Imagine your life was a musical. I don’t care if the image that comes to mind is Hollywood or Bollywood, you get what I mean. At appropriate moments all the characters stop talking, turn to each other, and start singing what they mean instead.
This is the basic theory behind the tanka, an old form of Japanese poetry that was revived in the late 19th century.
Japan, language, and poetry forms
Courtiers in medieval Japan were expected to be conversant with both written Chinese and Japanese language and poetry forms. Because there’s a huge wealth of information on the Internet about this, and because it’s frankly a little overwhelming for our purposes, I’ll focus on the Japanese forms, which were classified as “waka” – which just means “poetry in Japanese” as contrasted with poetry in Chinese.
The most popular and common form of waka was the tanka. A tanka is basically a souped-up version of the haiku that most Western students study at some point. Instead of the haiku’s 5-7-5 (and a nature image) syllable structure, however, the tanka is composed of five lines, with counts of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables, for a total of 31 syllables.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
why write a tanka?
Tanka, like the drottkvaett we discussed in an earlier slam, were a form of extemporaneous poetry. Writing a tanka was a way of showing off how educated and intelligent the writer was. Lovers, friends, and colleagues would exchange tanka at greeting, at parting, would leave them like little notes for each other discussing matters prosaic as well as poetic.
The other way tanka show up in classic literature is that characters (and historical figures) memorize tanka and recite them at appropriate times, kind of like how you or I would quote a line from a movie or song today. Tanka were memorized, quoted, and passed around until eventually they were collected in great anthologies of classic literature.
In both of these uses, tanka were very much like the song breaks in musical theater. The writer or speaker would use this careful, concise form of communication to convey a concept with power and precision.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
okay, so how do I do this?
You remember how to count syllables, right? It’s as simple as that, in theory. Just find 31 syllables of words and break them up into five lines, in the 5-7-5-7-7 pattern.
In practice, writing a good tanka is like writing the most compact of microstories. Here are a few examples to set you on your way (note that because of translation, not all the syllable counts here are perfect- check your work):
In castle ruins
the tappings of a hand-drum
so clearly echo,
that in Komachi’s dancing
even the moon seemed to smile.
HIROKO SEKI
On the white sand
Of the beach of a small island
In the Eastern Sea
I, my face streaked with tears,
Am playing with a crab
ISHIKAWA TAKUBOKU
Two rings I once wove
from grasses beside a stream.
One I gave away,
its mate I kept for myself,
pressed in the depths of a book.
ABDUL AZIZ BIN ABDULLAH
As it turns darker,
sounds of music and chanting
are growing stronger:
the fiery light releases
fragrance from the dancer’s sleeves.
NOBUKO TSUDA
