later joined the "socialistic" group of Japanese poets and renounced naturalism.-Major works:His major works were two...
contributed to Myōjō. In 1980, the New York Times published a representative work:
-
- On the white sand
- Of the beach of a small isle
- In the Eastern Sea
- I, my face streaked with tears,
- Am playing with a crab.
- – Ishikawa Takuboku
Masaoka Shiki
Masaoka Shiki
, pen-name of Masaoka Noboru , was a Japanese poet, author, and literary critic in Meiji period Japan. Shiki is regarded as a major figure in the development of modern haiku poetry...
's poems and writing (as well as the work of his friends and disciples) have had a more lasting influence. The magazine Hototogisu, which he founded, still publishes. He is sometimes called the Father of Modern Tanka. He coined the term tanka as a replacement for waka.
In the Meiji period
Meiji period
The , also known as the Meiji era, is a Japanese era which extended from September 1868 through July 1912. This period represents the first half of the Empire of Japan.- Meiji Restoration and the emperor :...
, Shiki claimed the situation with waka should be rectified, and waka should be modernized in the same way as other things in the country. He praised the style of Man'yōshū, calling it manly, as opposed to the style of Kokin Wakashū, which was the ideal type of waka during a thousand-year period, which he denigrated and called feminine. He praised Minamoto no Sanetomo
Minamoto no Sanetomo
Minamoto no Sanetomo was the third shogun of the Kamakura shogunate Sanetomo was the second son of the founder of the Kamakura shogunate Minamoto no Yoritomo, his mother was Hōjō Masako, and his older brother was the second Kamakura shogun Minamoto no Yoriie.His childhood name was...
, the third Shogun
Shogun
A was one of the hereditary military dictators of Japan from 1192 to 1867. In this period, the shoguns, or their shikken regents , were the de facto rulers of Japan though they were nominally appointed by the emperor...
of the Kamakura Shogunate
Kamakura shogunate
The Kamakura shogunate was a military dictatorship in Japan headed by the shoguns from 1185 to 1333. It was based in Kamakura. The Kamakura period draws its name from the capital of the shogunate...
, who was a disciple of Fujiwara Teika and composed waka in a style much like that in the Man'yōshū.
Following Shiki's death, in the Taishō period
Taisho period
The , or Taishō era, is a period in the history of Japan dating from July 30, 1912 to December 25, 1926, coinciding with the reign of the Taishō Emperor. The health of the new emperor was weak, which prompted the shift in political power from the old oligarchic group of elder statesmen to the Diet...
Saito Mokichi
Saito Mokichi
was a Japanese poet of the Taishō period, a member of Araragi school, and a psychiatrist.The psychiatrist Shigeta Saitō is his first son, the novelist Morio Kita is his second son and the essayist Yuka Saitō is his granddaughter....
and his friends formed a poetry circle, Araragi
Araragi (magazine)
was a Japanese literary magazine of the prewar period.Started in 1908 by Itō Sachio, it was a leading magazine of tanka . A group of poets who contributed to the magazine had come to be known as the Araragi school....
, that praised the Man'yōshū. Using their magazine they spread their influence throughout the country. Their modernization aside, in the court the old traditions still prevailed. The court continues to hold many utakai both officially and privately. The utakai that the emperor holds on the first of the year is called utakai-hajime and it is an important event for waka poets; the Emperor himself releases a single tanka for the public's perusal.
After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, waka began to be considered out-of-date, but since the late 1980s has revived under the example of contemporary poets, such as Tawara Machi. With her 1987 bestselling collection Salad Anniversary, the poet has been credited with revitalizing the tanka for modern Japanese audiences; the book's popularity soared to such a level that she became a national celebrity and was responsible for a surge of average citizens writing tanka.
Today there are many circles of tanka poets. Many newspapers have a weekly tanka column, and there are many professional and amateur tanka poets; Makoto Ooka
Makoto Ooka
is a Japanese poet and literary critic.Ooka's poetry column was published without a break seven days a week for more than 20 years on the front page of Asahi Shimbun, which is Japan's leading national newspaper.-Notes:...
's poetry column was published seven days a week for more than 20 years on the front page of Asahi Shimbun
Asahi Shimbun
The is the second most circulated out of the five national newspapers in Japan. Its circulation, which was 7.96 million for its morning edition and 3.1 million for its evening edition as of June 2010, was second behind that of Yomiuri Shimbun...
