Modern Japanese Tanka

by Makoto Ueda (Editor/Translator), Yosano Tekkan, Okamoto Kanoko

Tanka, a clasical Japanese verse form like haiku, has experienced a resurgence of interest among twentieth-century poets and readers. Arguably the central genre of Japanese literature, the 31-syllable lyric made up the great majority of Japanese poetry from the ninth to the nineteenth century and was the inspiration for such poetry as haiku and renga. Tanka has begun to attract considerable attention in North America in recent years. Modern Japanese Tanka is the first comprehensive collection available in English.

Tanka retains the aesthetic sensibilities that circumscribe Japanese culture, but just as Japan has changed during this tumultuous century, tanka has undergone equally radical shifts. Responding to artistic and social movements of the West, tanka has incorporated influences ranging from Marxism to Avant-Garde.

Modern Japanese Tanka includes four hundred poems by twenty of Japan's most renowned poets who have made major contributions to the hisotry of tanka in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With his graceful, eloquent translations, Makoto Ueda captures the distinct voices of these individual poets, providing biographical sketches of each as well as transliterating Japanese text below each poem. His introduction gives an excellent overview of the development of tanka in the last one hundred years.

Tracing the contemporary tanka tradition from Yosana Tekkan in the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth-century poetry of such writers as Taware Machi, Modern Japanese Tanks elegantly conveys an authentic sense of Japanese lyric to a Western audience.

Genres: Poetry, Japan, Japanese Literature, Anthologies

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Makoto Ueda (上田 真 Ueda Makoto, born 1931) is a professor emeritus of Japanese literature at Stanford University.

He earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature in 1961.

In 2004-2005 he served as the honorary curator of the American Haiku Archives at the California State Library in Sacramento, California. He was given that honor "in recognition of Ueda’s many decades of academic writing about haiku and related genres and his leading translations of Japanese haiku." The library added that "Ueda has been our most consistently useful source for information on Japanese haiku, as well as our finest source for the poems in translation, from Bashô to the present day." His work on female poets and 20th century poets "had an enormous impact".

He is an author of numerous books about Japanese literature and in particular Haiku, Senryū, Tanka, and Japanese poetics.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[yorshi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muy bellos poemas. me encanta el destello de lo cotidiano en la literatura, lo simple, como contemplar los colores de las verduras apiladas en una tienda, el destello particular de una rana en la nieve que reverbera el sol. y también otros muy duros, como la pobreza, la guerra y sus soledades, la pérdida de un seno por cáncer e hijos desaparecidos.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A micro-poem for every mood, every hunger, every passing fancy.

today too
out of this urge to cry
I went to the city
and out of this urge to cry
I came home from the city

[Joe Cummings · Rating 5 out of 5]

First you have to understand that all “tanka” is “waka,” but not all waka is tanka. Both forms are 31 syllable verses that generally follow a 5-7-5-7-7 format, but waka is an ancient type of poetry that has been a Japanese literary tradition for centuries. Waka poetry can be found in the “Kojiki,” Japan’s oldest book. Tanka, however, is a new literary genre that came out of the late 19th Century by a restless reform-minded generation of poets that found traditional waka to be stale and repetitive.
In his excellent book, “Modern Japanese Tanka” Japanese scholar and Stanford professor Makoto Ueda discusses the development of tanka from the late 19th Century to modern times. He shows how it differs from “haiku,” and more importantly how tanka is a more liberating and versatile art form. He does this with 400 samples by twenty different poets. In each chapter, Ueda introduces and describes the contribution of a different tanka master.
Tanka can be very haiku-like with the use seasonal references and cutting words, like Yosano Akiko’s:

evanescent
like the faint white
of cherry blossoms
blooming among the trees
my life on this spring day

Tanka, more importantly can also be about anything else-especially about the emotional reactions to the events and environment around the poet. When military veteran Mori Ogai ironically recalls his military service, he writes:

some medals
compensate for the terror
of the moment
while others pay for many
humdrum days spent in the service

A tanka writer can also poke fun at his own foibles. The reader can almost see Maekawa Samio slap his forehead as he recounts and complains:

monumental
idiot that I am
I’ve sent an umbrella
to a bicycle shop
for repairs

Tanka can also capture Life’s poignant moments. Yosano Tekkan writes of the loss his six-week old daughter in “To our baby that died:”

in the dark woods
lying ahead on your road
whom will you call?
you don’t know yet the names
of your parents or your own

It should be pointed out that translated tanka can look like free verse, and some tanka are. Editor Ueda helps those readers concerned with the 31 syllable constancy of the verses by presenting each poem in English and in Romanized Japanese at the bottom of the page.

