Talk:Uta monogatari

What is tanka prose?

This article contains no references to respectable sources on Japanese literature. When I first saw the term "tanka prose" (of course on the disambiguation page that should have its name changed) I assumed it was some obscure translation of the term Uta Monogatari (歌物語). But the page doesn't mention the correct Japanese term once, and inaccurately groups the Tosa Diary in too. All of the sources seem to be non-academic in nature, and the authors are apparently non-notable professional poets (not Japanese scholars), and different online sources brought up by Googling their names indicated a general lack of knowledge about Japanese language and literary history ([1] spells Ariwara no Narihira's name as Narihara, and makes a bizarre, unsourced claim that he and Ono no Komachi used the phrase one thousand times). Can we delete this page or rename it to Uta monogatari and include some small reference to this terminology and how inadequate it is? elvenscout742 (talk) 13:55, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm completely overhauling this article. The previous fancruft was completely wrong and poorly written. The sources cited were apparently all bogus, so I deleted them and replaced them with some nice Keene. If anyone wants to reinstate anything that I have removed, please discuss it here or on my Talk page. elvenscout742 (talk) 16:04, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

In case I forget the rule, I'm putting this here: on Wikipedia a lack of information is better than misleading or false information (Wikipedia:Editing policy) elvenscout742 (talk) 16:17, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Please do not unilaterally move this article

The sources cited in the older version are not reputable academic sources, and the information contained in this article before the move was either completely inaccurate (when it referenced ancient Japanese literature) or fancruft that violated Wikipedia policies on undue weight. If you want to make a new wiki to promote a "new genre of fiction", there is software online that allows you to do that. But Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia based on proper scholarship. The material described in the previous article is not based on anything that was written in pre-modern Japan. The authors cited are all clearly ignorant of Japanese language and literature, as their writings routinely make bizarre claims about what was "standard" in ancient Japanese literature, and they misspell the names of well-known poets, etc. I don't even mind leaving a minor reference to so-called "tanka prose" in this article, but it needs to be kept from overrunning the page with fancruft, and it needs to be worded tastefully and accurately. Wikipedia is not a place for original research, nor is it a place to post material that you found online somewhere but is not notable or worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia article. elvenscout742 (talk) 00:35, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Tanka prose is a contemporary English-language literary form and movement derived from classical Japanese prosimetra (prose plus poetry); your uta monogatari (poem tale) is one type only of the many types of classical Japanese prosimetra, e.g., kotobagaki (headnote or preface), nikki (memoir or diary), shu (poetry collection), kiko (travelogue) and so on. Contemporary examples of tanka prose are not modeled solely upon uta monogatari; most, in fact, are not but adopt some of the other models mentioned immediately above as well as introducing forms unknown to classical Japanese literature.

As for terminology, in lieu of tanka prose, one might have retained wabun (“waka writings”) but no one writes waka in English; poets write tanka in English and, you will admit, it is a short jump from “waka writings” to the analogous “tanka prose.”

Attempting to subsume all of these types of tanka prose, whether of classical Japanese origin or contemporary English derivation, under the banner of uta monogatari only muddies the issue. Your rewrite of “Tanka prose” as “Uta monogatari,” and your redirection of the original Tanka Prose page to your Uta monogatrari, is not so much a revision as a highjacking. I can see the need for a good article on Uta monogatari as well as on nikki, Elvenscout, but the categories tanka prose and uta monogatari are not, as you seem to presume they are, coterminous.

In your rewrite, you retain verbatim, under the sub-heading “Description,” a paragraph from the original “Tanka Prose” article; you have carefully removed the footnotes, however, and have therein committed plagiarism as the definiton of the form there provided is taken directly from the sourced articles, “The Elements of Tanka Prose” and “The Road Ahead for Tanka in English.” You have also carefully removed all other references to contemporary tanka prose writers, and contemporary tanka prose was the point of the original Wiki article. These edits, which are really attempts to obliterate, are consistent with the tone of your comments on this Talk page where you characterize the original article in pejorative terms throughout; it lacks “respectable sources,” those sources are “non-academic,” the cited authors are “non-notable professional poets,” your Googling (!) of said poet’s names “indicated a general lack of knowledge,” the sources are “bogus” and “fancruft.” You set yourself up as the final arbiter of reputable sources, of Japanese scholarship, of contemporary English poetry, and you do so not in the public arena, where you might be challenged, but behind the safe and sterile mask of anonymity.