. More recently, as a parting gesture in his weekly email to the nation, outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
Junichiro Koizumi
is a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 2001 to 2006. He retired from politics when his term in parliament ended.Widely seen as a maverick leader of the Liberal Democratic Party , he became known as an economic reformer, focusing on Japan's government debt and the...
offered a tanka poem as thanks to his supporters.
Tanka written in English
The writing of tanka in English has been less famous than the writing of English-language haikuHaiku in English
Haiku in English is a development of the Japanese haiku poetic form in the English language.Contemporary haiku are written in many languages, but most poets outside of Japan are concentrated in the English-speaking countries....
, but the earliest known English-language tanka collection was Ida Henrietta Bean's Tanka, in London, 1899. The first North American tanka collection was Jun Fujita
Jun Fujita
Jun Fujita was an Issei photojournalist, photographer, silent film actor, and published poet. He was the first Japanese-American photojournalist...
's Tanka : Poems in Exile, in 1923. Tanka had been previously published in English by other authors, including Sadakichi Hartmann
Sadakichi Hartmann
Carl Sadakichi Hartmann was a critic and poet of German and Japanese descent.Hartmann, born on the artificial island of Dejima, Nagasaki and raised in Germany, became an American citizen in 1894. An important early participant in modernism, Hartmann was a friend of such diverse figures as Walt...
, who was better known as an art critic than poet.
Tanka publication in English was sporadic until after WWII when various Japanese North American
Japanese American
are American people of Japanese heritage. Japanese Americans have historically been among the three largest Asian American communities, but in recent decades have become the sixth largest group at roughly 1,204,205, including those of mixed-race or mixed-ethnicity...
tanka poets began publishing anthologies and collections in Japanese, English translation, and bi-lingual editions. These efforts apparently began immediately after the poets were released from internment camps in Canada and the United States, but the oldest known anthology is Tana and Nixon's Sounds from the Unknown, 1963, and the Kisaragi Poem Study Group's Maple : poetry by Japanese Canadians with English translation, 1975. Similar works continue to be published sporadically. Because both books were translated from the Japanese, neither was the first anthology of English-language tanka.
Tanka came to the attention of poets writing English-language haiku
Haiku
' , plural haiku, is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities:* The essence of haiku is "cutting"...
in the 1980s, and during the 1990s some of the better known names in tanka and haiku publication, including Jane Reichhold, Michael McClintock, Sanford Goldstein, Michael Dylan Welch, Janice Bostok, Pat Shelley, Father Neal Lawrence, and George Swede
George Swede
George Swede , is a Canadian psychologist, poet and children's writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario...
, published tanka collections and anthologies, or mixed collections containing tanka, haiku and other forms. Though some tanka had been published in haiku magazines, with the out-pouring of tanka in Mirrors and the beginning of the Tanka Splendor Awards and resulting yearly anthologies by AHA Books, the interest in English tanka began to blossom.
A Gift of Tanka by Jane Reichhold and the publication of Sanford Goldstein's At the Hut of the Small Mind,and Father Lawrence's Shining Moments by AHA Books opened the way for more tanka books, as did Michael Dylan Welch's anthology Footsteps in the Fog and then Jane and Werner Reichhold's anthology Wind Five Folded.
Kenneth Rexroth
Kenneth Rexroth
Kenneth Rexroth was an American poet, translator and critical essayist. He is regarded as a central figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, and paved the groundwork for the movement...
's The Love Poems of Marichiko was also published. Originally presented as a translation from the Japanese, they were later shown to have been a hoax – the poems were Rexroth's own work.
Unlike Japanese poets who often write primarily or only in one poetry form, many English-language tanka poets also write other short poetry forms including haiku
Haiku
' , plural haiku, is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities:* The essence of haiku is "cutting"...
, senryū
Senryu
is a Japanese form of short poetry similar to haiku in construction: three lines with 17 or fewer total morae . Senryū tend to be about human foibles while haiku tend to be about nature, and senryū are often cynical or darkly humorous while haiku are more serious...
, and cinquain
Cinquain
Cinquain is a class of poetic forms that employ a 5-line pattern. Earlier used to describe any five-line form, it now refers to one of several forms that are defined by specific rules and guidelines.-Crapsey cinquain:...
