History of the Tanka Form

One of the oldest Japanese forms, tanka originated in the seventh

century, and quickly became the preferred verse form not only in the
Japanese Imperial Court, where nobles competed in tanka contests,
but for women and men engaged in courtship. Tanka’s economy and
suitability for emotional expression made it ideal for intimate
communication; lovers would often, after an evening spent together
(often clandestinely), dash off a tanka to give to the other the next
morning as a gift of gratitude.

In many ways, the tanka resembles the sonnet, certainly in terms of

treatment of subject. Like the sonnet, the tanka employs a turn, known
as a pivotal image, which marks the transition from the examination of
an image to the examination of the personal response. This turn is
located within the third line, connecting the kami-no-ku, or upper
poem, with the shimo-no-ku, or lower poem.

Many of the great tanka poets were women, among them Lady
Akazone Emon, Yosano Akiko, and Lady Murasaki Shikibu, who
wrote The Tale of Genji, a foundational Japanese prose text that
includes over 400 tanka. English-language writers have not taken to
the tanka form in the same way they have the haiku, but there are
several notable exceptions, including Amy Lowell, Kenneth
Rexroth, Sam Hamill, Cid Corman, and Carolyn Kizer.

There are many excellent anthologies of Japanese verse, most of which

feature lengthy selections of tanka. Rexroth's translations, which
include One Hundred Poems from the Japanese and One Hundred More
Poems from the Japanese, are considered classics, and The Ink Dark
Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi & Izumi Shikibu, translated
by Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratani, continues this tradition.