Tanka Prose - Etymology and Form

Etymology and Form

In the time of the Man'yōshū (compiled after 759 AD), the term tanka was used to distinguish "short poems" from the longer chōka (長歌?, "long poems"). In the ninth and tenth centuries, however, notably with the compilation of the Kokin Wakashū, 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 as part of his tanka modernization project, similar to his revision of the term haiku.

Tanka consist of five units (often treated as separate lines when romanized or translated) usually with a pattern of onji of 5-7-5-7-7. The group of the first three, 5-7-5, is called the kami-no-ku ("upper phrase"), and the second, 7-7, is called the shimo-no-ku ("lower phrase"). In English, the units are often rendered as lines and indeed some modern Japanese poets have printed them as such; Hiroaki Sato notes that such lineation is not representative of the Japanese, where mono-linear units are the norm, and Mark Morris comments that tanka and other forms are "packed" by "Anglophone scholars...into a limited repertoire of rectilinear containers".