. Most early English-language tanka appeared in journals that featured a variety of small poem forms (although the main American haiku magazines published only haiku and sometimes senryu). Lynx (co-editors Jane and Werner Reichhold) has since 1992 been an outlet for tanka and tanka sequences in print and now online. Michael Dylan Welch's Woodnotes journal also published tanka prominently, starting in 1990 and continuing through to its last issue in 1997, and also published winners of the annual tanka contest run by the Haiku Poets of Northern California. The HPNC tanka contest, along with the Tanka Splendor contest, was one of the earliest contests for English-language tanka and is still continuing.
Only recently have there been journals devoted exclusively to tanka, including American Tanka
American Tanka
American Tanka is a U.S. literary journal devoted to the publication of English language tanka poetry. Founded in 1996, it is edited and published by Laura Maffei and headquartered in Staten Island, New York...
(1996) in the United States, edited by Laura Maffei and Tangled Hair in Britain, edited by John Barlow. The first English-language tanka journal, Five Lines Down, began in 1994, edited by Sanford Goldstein and Kenneth Tanemura, but lasted only a few issues. The Tanka Society of America was founded by Michael Dylan Welch in April 2000. This society now publishes the tanka journal Ribbons. Tanka Canada also publishes a journal titled Gusts, and the Anglo-Japanese Tanka Society (UK) hosts a web site with tanka and articles.
Tanka publication expanded through the 1990s with the establishment of additional journals, online forums, and contests such as the Tanka Splendor Awards, but broadened in the early 21st century with the establishment of several tanka organizations working in English, and a proliferation of international sources. Various special-interest tanka groups have also sprouted, such as "Mountain Home," named for the English translation of the title of the famous collection of Saigyo's waka, the Sanka Shu ("Mountain Home Collection"). The number of literary journals (print and web) that regularly publish tanka in English now numbers in excess of twenty. Noteworthy journals not mentioned elsewhere include Modern English Tanka, Eucalypt, The Tanka Journal, Atlas Poetica, and more.
Japan
- Kakinomoto no HitomaroKakinomoto no HitomaroKakinomoto no Hitomaro was a Japanese poet and aristocrat of the late Asuka period. He was the most prominent of the poets included in the Man'yōshū, and was particularly represented in volumes 1 and 2. In Japan, he is considered one of the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals...
- Yamabe no AkahitoYamabe no AkahitoYamabe no Akahito was a poet of the Nara period in Japan. The Man'yōshū, an ancient anthology, contains 13 choka and 37 tanka of his. Many of his poems were composed during journeys with Emperor Shōmu between 724 and 736...
- Ōtomo no YakamochiOtomo no Yakamochiwas a Japanese statesman and waka poet in the Nara period. He is a member of the . He was born into the prestigious Ōtomo clan; his grandfather was Ōtomo no Amaro and his father was Ōtomo no Tabito. Ōtomo no Kakimochi was his younger brother, and Ōtomo no Sakanoe no Iratsume his aunt...
- Six best Waka poetsSix best Waka poetsThe Six Immortals of Poetry were famous poets of Waka in the early Heian period of Japanese history. They were:* Henjo* Ariwara no Narihira* Fun'ya no Yasuhide* Kisen* Ono no Komachi* Ōtomo Kuronushi...
- HenjoHenjoSōjō Henjō was a Japanese waka poet and Buddhist priest. His birth name was Yoshimine no Munesada...
- Ariwara no NarihiraAriwara no Narihirawas a Japanese waka poet and aristocrat. He was one of six waka poets referred in the preface in kana to Kokin Wakashū by Ki no Tsurayuki, and has been named as the hero of The Tales of Ise, whose hero was an anonym in itself but most of whose love affairs could be attributed to Narihira.He was the...
- Hun'ya no Yasuhide
- KisenKisenalso known as was an early Heian period and poet. Little is known about his life other than that he lived in Ujiyama.When Ki no Tsurayuki wrote the of the Kokinshū, he selected Kisen as one of the whose work was to be considered as superior. Tsurayuki says the following to comment on Kisen's...
- Ono no KomachiOno no Komachiwas a famous Japanese waka poet, one of the Rokkasen—the Six best Waka poets of the early Heian period. She was noted as a rare beauty; Komachi is a symbol of a beautiful woman in Japan. She also figures among the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals....
