Waka

:See Waka (disambiguation) and Tanka (disambiguation) for other usages.

Related Topics:
Waka (disambiguation) - Tanka (disambiguation)

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Waka (??) or Yamato uta is a genre of Japanese poetry.

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Waka literally means Japanese poem in Japanese. The word was originally coined to differentiate native poetry from the kanshi (Chinese poems) that all educated Japanese people were also familiar with.

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For this reason, the word waka encompasses a number of styles. The main two are tanka (?? lit. "short poem") and ch?ka (?? lit. "long poem"), but there are others: bussokusekika, sedoka and katauta. These last three forms, however, fell into disuse at the beginning of the Heian period, and ch?ka vanished soon afterwards. Thus, the term waka came in time to imply tanka.

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The term tanka itself has only a recent history. Japanese poet and critic Masaoka Shiki created this term for his statement that waka should be renewed and modernized. Until then, poems of this nature had been referred to as waka or simply uta ("song, poem"). Haiku is also a term of his invention,used for his revision of the old hokku form, with the same idea. For economy of thought, we will use here the term tanka for further description.

Related Topics:
Masaoka Shiki - Haiku

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Traditionally waka in general has had no concept of rhyme, or even of line. Instead of lines, waka has the unit (?) and the phrase (?). (Units or phrases are often turned into lines when poetry is translated or transliterated into Western languages, however.)

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