Tanka

This article is about the Japanese poetic form. For tanka poetry written in English, see Tanka in English. For other uses, see Tanka (disambiguation).

Tanka (短歌, "short poem") is a genre of classical Japanese poetry and one of the major genres of Japanese literature.

Etymology

Originally, in the time of the Man'yōshū, the term tanka was used to distinguish "short poems" from the longer chōka (長歌, "long poems"). In the ninth and tenth centuries, however, notably with the compilation of the Kokinshū, the short poem became the dominant form of poetry in Japan, and the originally general word waka (和歌, "Japanese poem") became the standard name for this form. Japanese poet and critic Masaoka Shiki revived the term tanka in the early twentieth century for his statement that waka should be renewed and modernized. Haiku is also a term of his invention, used for his revision of standalone hokku, with the same idea.

Form

Tanka consist of five units (often treated as separate lines when romanized or translated) usually with the following pattern of onji:

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").

Traditionally tanka 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).

The term waka 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.

History

Tanka has a long history, first recorded in the early 8th century in the Kojiki 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 historian Donald Keene's books, he uses four large categories:

1. Early and Heian Literature (Kojiki to past The Tale of Genji to 1185)
2. The Middle Ages ('chūsei' from 1185, including the Kamakura and Muromachi periods)
3. Pre-Modern Era (1600–1867, then subdivided into 1600–1770 and 1770–1867)
4. Modern Era (post 1867, divided into Meiji (1868–1912), Taishō (1912–1926) and Shōwa (from 1927)).

Ancient

The most ancient waka were recorded in the historical record the Kojiki and the 20 volumes of the Man'yōshū, the oldest surviving waka anthology. The editor of the Man'yōshū is anonymous, but it is believed that the final editor 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 the royalty and nobility, but also works of soldiers and farmers 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 largely fell out of official favor. But in the 9th century, Japan stopped sending official envoys to Tang dynasty China. 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, 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. It was presented to the emperor in 905. 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 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.

Tokugawa shogunate period

In the early Edo period, waka was not a fashionable genre. Newly created haikai no renga (of whose hokku, 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.

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 Myōjō 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:

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'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 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.

Ceremony of the Utakai Hajime, about 1950

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 audiences.

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. As a parting gesture, outgoing PM Junichiro Koizumi wrote a tanka to thank his supporters.

The Japanese imperial family continue to write tanka for the New Year. [1]

Other forms of waka

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 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.

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 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:

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?

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]

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. 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 kutsukaburi (沓冠) 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:

• Bussokusekika: This form carved on a slab of slate – the Bussokuseki (silhouette of Buddha's feet stone) – at the Yakushi-ji temple in Nara. 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 Book 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.

Famous tanka poets

• Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902)
• Yosano Akiko (1878–1942)
• Ishikawa Takuboku (1886–1912)
• Saitō Mokichi (1882–1953)
• Itō Sachio (1864–1913)
• Kitahara Hakushu (1885–1942)
• Nagatsuka Takashi (1879–1915)
• Okamoto Kanoko (1889–1939)
• Wakayama Bokusui (1885–1928)
• Orikuchi Shinobu (1887–1953) under the pseudonym Shaku Choku
• Terayama Shuji (1935–1983)
• Tawara Machi (born 1962)
• Yukio Mishima (1925–1970)
• Baba Akiko
• Nakajo Fumiko
• Saito Fumi

See also

• Honkadori
• Japanese language
• Japanese phonology
• List of Japanese language poets
• List of kigo
• List of National Treasures of Japan (writings)
• Ryuka (poetry)

Bibliography

Classical 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, Edwin, 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 Kojiki (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 Bussokuseki poems carved in stone at the Yakushi-ji temple in Nara, 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, Donald, compiled and edited, Anthology of Japanese Literature from the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Grove Press, 1955
• Keene, Donald, Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era - Poetry, Drama, Criticism (A History of Japanese Literature, Volume 4), Columbia University Press, 1999
• McCullough, Helen Craig, 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, Donald, 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 Watson, 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

Modern tanka anthologies

• Nakano, Jiro, Outcry from the Inferno: Atomic Bomb Tanka Anthology, Honolulu, Hawaii, Bamboo Ridge 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, Fumiko. 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