- Ōtomo KuronushiOtomo Kuronushiwas a Japanese poet, one of the Rokkasen, the "Six Poetic Geniuses" described in the Kokin Wakashū, a classical poetic anthology.-References:*Papinot, Edmond . Historical and geographical dictionary of Japan. Tokyo: Librarie Sansaisha....
- Henjo
- KūkaiKukaiKūkai , also known posthumously as , 774–835, was a Japanese monk, civil servant, scholar, poet, and artist, founder of the Shingon or "True Word" school of Buddhism. Shingon followers usually refer to him by the honorific titles of and ....
- Ki no TsurayukiKi no Tsurayukiwas a Japanese author, poet and courtier of the Heian period.Tsurayuki was a son of Ki no Mochiyuki. He became a waka poet in the 890s. In 905, under the order of Emperor Daigo, he was one of four poets selected to compile the Kokin Wakashū, an anthology of poetry.After holding a few offices in...
- Murasaki ShikibuMurasaki ShikibuMurasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court during the Heian period. She is best known as the author of The Tale of Genji, written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1012...
- Fujiwara no TeikaFujiwara no TeikaFujiwara no Teika , also known as Fujiwara no Sadaie or Sada-ie, was a Japanese poet, critic, calligrapher, novelist, anthologist, scribe, and scholar of the late Heian and early Kamakura periods...
(1162–1241) - Saigyō Hōshi (1118–1190)
- Minamoto no SanetomoMinamoto no SanetomoMinamoto no Sanetomo was the third shogun of the Kamakura shogunate Sanetomo was the second son of the founder of the Kamakura shogunate Minamoto no Yoritomo, his mother was Hōjō Masako, and his older brother was the second Kamakura shogun Minamoto no Yoriie.His childhood name was...
(1192-1219) - Emperor Go-TobaEmperor Go-Tobawas the 82nd emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession. His reign spanned the years from 1183 through 1198....
(1180–1239) - Kamo no ChomeiKamo no Chomeiwas a Japanese author, poet , and essayist. He witnessed a series of natural and social disasters, and, having lost his political backing, was passed over for promotion within the Shinto shrine associated with his family. He decided to turn his back on society, take Buddhist vows, and became a...
(1155–1216) - Motoori NorinagaMotoori Norinagawas a Japanese scholar of Kokugaku active during the Edo period. He is probably the best known and most prominent of all scholars in this tradition.-Life:...
(1730–1801) - Ueda AkinariUeda AkinariUeda Akinari or Ueda Shūsei was a Japanese author, scholar and waka poet, and a prominent literary figure in 18th century Japan...
(1734–1809) - RyōkanRyokanwas a quiet and eccentric Sōtō Zen Buddhist monk who lived much of his life as a hermit. Ryōkan is remembered for his poetry and calligraphy, which present the essence of Zen life.-Early life:...
(1758–1831) - Princess Kazu (1846–1877)
- Masaoka ShikiMasaoka Shiki, pen-name of Masaoka Noboru , was a Japanese poet, author, and literary critic in Meiji period Japan. Shiki is regarded as a major figure in the development of modern haiku poetry...
(1867–1902) - Yosano Akiko (1878–1942)
- Ishikawa Takuboku (1886–1912)
- Saitō Mokichi (1882–1953)
- Itō SachioIto Sachiowas the pen-name of , a Japanese tanka poet and novelist active during the Meiji period of Japan.-Biography:Itō was born in what is now Sanmu city, Chiba prefecture, as the younger son to a farming family...
(1864–1913) - Kitahara HakushuKitahara Hakushuis the pen-name of ', a Japanese tanka poet active during the Taishō and Shōwa periods of Japan. He is regarded as one of the most popular and important poets in modern Japanese literature.-Early life:...
(1885–1942) - Nagatsuka Takashi (1879–1915)
- Okamoto KanokoOkamoto Kanokowas the pen-name of a Japanese author, tanka poet, and Buddhism scholar active during the Taishō and early Shōwa periods of Japan.-Early life:Kanoko's maiden name was Ohnuki Kano. She was born in Aoyama, Akasaka-ku was the pen-name of a Japanese author, tanka poet, and Buddhism scholar active...