Facebook friends know that I have been captioning with verse some of the photos I make of a ten kilometer walk along the canals between my home and the local library. It’s a therapy of sorts. The photos remind me to keep searching for beauty during this terrible time of being unemployed. The captions/lyrics/verse/poems were, at first, in the style of seventeen syllable “haiku,” but recently I’ve been offering some poor samples tanka as well. It’s a more suitable form sometimes. I know that from reading this book.

[Elvira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely one of the best collections of modern Japanese tanka. Very good translation, too. I thoroughly enjoyed this anthology and would recommend it to anyone with a fondness of Japanese poetry.

[Donna Beaver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Makoto Ueda is probably one of my favorite anthologists. I love these tall formatted books of his series of Japanese poetry.

[Alfonsas Andriuškevičius · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yra prastų poezijos antologijų ir yra gerų. Prastosios - kuriose prigrūsta daug autorių, bet teįdėta po vieną - du jų kūrinius. Gerosios - kuriose autorių nebūtinai daug, užtat eilėraščių - kiekvieno po solidų pluoštą. Tuomet gali susidaryti įspūdį, kas jis per paukštis, ir arba domėtis juo toliau, arba ne. Iš mano turimų gerųjų antologijų pirmiausia paminėčiau stambų rusišką tomą "Viduramžių arabų poezija" (1975). Joje radau ne vieną puikų poetą, o Ibn al Muutazzą (9 a.) pamėgau, regis, visiems laikams. Kokie gamtos vaizdai, kokios metaforos, kokie palyginimai! "Mane sujaudino žaibas, nutvieskęs raudoną debesį" (čia dabar laisvai verčiu iš rusų, iš galvoje glūdinčio teksto). Arba: "Ak, tu vyne stiklo rūbais, tu toksai smagus ir jaunas" (šitas eilutes, beje, deklamavau nelietuviškai RoRa, kuomet Lisabonos senamiestyje su juo buvome įkopę į senovinę arabų tvirtovę).

O kita iš gerųjų antologijų - moderniosios japonų tankos (penkiaeiliai). Joje - dvidešimt autorių, ir kiekvieno - po neblogą pluoštelį. Mane nuginklavo Saito Mokichi, Kitahara Hakushū, Miyazawa Kenji, Nakajo Fumiko. Nedelsdamas atsisiųsdinau jų angliškas knygas (laimei, jos egzistavo). O paskui žengiau šventvagišką žingsnį: po keliolika jų tankų išverčiau iš anglų (ne iš japonų, kurios nemoku!) kalbos (baiminausi, kad mūsų japonistai gali niekad jų nesiimti) ir, nieko neslėpdamas, įdėjau į knygelę "6 japonų poetai"... Štai jums po vieną šio ketverto tanką angliškai. Saito Mokichi (dirbęs gydytoju psichiatrinėje ligoninėje): "dahlias are black / a laughing madman said / and walked away / not looking back / even once". Kitahara Hakushū (pažeidęs ne vieną tuometinio japonų gyvenimo tabu): "each alighted / on a thick onion leaf / dragonflies / look fearful of something / in the crimson sunset glow". Miyazawa Kenji (mokęs valstiečius ūkininkauti ir skaitęs jiems poeziją): "bloodshot / the bow-shaped moon / in the depth of night / comes to my window / and curls its lips". Nakajo Fumiko (jauna susirgusi vėžiu, pradžioje netekusi vienos krūties, o paskui - ir antrosios): "that hill / shaped like the breast / I have lost / will be adorned with / dead flowers in winter".

[Annie Whitlock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in the 90s, but a good overview of Tanka up to that point. I appreciated how much history was in the introduction, and learned a lot about the form and evolution of Tanka, as well as the poets who wrote it.

[Rick Jackofsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice collection of tanka. I enjoyed reading the brief biographies of each featured poet.

[Paul Kerschen]

Broad and well-framed: a good way to get oriented.

[Kit · Rating 4 out of 5]

more than a few great
poets represented. too
many poems though
suffused with bland self-pity -
better, probs, in Japanese?

[Susan Sonnen · Rating 5 out of 5]

2nd reading

[Robert S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

stalwartly
youngsters strut
toward death
in the summer mountains
where ropes hang like intestine

[W.B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

at dawn
on a mountain pass
in the drifting fog
almost imperceptible
the smell of green tomatoes



--Miyazawa Kenji