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| How Akiko Yosano and Machi Tawara Shaped Modern Tanka |
A comb passes through a twenty-year-old woman’s black hair. The poet notices how beautiful her pride looks. Decades later, a woman hears a marriage proposal and finds herself thinking about the two cans of alcohol that came before it.
The
comb appears in Tangled Hair (1901) by Akiko Yosano (1878–1942). The
cans appear in Salad Anniversary (1987) by Machi Tawara (born 1962).
Each detail gives a woman’s judgment room to emerge in a poem short enough to
read in one breath.
Yosano
brought a new frankness to the expression of female desire in modern tanka.
Tawara found a rhythm for contemporary conversation and brought new readers to
the form. Their connection became direct in 1998 when Tawara recast Yosano’s
poems in contemporary Japanese.
1. What Five Phrases Can Do
Traditional
Japanese tanka follows a 5–7–5–7–7 pattern. Its 31 sound units are counted in
morae. The Japanese word hon, meaning “book,” has one syllable and two
morae because the final n counts separately. An English version can
therefore use five lines without reproducing the Japanese count.
The
last two phrases give the poet room to change what the reader thinks is
happening. That possibility runs through the short waka tradition and
into modern tanka. In these poems, an image can become a question and a remark
can take on a meaning the person who made it never intended.
2. From Classical Waka to Modern Tanka
Poets
in Japan were writing short waka by the seventh century. Some of those
early poems survive in the eighth-century Man’yōshū, including work by
Kakinomoto no Hitomaro. Generations later, Ono no Komachi used dreams to
capture the uncertainty of love. By the time modern poets inherited the form,
it already had a long history of giving private feelings a voice.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902) urged poets to look closely at the life around them. Akiko Yosano brought her own kind of directness to tanka. In Tangled Hair, her speakers could say what they wanted and question the people who judged them for wanting it.
Decades later, Machi Tawara listened for what people reveal in passing. In Salad Anniversary, someone says the food tastes good. The speaker treasures the remark enough to give the day a name of its own.
3. Three Tanka by Akiko Yosano
Yosano
published tanka in Myōjō (“Bright Star”) during the Meiji period
(1868–1912). Her first collection, Midaregami (Tangled Hair), caused a stir with its frank treatment of desire. All three poems below
come from that collection. The English versions are my renderings.
Soft Skin and the Person Who Preaches
Japanese
original
やは肌の
あつき血汐に
ふれも見で
さびしからずや
道を説く君
English
rendering
Without
ever touching
the hot blood beneath
soft skin,
are you never lonely,
you who preach the Way?
The
Japanese saves kimi, “you,” for the end. By then we have felt the warmth
of the body and heard a question about loneliness. Only in the last phrase do
we learn that the question is directed at someone who teaches others how to
live.
Yosano
could have made the speaker accuse him of hypocrisy. She asks if he is lonely.
That choice brings the two people closer together even as the speaker
challenges him. A reader can hear tenderness or mockery in the same question.
A Twenty-Year-Old and Her Black Hair
Japanese
original
その子二十
櫛にながるる
黒髪の
おごりの春の
うつくしきかな
English
rendering
That
girl is twenty.
Through the comb
her black hair streams.
The pride of her spring,
how beautiful!
The
comb gives the poem a movement we can picture. Then comes ogori, a word
that can mean pride and can carry a suggestion of arrogance. The closing
exclamation lets us hear the speaker take pleasure in that very quality. The
beauty of the scene includes the young woman’s assurance.
For
readers exploring Japanese women writers, the scene offers a question
about who is looking. The poem begins with “that girl,” as though someone were
observing her from a distance. By the end, the language is close enough to the
girl’s pride that we can imagine what it feels like to her.
Everyone Is Beautiful Tonight
Japanese
original
清水へ
祇園をよぎる
桜月夜
こよひ逢ふ人
みなうつくしき
English
rendering
Toward
Kiyomizu,
crossing through Gion
in moonlight among blossoms,
everyone I meet tonight
is beautiful.
The
opening gives us a route through Kyoto. The closing phrases direct our
attention to the people the speaker passes. Koyoi, “tonight,” keeps her
judgment within one evening. The word makes it possible to read the beauty of
the scene as something that happens between the people in the street and the
woman looking at them. Another person could make the same walk and see a different
city.
4. Three Tanka by Machi Tawara
Tawara
was teaching high school when Sarada Kinenbi (Salad Anniversary) reached a wide readership. Its poems could sound like a conversation that
had already begun when we arrived. The five-line Japanese and English guides
below explain the movement of each poem.
Salad Anniversary
Japanese
reading guide
相手が料理をほめる。
何気ない一言が話し手の心に残る。
話し手はその喜びを日付に結びつける。
七月六日が特別な日になる。
その日にサラダの名をつける。
English
reading guide
Someone
praises the food.
The casual remark stays with the speaker.
She ties the pleasure of hearing it to a date.
July 6 becomes a special day.
She names the day after the salad.