(1889–1939) - Wakayama Bokusui (1885–1928)
- Orikuchi ShinobuShinobu Orikuchi, also known as , was a Japanese ethnologist, linguist, folklorist, novelist, and poet. As a disciple of Kunio Yanagita, he established an original academic field named , which is a mixture of Japanese folklore, Japanese classics, and Shintō...
(1887–1953) under the pseudonym Shaku Choku - Terayama ShujiShuji Terayamawas an avant-garde Japanese poet, dramatist, writer, film director, and photographer. According to many critics and supporters, he was one of the most productive and provocative creative artists to come out of Japan. He was born December 10, 1935, the only son of Hachiro and Hatsu Terayama in...
(1935–1983) - Tawara MachiMachi Tawarais a contemporary Japanese writer, translator and poet.Tawara is most famous as a contemporary poet. She is credited with revitalizing the tanka for modern Japanese audiences...
(born 1962) - Yukio MishimaYukio Mishimawas the pen name of , a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor and film director, also remembered for his ritual suicide by seppuku after a failed coup d'état...
(1925–1970) - Baba Akiko
- Nakajo Fumiko
- Saito Fumi
Famous waka collections
- NijūichidaishūNijuichidaishuThe are Japan's twenty one imperial collections of Japanese poetry written by noblemen. The following texts listed in chronological order constitute the Nijūichidaishū:...
– imperially commissioned waka collection - Hyakunin IsshuHyakunin Isshuis a traditional anthology style of compiling Japanese waka poetry where each contributor writes one poem for the anthology. Literally, it translates to "one hundred people, one poem [each]"...
See also
- HonkadoriHonkadoriIn Japanese poetry, is an allusion within a poem, to an older poem which would be generally recognized by its potential readers. Honkadori possesses qualities of yūgen and in Japanese art. The concept emerged in the 12th century during the Kamakura period...
- Japanese languageJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
- Japanese phonologyJapanese phonologyThis article deals with the phonology of the Japanese language.-Consonants:The Japanese vowels are pronounced as monophthongs, unlike in English; except for , they are similar to their Spanish or Italian counterparts....
- List of Japanese language poets
- List of kigo
- List of National Treasures of Japan (writings)
Waka anthologies
- Brower, Robert H., and Earl Miner, Japanese Court Poetry, Stanford University Press, 1961. ISBN 0-8047-1524-6 pbk
- 527 pp., a standard academic study.
- Carter, Steven D., editor and translator, Traditional Japanese Poetry: An Anthology. Stanford University Press, 1991
- Waka, tanka, renga, haiku and senryū with translations and annotations
- Carter, Steven D., editor and translator, Waiting for the Wind: Thirty-Six Poets of Japan's Late Medieval Age, Columbia University Press, 1989
- Cranston, EdwinEdwin CranstonEdwin Augustus Cranston is a Professor of Japanese literature in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Harvard University. His primary research interest is the classical literature of Japan, especially traditional poetic forms.-History:...
, editor and translator, A Waka Anthology, Volume One: The Gem-Glistening Cup, Stanford University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-8047-1922-5 cloth ISBN 0-8047-3157-8 pbk
- 988 pp. includes almost all waka from the KojikiKojikiis the oldest extant chronicle in Japan, dating from the early 8th century and composed by Ō no Yasumaro at the request of Empress Gemmei. The Kojiki is a collection of myths concerning the origin of the four home islands of Japan, and the Kami...
(Record of Ancient Matters completed 712) through the Man'yōshū (Collection for Ten Thousand Generations c.759) and also includes the Buddha's Footstone Poems (21 BussokusekiBussokusekika, also known as Bussokuseki no Uta, are poems inscribed beside the stone Buddha Foot monument at Yakushi Temple in Nara.Numbering twenty one poems in total, they are divided into two sections:*Seventeen poems praising the virtue of Buddha....
poems carved in stone at the Yakushi-jiYakushi-jiis one of the most famous imperial and ancient Buddhist temples in Japan, located in Nara. The temple is the headquarters of the Hossō school of Japanese Buddhism...
temple in NaraNara, Narais the capital city of Nara Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan. The city occupies the northern part of Nara Prefecture, directly bordering Kyoto Prefecture...
