Tanka

A tanka is another form of Japanese poems, like the haiku. It is also called waka or uta. Tanka means a short song. It is an unrhymed Japanese verse form of five lines containing five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables respectively. All tankas have five lines and each line follows a pattern: the first line has five syllables, the second line has seven syllables, the third line has five syllables, the fourth line has seven syllables, and the fifth line has seven syllables. This form of poem has a total of 31 syllables.

These poems are made up of five units which after translation into English, usually take the form of five lines. They follow a syllable pattern of 5-7-5-7-7, similar, and yet longer than a haiku. There are two parts, the initial 5-7-7 known as the kami-no-ku or upper phrase, and the second half, 7-7, known as the shimo-no-ku or the lower phrase. Together, the poem is thirty-one syllables long.

Example₁:
The bucket’s water
poured out and gone,
drop by drop
dew drips like pearls
from the autumn flowers.
by Masaoka Shiki

Example₂:
Her hair at twenty
Flowing long and black
Through the teeth of her comb
Oh beautiful spring
Extravagant spring
by Yosano Akiko 

Example₃:
The man
I used to meet in the mirror
Is no more
Now I see a wasted face.
It dribbles tears        

Example₄:
tree with lush leaves
at an outdoor fair
giving shade
to a goldfish seller
as summer begins
by Masaoka Shiki 

Example₅: For Satori
In the spring of joy
When even the mud chuckles
My soul runs rabid
Snaps at its own bleeding heels
and barks: “What is happiness?”

Example₆: Sombre Girl
She never saw fire
from heaven or hotly fought
with God; but her eyes
smolder from Hiroshima
and the cold death of Budha

     Characteristics of the tanka

• The tanka is longer than the haiku. It has two additional lines that have seven syllables each. In total, it has 31 syllables. Its structure is 5-7-5-7-7.
• A tanka does not have end punctuation.
• It also does not use rhymes.
• The third line of the tanka acts like a pivot that divides the poem into two parts.
• The tanka uses imagery to convey its meaning. Remember, an imagery is a word that creates mental pictures. Examples include similes, metaphors and personification, though it could be any word that makes a reader smell, touch, hear, taste or see what the poet intends.

Let’s look at the following tanka.

Crash at two A.M.
I opened my bedroom door
A white cat ran by
Startled by the clanging fall
Of the treat jar’s metal lid

In this poem, we ‘hear’ the noise from the use of ‘crash’, and ‘clanging’. The cat becomes more visible when we are told it is ‘white’, instead of just a cat. Therefore, imagery makes the poem more alive. Note how the line on the cat is a pivot. We understand why the persona woke up, even without the last two lines. We also understand why the cat is hurrying by even without the first two lines.

How to write a tanka

You pass through the following steps:

• Think of a funny or amusing situation.
• Write down a few sentences that describe the situation.
• Think of powerful words that can appeal to the senses of the reader, and use them to describe the situation.
• Once you are done, think of how you can create the pattern 5-7-5-7-7.