My view of the proper resolution of this matter, Elvenscout, would be to see you write your scholarly article on Uta monogatari, if you so desire, and to see the Tanka prose article, which is really concerned more with a contemporary English derivation than the Japanese original, retained as is or, perhaps, with slight modification. Tanka prose and uta monogatari, as I mentioned previously, are not synonyms.

Tristan noir (talk) 01:21, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

But the term tanka prose is inherently oxymoronic. A tanka is a type of poem. When I first saw the term tanka prose yesterday, I thought it meant prose adaptations of tanka (along the lines of comic book movies), and that is still the only meaning I can think of that would make any sense. It is theoretically possible that at some time in the future the word tanka could catch on in English-speaking countries (as haiku already has) and develop a different meaning from the Japanese (as some would argue haiku already has). But this has not happened, except, apparently, in some small literary circle that do not really deserve their own Wikipedia article. The term tanka prose is equally attached exclusively to this small circle.

Your categorization of uta monogatari as "one type only of the many types of classical Japanese prosimetra" is flawed. No Japanese literary historian claims that waka-shū, nikki, kotobagaki and kikō are part of some all-encompassing form of literature called "prosimetra". Waka-shū are merely anthologies of poetry, and they often containkotobagaki (headnotes) that explain the background of the poems. They are not literary works that combine poetry and prose. Nikki are prose works that usually feature poetry. But if they are part of the same classification, then the Kojiki and Nihon-Shoki (as well as most other classical Japanese works) are also "prosometra".

Which brings me to the next point. I will admit that it is a short jump from waka writings to tanka prose. But the fact is that the Japanese term you cite wabun (和文, literally "Japanese language writing) does not mean what you apparently think it means. The word means "Japanese writing", as opposed to kanbun (writing in Chinese), the other dominant form of writing in pre-modern Japan. It includes non-poetic (prose, historical, etc.) written works, and of course as I mentioned above many of those works also included waka, but they are not called wabun because they happen to contain waka; both words just contain the character 和, meaning Japan as opposed to China (or to the West). In modern times, wabun also means "Japanese, as opposed to foreign, writings". I'm not sure if a large number of English-speaking people have made the same mistake as you and invented the phrase "tanka prose" accordingly, or if this mistake is based on an erroneous association of "wabun" with "haibun". There is no Japanese term for "waka writings", unless you consider uta monogatari to be said term. This is why I moved the article rather than simply posting it for deletion.

Most dictionaries will define wabun simply as "Japanese writing" or some such variant ([2], for example), but NO reputable source will claim that it means "a literary genre whose individual compositions employ two modes of writing -— [waka] verse and prose"

I am not setting myself up as the final arbiter of anything, including Japanese literature (I consider that post to belong, at least outside Japan, to Donald Keene). I am even willing to accept that "tanka prose" is the name of a movement of English literature that has nothing to do with Japan, but I maintain that it is a small movement to which you are trying to grant undue weight. If you have reputable, secondary sources that contradict me on the notability of this term, please show me them.

(I don't mean to respond to your ad hominem attacks, but: project much? I am not hiding anything but my real name. I blanked my user page 2 years ago because I didn't want my Wikipedia profile to appear in a Google-search of my e-mail -- which is on my resume -- and indirectly tie me back to edits I made 6 or 7 years ago that I now realize were stupid. But anyone is perfectly free to check the old version of my page and see my e-mail address and a photo of me. You, on the other hand, have no user page, and have apparently only ever edited Wikipedia to propagate the so-called "tanka prose" idea.)

If my removal of the fancruft on this page and the bad citations has inadvertently created a sentence or two worth of plagiarism from one of the authors that had previously been cited, I apologize. I will remove the offending text.