, c. 753)- Cranston, Edwin, editor and translator, A Waka Anthology, Volume Two: Grasses of Remembrance, Stanford University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-8047-4825-X cloth
- Keene, DonaldDonald KeeneDonald Lawrence Keene is a Japanologist, scholar, teacher, writer, translator and interpreter of Japanese literature and culture. Keene was University Professor Emeritus and Shincho Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature at Columbia University, where he taught for over fifty years...
, compiled and edited, Anthology of Japanese Literature from the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Grove Press, 1955 - McCullough, Helen CraigHelen Craig McCulloughHelen Craig McCullough was an eminent scholar of classical Japanese poetry and prose. Born in California, she graduated from Berkeley in 1939 with a degree in political science. After the outbreak of World War II, she entered the U.S. Navy’s Japanese Language School in Boulder, Colorado...
, Brocade by Night: 'Kokin Wakashū' and the Court Style in Japanese Classical Poetry, Stanford University Press, 1985 - McCullough, Helen Craig, Kokin Wakashū: The First Imperial Anthology of Japanese Poetry, with 'Tosa Nikki' and 'Shinsen Waka, Stanford University Press 1985
- Miner, Earl, An Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry, Stanford University Press, 1968.
- Based on Brower and Miner
- Philippi, DonaldDon PhilippiDon Philippi was a noted translator of Japanese and Ainu and a musician.Born in Los Angeles, Philippi studied at the University of Southern California before going to Japan in 1957 on a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Kokugakuin University...
, translator, This Wine of Peace, the Wine of Laughter: A Complete Anthology of Japan's Earliest Songs, New York, Grossman, 1968 - Rodd, Laurel Rasplica, and Mary Catherine Henkenius, translated and annotated, Kokinshu: A Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern. Cheng & Tsui Company, 1996
- Sato, Hiroaki, and Burton WatsonBurton WatsonBurton Watson is an accomplished translator of Chinese and Japanese literature and poetry. He has received awards including the Gold Medal Award of the Translation Center at Columbia University in 1979, the PEN Translation Prize in 1981 for his translation with Hiroaki Sato of From the Country of...
, editors and translators, From the Country of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry, multiple editions available - Reichhold, Jane, and Kawamura, Hatsue. Trans. A String of Flowers. . . Untied: Love Poems from the Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu. Berkeley, CA: Stonebridge Press. 2002
- Philippi, Donald
Modern tanka anthologies
- Nakano, Jiro, Outcry from the Inferno: Atomic Bomb Tanka Anthology, Honolulu, Hawaii, Bamboo RidgeBamboo RidgeBamboo Ridge is a Hawaii-based literary journal and press founded in 1978 by Eric Chock and Darrell H.Y. Lum to publish works by and for the people of Hawaii...
Press 1995 ISBN 0-910043-38-8 [104 pp. 103 tanka by 103 poets] - Shiffert, Edith, and Yuki Sawa, editors and translators, Anthology of Modern Japanese Poetry, Rutland, Vermont, Tuttle, 1972
- Ueda, Makoto, Modern Japanese Tanka: An Anthology, NY: Columbia University Press, 1996 ISBN 0-231-10432-4 cloth ISBN 978-0-231-10433-3 pbk [257 pp. 400 tanka by 20 poets]
Modern tanka translations
- Baba, Akiko. Heavenly Maiden Tanka. Trans. Hatsue Kawamura and Jane Reichhold. Gualala CA:AHA Books, 1999
- Nakajo, FumikoFumiko NakajoFumiko Nakajo was a tanka poet...
. Breasts of Snow. Trans. Hatsue Kawamura and Jane Reichhold. Tokyo:The Japan Times Press, 2004 - Saito, Fumi, White Letter Poems. Trans. Hatsue Kawamura and Jane Reichhold. Gualala CA: AHA Books, 1998
Tanka written in English
- Goldstein, Sanford. At the Hut of the Small Mind. Gualala, California: AHA Books, 1992
- Goldstein, Sanford. Four Decades on my Tanka Road. Baltimore, MD: Modern English Tanka Press, 2007
- Conforti, Gerard John. Now That the Night Ends. Gualala, California: AHA Books and Chant Press, 1996
- Lawrence, Neal Henry. Rushing Amid Tears. Tokyo, Japan: Eichosha Shinsha Co. Ltd.
