Waka for Japan
Website: http://www.temcauley.staff.shef.ac.uk/introduction.shtml
Email Address: t.e.mcauley@sheffield.ac.uk
Editor/Consultant: Thomas McAuley
Country: Japan
Type: Resource
Description: A resource for Japanese poetry/waka. Tsurayuki's words, written over a thousand years ago, are the first description by a Japanese of waka. The word is made up of two parts: wa meaning 'Japanese' and ka meaning 'poem' or 'song'. It was probably coined at about the time Tsurayuki was writing as a way to distinguish the poetry written by the Japanese in their own language from that they read and wrote in Chinese - the source of much of Japan's poetic inspiration. Today, the type of waka best known outside of Japan is probably the haiku, a sequence of three 'lines' of five, seven and five syllables and describing an aspect of nature. Haiku are now written in many languages other than Japanese, and widely in Japan itself. They are, however, a relatively late form of waka, beginning to be written in the seventeenth century, by which time the Japanese had already been writing poetry for a thousand years.
(Directory entry)
Website: http://www.temcauley.staff.shef.ac.uk/introduction.shtml
Email Address: t.e.mcauley@sheffield.ac.uk
Editor/Consultant: Thomas McAuley
Country: Japan
Type: Resource
Description: A resource for Japanese poetry/waka. Tsurayuki's words, written over a thousand years ago, are the first description by a Japanese of waka. The word is made up of two parts: wa meaning 'Japanese' and ka meaning 'poem' or 'song'. It was probably coined at about the time Tsurayuki was writing as a way to distinguish the poetry written by the Japanese in their own language from that they read and wrote in Chinese - the source of much of Japan's poetic inspiration. Today, the type of waka best known outside of Japan is probably the haiku, a sequence of three 'lines' of five, seven and five syllables and describing an aspect of nature. Haiku are now written in many languages other than Japanese, and widely in Japan itself. They are, however, a relatively late form of waka, beginning to be written in the seventeenth century, by which time the Japanese had already been writing poetry for a thousand years.
(Directory entry)
