Tanka (短歌, "short poem"?) is a genre of classical Japanese poetry and one of the major genres of Japanese literature. Originally, in the time of the Man'yōshū, the term was used to distinguish "short" poems from the longer chōka. In the ninth and tenth centuries, however, notably with the compilation of the Kokinshū, the short poem became the dominant form of poetry in Japan, and the originally general word waka (和歌, "Japanese poem"?) became the standard name for this form. Japanese poet and critic Masaoka Shiki revived the term tanka in the early twentieth century for his statement that waka should be renewed and modernized. Haiku is also a term of his invention, used for his revision of standalone hokku, with the same idea.
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