Talk:Waka (poetry)

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[edit] Tanka/Waka move

I moved Tanka to Waka since there is no waka article then and it seems appreciate to discuss choka and takan at once in waka article. They may deserve to their own article, but tanka article is still very short, so I think it's fine for now. --Taku 02:41, 12 Sep 2003 (UTC)


[edit] Choka translation request

Would it be possible please to translate the choka cited for those of us less able to read kanji? --Andycjp12th July 2004


[edit] Modern Japanese tanka revival and Tawara Machi?

I will admit that I don't know that much about modern Japanese tanka, but I wonder about this statement in the text: "The modern revival of tanka took place under the wing of contemporary poet Tawara Machi." Isn't Tawara Machi really just a continuation of the revival of the tanka form started at the beginning of the 20th century by Yosano Akiko and her husband-editor Yosano Tekkan, and others including Masaoka Shiki?

For a poetry form that has such a very long history, it looks like it is going to take lots of work to do it justice. ;-) --gK 09 October 2004


[edit] Article editing discusion #1

Agreed; I added some names. As for this section I think now it became a bit redundant. How about moving the description of its historical development away and merge Historical development in the below, and keeping this section only with the form and naming convention information? Reference to renga should be kept and perhaps reference to kyoka will be useful. --Aphaea 08:38, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Yes, the Tanka section probably has too much history right now and should be just a description of the form, and then the tanka history moved down to the Historical Development section.
On tanka history: The modern-era revival of tanka probably started with Yosano Tekkan and the poets that were associated with his Myōjō magazine, but that magazine was fairly short-lived, and Masaoka Shiki's poems and writing (as well as the work of his friends and disciples) have had a more lasting influence.
The Historical Development section really needs some subsections. I don't know how the Japanese divide things. In Donald Keene's books, He uses four large categories: 1) Early and Heian Literature (Kojiki to past 'The Tale of Genji' to 1185) 2) The Middle Ages ('chūsei' from 1185, including the Kamakura and Muromachi Periods) 3) Pre-Modern Era (1600-1867, then subdivided into 1600-1770 and 1770-1867) 4) Modern Era (post 1867, divided into Meiji (1868-1912), Taishô (1912-1926) and Shôwa (from 1927)).
As for Kyōka, it would be nice if it and Chōka could both also have their own articles eventually (and also one specifically for Tanka, so that the Waka article becomes an overview article for all japanese poetry not written in Chinese). I just checked -- there isn't an article yet on Kanshi. There is one for Renga.
I'm still searching for them, but other tanka/waka/renga poets (not including haiku poets) that already have wikipedia articles or stubs include, Hagiwara Sakutaro, Ishikawa Takuboku, Ito Sachio, Kakinomoto Hitomaro, Kamo no Chomei, Kitahara Hakushu, Kukai, Kenji Miyazawa, Mori Ogai, Motoori Norinaga, Murasaki Shikibu, Nagatsuka Takashi, Okamoto Kanoko, Otomo no Yakamochi, Ryōkan, Takeshi Kitano, Tsuji Jun, Ueda Akinari, Wakayama Bokusui, plus an article on Death poems. --gK 10:36, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I did some fixup on the Waka article, correcting some typos and changing some of the wording. There is still more to do, because every time that I look at it I find more. Unfortunately I am not a natural editor. The next time I work on a long article I will: 1) print it out 2) run the text through a spell checker. Both of those steps should make editing a little easier.  ;-) --gK 12:40, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I agree with your descrption on modern revival ; Keen's categories seems to me to have a sense and he is not so far from Japanese scholars. I'll move your listed poets to famous waka poets and try to merge your draft. But I'm not a native English speaker, please don't feel ill if I harmed your cool draft. Cheers. --Aphaea 14:22, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)


[edit] Article editing discusion #2

As for the list of famous waka poets, we probably don't want that to get too long, and some of the ones that I listed are not necessarily that famous or important,but just ones that already had Wikipedia articles or stubs. What might be a good idea is create two columns, one of pre-Meiji waka poets, and another of modern tanka poets. The other choice might be to create an annotated list to explain why a person is on the list. (Here is an example for someone who currently doesn't even have a stub and certainly deserves a full article: Fujiwara Teika (1162 - 1241) Compiler of the 8th and 9th Imperial anthologies, as well as Hyakunin Isshu. Should the list be chronological, or alphabetical?

