Waka
- See Waka (disambiguation) for other usages.
Waka (和歌) or Yamato uta is a genre of Japanese poetry.
Waka means literally 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.
For this reason, the word waka encompasses a number of styles. The main two are tanka (短歌, "short poem") and chōka (長歌, "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 chōka vanished soon afterwards. Thus, the term waka came in time to imply tanka.
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, with the same idea. For economy of thought we will use here the term tanka for further description.
Traditonally waka in general has had no concept of rhyme, or even of line. Instead of lines, waka has the unit (連) and the phrase (句). (Units or phrases are often turned into lines when poetry is translated or transliterated into Western languages, however.)
Tanka
Tanka consists of five units (often treated as separate lines when Romanised or translated) with the following mora pattern:
- 5-7-5 / 7-7.
The 5-7-5 is called the kami-no-ku ("upper phrase") and the 7-7 shimo-no-ku ("lower phrase").
Tanka is a much older form of Japanese poetry than haiku. In ancient times poems of this form were called hanka ("reverse poem"), since the 5-7-5-7-7 form derived from the conclusions (envoi) of choka.
The Heian period saw many tanka written by the six best Waka poets and the renga article for more details.)
The modern revival of tanka took place under the wing of contemporary poet Tawara Machi.
Chōka
Chōka consists of at least twice repeated 5-7 syllable phrases, and concludes with a 5-7-7 ending.
The briefest chōka documented was made by Yamanoue no Okura in the Nara period, and goes:
- 瓜食めば子ども思ほゆ栗食めばまして思はゆ何処より来りしものそ眼交にもとな懸りて安眠し寝さぬ (Man'yoshu: 0337),
which consists of a pattern 5-7 5-7 5-7 5-7-7:
- 瓜食めば
- 子ども思ほゆ
- 栗食めば
- まして思はゆ
- 何処より
- 来りしものそ
- 眼交に
- もとな懸りて
- 安眠し寝さぬ