Googling remains a valid method of finding out how well-established certain terms are. A search for "tanka prose" yielded less than 10,000 results, despite your article claiming that the movement had exist for over 30 years. If it were notable there would be scholars studying it and publishing articles (secondary sources) on it that are well-researched and do not make bizarre claims about "tanka prose" dating back to ancient Japan with people like "Ariwara no Narihara". Every one of the authors you previously cited is clearly ignorant of what waka in ancient Japan were like.

Your article contained outrageous statements that "tanka prose" was composed by Ki no Tsurayuki in the 10th century, and hinted that the Ise monogatari was an even earlier example of "tanka prose". You failed to provide sources for these statements in over a year, and when they were deleted you callously reverted the deletion, still not providing any sources. And now that I have provided sources to the contrary, you have tried to change what you claim you were arguing for by proclaiming "tanka prose" to be "a contemporary English-language literary form and movement". This was not what your article claimed, and that is the only reason I saw fit to fix it. I am not interested in getting in lengthy debates about obscure movements in modern English literature, as my specialty is ancient Japanese literature. Stop claiming "tanka prose" dates back to ancient Japan, cite valid sources that justify using inaccurate terminology (Wikipedia allows this if it is well-established in English), and stop making personal attacks, and we will have no more problem.

elvenscout742 (talk) 06:34, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Jeffrey Woodward has written of the origins of so-called "tanka prose" the following: From the compilations of the oldest surviving collections of poetry, the Kojiki and Man'yōshū of the 8th century, prose very often accompanied waka. (The Tanka Prose Anthology, p.10) This statement is wrong and utterly bizarre. A simple Wikipedia search reveals that the Kojiki is not a "collection of poetry" but a quasi-historical prose text that happens to contain poetry here and there. The Man'yōshū was a pure poetry collection that contained notes about the backgrounds of the poems. It is NOT a prose work that heavily features waka. I don't see how this kind of material can be taken seriously as a source of information on pre-modern Japanese literature, and I hope you don't try to change the subject again by claiming your article was about a movement in English literature and didn't claim to be about Japanese literature. elvenscout742 (talk) 16:09, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

The above was written by me. It's not a sockpuppet account. I wanted to edit Japanese Wikipedia for the first time in years, and I forgot my old password. I didn't realize that English-Wikipedia accounts could edit Japanese Wikipedia now, or that not logging out of the other account would result in me accidentally signing a comment in the wrong name.

Anyway, one of the sources previously cited (The Road Ahead for Tanka in English, again by Woodward) repeatedly misspells Ariwara no Narihira's name. He is one of the Six Saints of Waka, and the protagonist of the archetypal uta monogatari. No one who doesn't know his name is a reliable source on tanka in Japanese or English. I'm sure he is a nice guy and I'm sure for people who enjoy his poetry and prose he's a fine writer (I'm not interested). But he is not an authority on ancient Japanese literature.

elvenscout742 (talk) 16:09, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

That material in “Uta monogatari” under the sub-heading “Influence outside Japan” is wholly erroneous and unsupported by any citation; I’m going to remove it therefore. Sanford Goldstein’s “Tanka Walk” is offered as an example of said uta monogatari influence; it is doubtful that the author of the article, Elvenscout, could have read Goldstein’s work, not only because it was published in a small out-of-print poetry journal in 1983 but also because the style and form of Goldstein’s “Tanka Walk” have nothing in common with uta monogatari. Goldstein describes his daily exercise regimen over the course of many days and intersperses this narration with tanka and meditations inspired by his walking and his life in Japan. “Tanka Walk,” therefore, has much in common with nikki (diary / memoir) and nothing in common with the poem-tale as elaborated in Ise or Yamato. A citation of Goldstein might be appropriate in an article on nikki but this article does not concern nikki. Further, Elvenscout offers his opinion, again unsupported by any citation, that the poetic literature included in the various journals that he mentions is inspired by uta monogatari. This assertion does not correspond with the facts as any neutral reader of these journals can easily ascertain by perusing their contents. Where Japanese inspiration is cited, appeals are made not to uta monogatari but to the entire spectrum of early Japanese prosimetra (compositions that mix prose and verse, the verse, in this case, being tanka’s predecessor, waka). Tristan noir (talk) 23:34, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Some replies to your many claims & counterclaims, Elvenscout, in your three consecutive long posts on this talk page. I’ll place your remarks in bold, the better to distinguish your words from mine.

