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The Tanka Journal
Nihon Kajin Club,
Shüei Bldg. 2F, 1-12-5
Higashi-gotanda
Shinagawa-ku
Tokyo
141-0022
Japan
ISSN 0918-7707
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This page last updated: 1st August 2005. 		The Tanka Journal #26

This publication contains tanka on topics ranging from the social habits of ants to the effects of the recent tsunami in south east Asia, from drinking tea to meditating on the meaning of life. This is the journal of the Japan Tanka Poets' Society, though it is a truly international publication, including tanka in several languages. Most are presented in English and Japanese, though there are also translations into German, Russian and Portuguese. A tanka from Shigeo Narumi's sequence: THE FIRST OVERSEAS TANKA HAIKU FESTIVAL could just as well be a description of this journal:

	the blue booklet
	which contains one thousand
	and one hundred
	Tanka and Haiku
	is one small but vivid earth.
Amelia Fielden's article TANKA WRITING IN JAPAN: A POPULAR PASTIME describes an astonishing Japanese TV extravaganza — a four hour live broadcast of tanka poetry. The outside broadcast covered tanka poets gathered to conduct a traditional tanka competition, while in the studio, the presenters invited the audience at home to fax in their own tanka. By the end of the programme over 3,500 people had sent in tanka that they had composed during the programme! This is an astonishing display of public interest in poetry!

The contents of this journal certainly bear out the popularity and flexibility of this form. Kasuga Makiko's tanka sequence ARE ARE compares childbirth and early child development to the blossoming of flowers. The sequence is beautifully translated by Amy V Heinrich:

	in the midst of
	white-breathed winter,
	wanting to make
	her mark walking — 
	today thirteen steps.
This is I think the most elegantly translated of the tankas here. I can't compare the translations with the original Japanese, but often the English feels a little clumsy and inelegant, though the beauty of ideas and concepts does survive translation. It was though, mostly tanka written originally in English that made the biggest impression on me. Marianne Bluger's beautiful sequence BRIGHT ASTERICKS that charts her feelings as she learns to cope with and recover from serious illness:
	the shape
	of that wind-blasted pine
	twisted-black
	against the blood rinsed
	doom of sundown sky
which uses to beautiful effect the tradition of observing nature to reflect emotional states.

Amelia Filden (should that be Fielden?) offers us another beautiful English language sequence in WHO KNOWS UBE, a beautiful portrait of place and meditation of change:

	first persimmon
	of Japanese autumn,
	discarded skin
	luminous as lacquer — 
	no, I regret nothing.
This is a fascinating journal containing beautiful, moving and thought provoking tanka, but it may be more fully appreciated by those who can understand Japanese.

reviewer: Juliet Wilson.