The
hinge in the original is kara, “because.” It lets the compliment lead
into the declaration as though one naturally followed from the other. The
speaker uses the public language of anniversaries for a moment that may matter
only to her. We can hear both the joke and the affection in that decision.
One
reading counts the Japanese as 5–7–5–8–7. The additional mora falls in
the phrase that names July 6. The date gets enough room to sound like something
the speaker would actually say.
A Marriage Proposal After Two Cans
Japanese
reading guide
相手が結婚を持ちかける。
その言い方はずいぶんあっさりしている。
話し手は飲んだ量に目を向ける。
缶チューハイは二本。
そんな場で結婚を口にしてよいのかと問う。
English
reading guide
Someone
proposes marriage.
The words come out surprisingly easily.
The speaker considers how much was drunk.
It was two cans of chūhai.
She wonders whether this was the moment to say it.
The
two cans of chūhai, a canned alcoholic drink, give the speaker something
concrete to weigh against the promise. The number is comically precise and the
future it raises is anything but certain. Tawara lets the woman’s question
close the poem. We can hear her enjoying the other person’s nerve or wondering
how the proposal will sound in the morning.
A Child Grabs Winnie the Pooh’s Nose
Japanese
reading guide
話し手は生きることについて考える。
その思いを子どもの動きが支えている。
子どもがぬいぐるみに手を伸ばす。
指がプーさんの鼻に届く。
その指が鼻をつかむ。
English
reading guide
The
speaker begins with a thought about living.
A child’s movement gives that thought substance.
The child reaches toward a stuffed bear.
The fingers reach Winnie the Pooh’s nose.
They close around it.
In
the title poem of Pū-san no Hana (Winnie the Pooh’s Nose, 2005),
Tawara puts the broad thought first and lets the small action give it weight.
The last verb, tsukameri, records the completed grasp. The child has
discovered that a hand can reach something and hold it. The adult watching has
found an image for what it means to reach out. The poem gives each discovery
its own scale.
5. What Each Poet Contributed to Modern Tanka
Akiko Yosano
Yosano helped give modern tanka a female voice that could speak about desire and examine the authority of the person being addressed. Her contribution is as much a matter of craft as subject. She delays the identity of the listener in the soft-skin poem.
She lets a word for pride color the image of the girl’s
hair. She gives the walker in Gion the authority to decide how the world looks
that evening. In each case, the speaker’s point of view shapes the poem before
anyone else can define it for her.
Machi Tawara
Tawara gave modern tanka a wider audience and a wider range of everyday speech. Her achievement is audible in the differences among the poems. The pleasure of the salad poem requires a light touch. The proposal needs room for an uncertain question. The poem about the child slows down enough for us to see the fingers close.
Tawara also wrote about how to compose tanka and encouraged readers to
try the form themselves.
In Chokorēto Goyaku Midaregami (1998), Tawara rendered Yosano’s poems in contemporary Japanese. That undertaking extends the idea of tanka and poetic exchange across generations.
A reader can hear the distance between the two writers in
the way they handle a question. Yosano’s woman asks whether the person who
preaches feels lonely. Tawara’s woman asks whether the person proposing
understands what he has just said. Each question changes who gets to interpret
the encounter.
6. Reading the Six Poems Together
Try
reading the last phrase of each poem and then going back to its opening. After
Yosano identifies the person who preaches, the warm skin becomes part of an
argument. After Tawara’s speaker names her anniversary, the compliment starts
to sound more intimate than it did at first. The poems are brief enough to
remember whole. A good ending sends you back through them with a different ear.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Must tanka use exactly 31 syllables?
The
traditional Japanese pattern counts 31 morae. English syllables are different
units. Individual Japanese poems may vary the count as Tawara does in the title
poem of Salad Anniversary.
Why did Yosano’s Tangled Hair attract attention?
Yosano
wrote about desire with striking frankness and let female speakers question the
people who judged them. Her timing and word order give those questions much of
their force.
Which three Tawara poems are discussed here?
They
are the title poem of Salad Anniversary, the poem about a marriage
proposal after two cans of chūhai and the title poem of Winnie the
Pooh’s Nose.
Did Tawara translate Yosano into English?
Her
1998 project brought Yosano’s poems into contemporary Japanese. It was a
rendering across generations within the same language.
References
1. Holt,
Jon P. “Chocolate Revolutionary: Tawara Machi’s Rule-Breaking Tanka Verses.” Japanese
Language and Literature, vol. 52, no. 2, 2018, pp. 341–372.
2. National
Diet Library, Japan. “YOSANO Akiko.” Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical
Figures.
3. Stanlaw, James. “‘Chocolate Translations,’ ‘Bittersweet Revolutions,’ and ‘Tanka and Photo’: Tawara Machi’s New Renditions of Midaregami and Questions of Canonicity in Modern Japanese Classical Poetry.” Proceedings of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies, vol. 1, 2000.
4. Sunagoya
Shobō. Close reading of Machi Tawara’s “Salad Anniversary.” One-Poem
Readings.
5.
6. Tawara, Machi. “Thirty Years Since Salad Anniversary.” Bungeishunjū, 2017.
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