But the term tanka prose is inherently oxymoronic. Western writers of haibun often use the term “haiku prose.” By that name, they mean a prose composition, written “in the spirit of haikai,” which also incorporates haiku. Take “tanka prose” as its parallel in construction. If the writers of these literary forms in English & other western languages have reached a consensus and understand that these terms define a specific type of composition, then objections based upon the circumstance that Japanese offers no equivalent term have no currency.

Your categorization of uta monogatari as "one type only of the many types of classical Japanese prosimetra" is flawed. No Japanese literary historian claims that waka-shū, nikki, kotobagaki and kikō are part of some all-encompassing form of literature called "prosimetra". Perhaps, perhaps not. Prosimetrum is an accepted critical term that is applied to compositions of prose-plus-verse in any language. Helen McCullough contributed an article entitled “Combinations of Poetry and Prose in Classical Japanese Narrative” to Harris & Reichl (eds.), Prosimetrum: Crosscultural Perspectives on Narrative in Prose and Verse(1997). Is McCullough, in your opinion, a reputable scholarly source? But your objection is really beside the point in any discussion of “tanka prose.” Japanese literary historians may or may not view shu, nikki, monogatari and kiko as an “all-encompassing form” called prosimetra. The question is: how do the contemporary writers of “tanka prose” in English view mixtures of tanka plus prose in classical Japanese literature and how do they apply their view to their compositions?

Waka-shū are merely anthologies of poetry, and they often contain kotobagaki (headnotes) that explain the background of the poems. They are not literary works that combine poetry and prose. I understand that many waka-shū are simple collections of poems without prose accompaniment. Your blanket assertion that no waka-shū are “literary works that combine poetry and prose” is easily refuted by simple citation; I refer you to Murasaki Shikibu shū and Kenreimon’in Ukyō Daibu no Shū for well-known examples of shu where there is extensive use of prose and, indeed, a kind of narrative. You cite Keene favorably, Elvenscout, so you may wish to turn to his book, Travelers of a Hundred Ages (pp. 79-82), where he compares various shū; his discussion directly contradicts your claim. If others are following this discussion, they can readily consult the Bowring and Harries translations of Murasaki Shikibu and Lady Daibu respectively and see that what you claim about shū is at variance with the facts.

Nikki are prose works that usually feature poetry. But if they are part of the same classification, then the Kojiki and Nihon-Shoki (as well as most other classical Japanese works) are also "prosometra". Any work that combines prose plus verse is a type of prosimetrum. The term is not mine nor is its definition. It has common scholarly acceptance.

Which brings me to the next point. I will admit that it is a short jump from waka writings to tanka prose. But the fact is that the Japanese term you cite wabun (和文?, literally "Japanese language writing) does not mean what you apparently think it means . . . .There is no Japanese term for "waka writings", unless you consider uta monogatari to be said term. This is why I moved the article rather than simply posting it for deletion. Thank you for pointing out my error in re “wabun.” I suppose that there is no “wakabun” either. You state that Japanese has no term for “waka writings.” I’m willing to accept your statement at face value. But where tanka & prose are being combined in Western writings (predominately in English, German, French & Dutch), no one is writing uta monogatari strictly, so far as I can determine, nor is anyone exclusively promoting nikki or kiko. The common denominator in the West is that the composition include tanka and prose; some compositions may resemble monogatari, nikki or shu and yet others may lean closer to the modern prose poem. That Japanese offered these poets no ready terminology likely contributed to employment of the term “tanka prose.”

Googling remains a valid method of finding out how well-established certain terms are. A search for "tanka prose" yielded less than 10,000 results. That is a curious result, Elvenscout. I just now did a simple search of “tanka prose” and received, per Google, “about 208,000 results.” Perhaps you’d like to try again?