- Lawrence, Neal Henry. Shining Moments. Gualala, California: AHA Books, 1993
- Reichhold, Jane, ed. Tanka Splendor. Gualala, California: AHA Books, 1990–2007
- Reichhold, Werner Reichhold. Tidalwave. Gualala, California: AHA Books, 1989
- Reichhold, Jane. A Gift of Tanka. Gualala, California: AHA Books, 1990
- Reichhold Werner. Bridge of Voices. Gualala, California: AHA Books, 1990
- Reichhold, Jane, and Werner Reichhold. Oracle. Gualala, California: AHA Books, 1993. The first linked tanka sequence in English
- Reichhold, Jane, and Werner Reichhold, eds. Wind Five Folded: An Anthology of English-Language Tanka. Gualala, California: AHA Books, 1994
- Reichhold, Jane. Bowls I Buy. Gualala, California: AHA Books, 1996
- Reichhold, Jane, and Werner Reichhold, eds. In the Presence. Gualala, California: AHA Books, 1998
- Reichhold, Jane. Her Alone. Gualala, California: AHA Online Books, 2002. Tanka composed with prose
- Garrison, Denis, and Michael McClintock, eds. The Five-Hole Flute: Modern English Tanka in Sequences and Sets. Baltimore, Maryland: Modern English Tanka Press, 2006. ISBN 0-615-13794-6
- Garrison, Denis, and Michael McClintock, eds. Landfall : Poetry of Place in Modern English Tanka. Baltimore, Maryland: Modern English Tanka Press, 2007 ISBN 978-0-615-16264-5
- Kei, M., ed. Fire Pearls : Short Masterpieces of the Human Heart. Perryville, MD: M. Kei, Publisher, 2006 ISBN 978-1-4303-0999-4
- McClintock, Michael, Pamela Miller Ness and Jim KacianJim KacianJames Michael Kacian, an American haiku poet, editor, publisher, and public speaker was born on July 26, 1953, in Worcester, Massachusetts, then adopted and raised in Gardner, Massachusetts. He has lived in London, Nashville, Bridgton and now resides in Winchester, Virginia...
, eds., The Tanka Anthology: 800 of the Best Tanka in English by 68 of Its Finest Practitioners, Winchester, VA, Red Moon Press 2003 ISBN 1-893959-40-6 - St. Maur, Gerald, ed. Countless Leaves. Edmonton, Alberta: Inkling Press and Magpie Productions, 2001
- Tasker, Brian, ed. In the Ship's Wake: An Anthology of Tanka. North Shields, England: Iron Press, 2001
- Ward, Linda Jeannette, ed. Full Moon Tide: The Best of Tanka Splendor 1990–1999. Coinjock, North Carolina: Clinging Vine Press, 2000
- Ward, Linda Jeannette. A Frayed Red Thread. Coinjock, North Carolina: Clinging Vine Press, 2000
- Welch, Michael Dylan, ed., Footsteps in the Fog, Foster City, CA USA, Press Here, 1994 ISBN 1-878798-12-X [the first anthology of English-language tanka 48 pp. 115 tanka by 7 poets]
- Zheng, Ron L., Leaving My Found Eden, Seattle, WA, Literary Road Press, 2008, ISBN 1-934037-38-6
- Zheng, Ron L., Seven 1/2 and One, Seattle, WA, Literary Road Press, 2008, ISBN 1-934037-38-6
- Zheng, Ron L., Leaving My Found Eden: A Poetography Collection, Seattle, WA, Literary Road Press, January 2009, ISBN 978-1-934037-47-8
Tanka written in English online
- Conforti, Gerard John, For My Brother Victor & Elsa His Wife
- Conforti, Gerard John. Now that the Night Ends
- Conforti, Gerard John. Spirit of the Wind
- Helsem, Michael. 404; & In the Time of the Fall of the Towers
- Reichhold, Werner. Cybertry Part II A
- Reichhold, Werner. Cyberpoetry
- Zheng, Ron L. "Poetography"
Tanka, kyōka, and gogyōka
- Kei, M., ed. Catzilla!: Tanka, Kyoka, and Gogyohka About Cats, edited by M. Kei, 2010. ISBN 978-0-557-53612-2
External links
- Ogura Hyakunin Isshu – 100 Poems by 100 Poets at University of Virginia Library Japanese Text Initiative
- 2001 Waka for Japan 2001 translated by T. E. McAuley of the School of East Asian Studies at the University of Sheffield.
- American Tanka magazine
- Tanka Society of America