Ishikawa Takuboku

Ishikawa Takuboku appears in Modern Japanese Tanka edited by Makoto Ueda. The 'first collection' of modern Japanese tanka available in English. A delightful and comprehensive presentation that shows the development of the tanka form.

Attributes of his tanka:

Open and accessible with emotional honesty.
Freshness and interesting imagery.
Bear many re-readings.
Often illustrate a dark emotion (including fear, anger, and hatred) that many people felt at times but which was (and still is) rarely presented in tanka.
Innovation in the use of three lines instead of the two or sometimes one that were the conventional forms. Thus Takuboku usually grouped his 5-7-5-7-7 sound units as

5 plus 7

5 plus 7

7

These tanka were immediately popular.

His content is a relief from the sweetness of too many tanka.

Books of Ishikawa Takuboku's Tanka

Poems To Eat (translation by Carl Sesar)
(printed 1966 in Japan and 1998 in USA)

Poems To Eat (1998 translation by Carl Sesar).

Three parts:

Poems selected from Takuboku's Japanese A Handful of Sand.
Poems selected from Takuboku's Japanese Sad Toys.
Miscellaneous tanka.

In his introduction, Sesar writes that Takuboku's style is to have each tanka be:

a strict report of events taking place in one's emotional life ... a straightforward diary. This means it's going to be fragmentary, it can't have a unity or a coherence.

Literary critic Donald Keene writes (on the rear cover):

The original texts are among the most popular poems ever composed in Japan, and yet Sesar renders them so perfectly in language and feeling that one might think this was a collection of his own poetry. This book is the best possible introduction to Takuboku — and to his translator.

Sesar translates with extremely short lines so a syllabic Westerner might "consider" them senryu. But they seem so rich that I am content to call them tanka as that is what Takubuku called them.

Examples:

just staring / at that / cloudy sky / I feel like / killing someone

got five blocks / that's all -- / tried walking / like someone / with something to do

Time Line

See Takuboku at wikipedia for more info.

1886.: Born 20 February 1886 as Ishikawa Hajime (later taking a pseudonym for publications) in Northern Japan.
1910.: Published Ichiakuno suna (A Handful of Sand) .
1912.: Died 13 April 1912, age 26.; Posthumous publication of Kanashiki gangu (Sad (or Grieving) Toys).
1966.: Poems To Eat (translation by Carl Sesar) published in Japan.
1998.: Poems To Eat (translation by Carl Sesar) published in USA.

Books

Links and Books.

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Ishikawa Takuboku

Attributes Of Ishikawa Takuboku's Tanka

Books of Ishikawa Takuboku's Tanka

Poems To Eat (translation by Carl Sesar) (printed 1966 in Japan and 1998 in USA)

Time Line

Books

Poems To Eat (translation by Carl Sesar)
(printed 1966 in Japan and 1998 in USA)