How to Haiku by Bruce Ross

Author:Bruce Ross
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0-8048-3232-3
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

MODERN JAPANESE TANKA

Modern Japanese tanka went through the same types of experimentation as other Japanese literary forms. The 5-7-5-7-7 pattern was sometimes loosened up. Some tanka were written in one horizontal line and some had less than five lines or phrases. Some continued to explore their authors' feelings in nature in a romantic way while others presented realistic "sketches from nature" or the many styles and approaches found in modern world poetry. One of the most important early modern tanka writers was Ishikawa Takuboku, who was writing at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. Notice how in the following two tanka the natural world is left out and the mood of each is connected to the authors inner feelings about the ordinary events of his life:

I work

and work still my life

continues

to be the same as ever

I look at my hands

I shut my eyes

but nothing whatsoever

surfaces in my mind

in my utter loneliness

I open them up again

Notice the contrast between the stark mood of alienation and the ordinary phrasing with which these tanka are expressed. They are like overhearing someone's conversation or hearing their inner thoughts. But tanka like this allowed later tanka writers to consider expressing feelings that were quite unlike the court poetry.

In 1987 a young Japanese high school teacher, Tawara Machi, published a collection of tanka called Salad Anniversary. It became a best-selling work, and she became a television celebrity. Notice how, in the following examples, the author returns to the natural beauty of court poetry but transforms that style of sensitive feeling into an expression of more challenging and more modern inner feeling:

I wait for spring

with an empty heart

in March

gazing at late blossoming plum

with you

cherry blossoms

cherry blossoms cherry blossoms

begin blooming

stop blooming and as it was before

the same park

Something has changed in how poets look at nature and at their own life. Somehow the beauty of nature does not have the overpowering effect that it had in the tradition of court poetry. A very modern tone that even seems to include some kind of criticism of that kind of feeling is expressed here. The second tanka is in fact almost overly dramatic since cherry blossoms are the single most often used image of beauty in Japan. The author seems to do this by pointing out the ordinariness of these beautiful blossoms. They come and go, she tells us, and the park they blossom in is still the same old park.

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