Replies to the Tanka Poets

In February 1898 Masaoka Shiki, the invalid reformer of Japanese poetry, told the waka world that Tsurayuki was a poor poet and the Kokinshū a worthless collection. The poets wrote back. This book gathers Shiki's replies: the letter that began it, a sharp lesson on the particle mo, a long serial answer to a whole crowd of readers, and two later essays on the Man'yōshū, including his defense of the comic poems of Book Sixteen.

Here Shiki argues that a poem is not good because it improves morals, that complex beauty yields more poems than simple beauty, that poets should know the places they write about, that a verse everyone applauds is probably shallow, and that you cannot understand the serious without enjoying the comic. Along the way he demolishes famous poems, rewrites students' verses before their eyes, and handles his opponents with wit and some rudeness. Beautiful old poems are quoted and explained: the maiden gathering greens, the crab who asks to be eaten, the Three Mountains.

Translated complete and unabridged from the Japanese, with a translator's note, endnotes for allusions and wordplay, and source information.