Agreed. The list should be downsized particularly for readability. We will make a category of waka poets or two lists List of waka poets and List of tanka poets. IMHO it would be friendly for newbies our list on this article provide readers with from five to seven poets per an epoch; so we have from 20 to 28 names at last. --Aphaea.

Schnolle: Maybe it's me, but I don't think that the poems need to be set off with the double lines. I really liked the look after the poems were set up in the three columns, but adding the double lines for me makes it look like a break in the text for a new section or something.

You're right, I'll remove them. I put them there because I felt it would look nice to have it stand out more clearly; using vertical space probably will do just fine. Haven't seen many other examples of poems in WP... --Schnolle 12:06, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Aphaea: Don't worry about your English -- I am mostly only making minor corrections such as missing articles ("the" and "a"), for example. I only know English and Spanglish (a mangled amalgam of English and Spanish sometimes spoken here in Southern California). --gK 03:41, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your encouragement. Your corrections are always appliciated by me. --Aphaea 12:43, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I just noticed that the historical divisions for the Waka article pretty much match those used in the Japanese literature article, except that they have "Ancient Literature (pre-8th Century)" and "Classical Literature (8th Century - 12th Century)", where the Waka "Ancient" section covers both periods. --gK 09:33, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Translation copyrighted?

Hmmm... I just consciously saw the copyright mark on the Choka for the first time... Doesn't this mean that this particular translation is ineligble to be included in Wikipedia? i.e., isn't it a Copyvio? --Schnolle 18:11, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think those quotations are allowed as fair use (enough short, necessary to be quoted). But if not, we should make it original translations. --Aphaea 23:00, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
It's one small poem out of just under 1,000 pages. It's part of a critical discussion. It is for educational purposes. It might induce some Wikipedia users to consider purchasing the book since the full book description and ISBN is included in the Resources section. For all of those reasons I think that the use of the translation of the poem qualifies as "fair use" according to US copyright law. [Unfortunately, everything that I looked up on Wikipedia "fair use" policy was only for images, so I'm not sure how to handle the "fair use" of text on the Wikipedia.]
If the copyright notice is the problem, I don't think that it is necessary since anything that isn't explicitely released into the public domain is copyrighted. I was mostly concerned that the translator gets proper credit. I've seen several translations on the wikipedia without credit, and I don't think that is right. (e.g. haiku)
Generally, the max is 50 words, or less than a 1/3 of the article/work-it-is-being-used-in. Or so I am assured by those more knowledgeable in copyright. --Maru (talk) Contribs 01:49, 8 November 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Spell-check

I just ran this article through a spell-checker (I recently installed the SpellBound extension for the Firefox browser--it's slow, but it works). --[[User:GK|gK ¿?]] 03:13, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Page move request

When this page was first moved to Waka, there were no other articles with this name. Unfortunately, "waka" is also the name of a type of canoe - the primary means of transport among many Pacific Island peoples - and is the principle form of tribal grouping among Maori (who trace their ancestry back to whichever waka first brought them to New Zealand). As such, I repeatedly have to replace links from articles relating to Maori history which erroneously lead to this article on Japanese poetry rather than to waka (canoe).

I realise that the number of correct links to the page on Japanese poetry outnumber those to Maori waka by a large factor (122 to 38, to be precise), but the numbers for the two subjects are both high enough that it seems to me it would make more sense to have the disambiguation page at Waka and the poetry page at Waka (poetry). I'm considering formally requesting this at Requested Moves, but thought it would be more diplomatic to suggest it here first, to see if there's support for this without having to go through the rigmarole of official channels. Grutness...wha? 07:58, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Since there's been no objection in nearly a month, I'm moving the pages. Grutness...wha? 09:38, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sijo as ancestor ?

The sijo article seems to imply that waka is derived from sijo. Is this true, arguable, false, misleading or what? Kdammers 07:00, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think so, and never heard, but I am not surprised either. Korean nationalists nowadays claim anything created from Japan rooted in Korea. In my opinion such unsourced claim are better to remove or at least "it is claimed that .... by [source]", since it should be a minority opinion, not a significant minority. --Aphaia 10:51, 29 August 2007 (UTC)