Your article contained outrageous statements that "tanka prose" was composed by Ki no Tsurayuki in the 10th century, and hinted that the Ise monogatari was an even earlier example of "tanka prose". . . And now that I have provided sources to the contrary, you have tried to change what you claim you were arguing for by proclaiming "tanka prose" to be "a contemporary English-language literary form and movement". The body of the original article, minus references, falls just short of 500 words. One paragraph of that article, under the sub-heading “History,” addresses early Japanese literature; that paragraph numbers sixty odd words. The rest of the article, indeed, speaks about English-language adaptation and literary practice, your counterclaim notwithstanding.

Jeffrey Woodward has written of the origins of so-called "tanka prose" the following: From the compilations of the oldest surviving collections of poetry, the Kojiki and Man'yōshū of the 8th century, prose very often accompanied waka. A simple Wikipedia search reveals that the Kojiki is not a "collection of poetry" but a quasi-historical prose text that happens to contain poetry here and there. The Man'yōshū . . . is NOT a prose work that heavily features waka . . .This statement is wrong and utterly bizarre. Utterly eccentric, if you will, is your characterization of this quotation as “utterly bizarre.” Edwin A. Cranston, in A Waka Anthology Volume 1, saw fit to translate many pages of the Kojiki; he apparently didn’t care that the work was “quasi-historical” and he also translated much of the prose that prefaces the poems; the prose may be defined as kotobagaki (headnotes) but the prose entries vary considerably in length and purpose; some entries offer contextual explanations for the poem that follows while others verge upon narrative. As for the Man’yōshū, kotobagaki are frequent throughout, often added by the anthologists, but attention should be called, in particular, to Book V of the Manyo where the works of poets such as Ōtomo no Tabito and Yamanoue Okura are collected; these works combine prose and waka in single compositions, your denials to the contrary. Again, if anyone is following this discussion, they need not rely upon your claims and my counterclaims but they can readily resolve these contradictions on their own by reference to translations of this material in Ian Hideo Levy’s Ten Thousand Leaves or in Cranston’s Waka Anthology.

Tristan noir (talk) 01:30, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Tanka prose is a Western genre with roots in Japanese. 'Tanka prose' per se, is therefore not a Japanese literary form, and whatever terms, history, and ideas apply to Japanese prosimetra are therefore little more than background and marginalia when discussing the Western literary form. I attempted to find the 'Tanka Prose' article so I could read and comment on what it said, but it has disappeared. The removal of the article and the substitution of something completely irrelevant smacks of sabotage to me. The existing article on Uta monogatari has only a tenuous connection to contemporary Western tanka prose. It is rare for anyone in the West to write items that could be described as uta monogatari. The only things that come to my mind appear in Japan: Themes and Variations edited by Charles Tuttle back in the 1950s. Contemporary Western usage is 1400 years and several cultures away from the Japanese root. If we are to judge tanka prose in Western languages by ancient Japanese standards, then that means we should also judge contemporary sonnets in English by Renaissance Italian standards. That's ridiculous. Literature, by its nature, evolves and travels. Modern authors and critics view the past through the lens of their contemporary understanding. We're poets, not historical re-enactors. Our goal is not to create perfect imitations of an ancient literary culture, but to write new and fresh works. Therefore, since tanka prose is a contemporary Western literature, it deserves its own page.

Elvenscout's diatribe shows a profound lack of knowledge about tanka in English. Tanka has been written and published in English since 1899. Although it is not as well known as haiku in English, it's still a legitimate genre in its own right. A bibliography of tanka shows more than one thousand book length publications, including anthologies, collections, musical compositions, performing arts, illustrated works, and endlessly inventive other applications of tanka, tanka prose, tanka sequence, responsive tanka, shaped tanka, illustrated tanka, musical tanka, and more. Although there are some Orientalist works in which novice authors attempt to imitate the Japanese waka, the vast majority of tanka are independent Western works. Japanese source material provides inspiration, but there's no reason why a poet writing in a Western language should be chained to the Japanese language, anymore than than they should be chained to classical Greek because that's the language Homer wrote in. For that matter, even though Shakespeare is one of the greatest poets writing in English, modern poets don't try to create imitation Shakespeare, either. The modern sonnet is not chained to Elizabethan England, and the modern tanka isn't chained to the Heian and Nara Periods in Japan. Tanka Prose is a distinct literature that deserves its own page.

~K~ (talk) 02:20, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Please refrain from making personal attacks. There was no diatribe. I have studied Japanese literature for years. I came across this page through the tanka (poetry) article. Having never heard of tanka prose before, I checked the sources, and did some background research on the authors of said sources. I concluded that the article (which made utterly bizarre claims, often not even backed up by the sources cited) was little more than fancruft and needed to be overhauled (and replaced with what it seemed the article was originally supposed to be about) or outright deleted. I have already laid out why I think the sources are not reliable or scholarly in nature (the consistent misspelling of Narihira's name, the claim that a waka-shuu is a type of literature that combines poetry and prose, etc.). User:Bagworm started by deleting the unsourced statements that had been challenged and left without sources for a year, and then I went further and removed the unscholarly sources and materially derived from them as well. User:Tristan noir then tried to completely revert all the changes that had been made, without showing any respect for his co-editors or offering any reasonable explanation or valid references.

If you want to make a new page at Tanka prose then feel free to, but please use only established secondary sources (don't produce your own assessments of primary sources and individual literary works, as that violates WP:NOR) and refrain from making bizarre claims about ancient Japanese literature. I will be watching just in case. ;)

elvenscout742 (talk) 06:11, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm at work right now and a job has just come in so I don't have time to respond in full to you (Tristan noir) at the moment, but the Google one is simple mathematics so I can reply quickly. You didn't search for "tanka prose", you searched for tanka prose (no quotation marks). The reason you got 208,000 results is because about 95.5% of your results were webpages with the words "tanka" and "prose" both appearing somewhere on the page, but without ever using the phrase "tanka prose". This demonstrates, if anything at all, that there are a lot more online sources that discuss tanka than discuss tanka prose. elvenscout742 (talk) 06:30, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

On the minor matter of the Google Search issue, Elvenscout, I stand corrected. Thank you. I neglected the quotation marks through carelessness and hence achieved the false results. In searching “tanka prose” (with quotation marks), I discovered, indeed, “about 9,280 results,” a result consistent with your earlier report. I thought it might be interesting to search “uta monogatari” (in quotes) as well. I did so and achieved “about 6,570 results” – a lower return, on my investment, than “tanka prose.”

Tristan noir (talk) 06:44, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Uta monogatari is, however, an established term discussed in academic literature, has had an article on the Japanese Wikipedia for almost 5 years. A search for "歌物語" ("uta monogatari" in Japanese) yielded 178,000 results, while "短歌散文" ("tanka prose" in Japanese) yielded 1,580, most of which are apparently in the form "短歌・散文", meaning tanka or prose, or tanka and prose (appearing in a list with other types of literature similarly joined). Please, however see my remark below (you replied to me while I was in the middle of writing it, and it seemed rude to just ignore you and post a separate remark). elvenscout742 (talk) 07:17, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

I think this discussion is fast degenerating into a general discussion about Japanese and English literature. I never intended to get into a fight over any of this. I want to solve this dispute now. Since the phrase "tanka prose" has no basis in Japanese literary scholarship, it is in theory acceptable to create a Wikipedia article of that title that discusses the matter purely in relation to works that have been described as tanka prose in works written by specialists. I have no problem whatsoever with you making an article at Tanka prose that mentions briefly that "tanka" originate in Japan. I don't even mind if such an article cites works that belittle or otherwise misrepresent classical Japanese literature, as long as no material that is factually inaccurate is placed on Wikipedia. (The only reason I attacked the sources you cited was because they were being used to back up bizarre claims about ancient Japanese literature. If they are exclusively used as sources of information on the English literature that they were written to discuss, there is no problem.) Therefore, I request that you do not re-use the same text as already existed on this article before the move. elvenscout742 (talk) 07:17, 14 September 2012 (UTC)