Japanese Language Stack Exchange
Japanese Language Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [poetry]

詩歌. Japanese poetry, including haiku and tanka

37 questions
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Are haiku typically "padded" when read aloud?

I was once told that haiku should be "padded" so that instead of 5/7/5, they fit an 8/8/8 meter: ■■■■■□□□　←　wait for 3 beats after this line ■■■■■■■□　←　wait for 1 beat after this line ■■■■■□□□　←　wait for 3 beats after this line If I recall…
user1478
11
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3 answers

Mora count for 思ふ in Classical Japanese?

During an analysis I was performing of the poems contained in the 古今集 I noticed a curious pattern. Otherwise perfectly-formed poems included in the collection seemed to ignore the morae-count on a consistent basis with respect to the verb 思ふ【おもふ】,…
Kaji
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Is the layout of this text supposed to resemble a style of poem?

While playing a Japanese video game, I became curious about the layout of these book pages that appear each time you finish a chapter of the game. The text of each page summarizes one of the chapters, and is laid out in six lines. Each line…
waldrumpus
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Archaic words used in haiku

My teacher who practices haiku told me that in haiku they still use the traditional names for months. I was wondering which other words are still used in haiku.
Vicfred
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5
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Is a sentence containing two similar kanji any known figure of speech

Searching for Japanese poetry or simply reading song lyrics, I can find very often some sentences that contain two kanji characters of specific properties: They are usually close to each other, one is a compound of the another one (or they can just…
mpasko256
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How do you indicate line breaks in a poem when it is written without actual line breaks?

In English, if you have a poem, like Roses are red, Violets are blue, Sugar is sweet, And so are you. and you need to write it on just one line (for reasons of space or whatever), you would write it like this: Roses are red, / violets are…
senshin
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Redistributable Anthology of Haiku or Tanka in Electronic Form

I think a graded anthology of haiku or tanka might make an excellent chrestomathy for learning kanji and japanese. Are there any appropriately-licensed (e.g. creative commons / public domain) haiku or tanka anthologies in electronic form that could…
James Tauber
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Trouble understanding small bits of poetry in a Japanese novel

Recently, I bought my first Japanese novel to improve my reading skills. The novel itself uses a modern, very simple grammar (it's Ningen no kouta by Kō Machida) so it's not hard to understand. However the text also showcases a few lines of poetry…
goradora
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Do the Japanese read Classical Chinese poems in Japanese or in on-readings?

The pros and cons of both approaches are obvious. 1) If you read by conversion into Japanese through kanbun, you get the sense. Meanwhile, you lose the rhythm, and sometimes it is not obvious what the Japanese rendering is. 2) If you read by string…
Alexander Z.
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Why does this haiku have a 5-6-5 pattern?

I was amazed to read the following haiku in "小林 一茶" (a book written by 宗左近/Sō Sakon about the famous poet) : 我と来てあそぶ親のない雀 At first sight, the text given by 宗左近 doesn't seem regular : 5+6+5 morae ?. I knew the following version with a 'や' after…
suizokukan
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How wrong is my constructed poem?

I tried writing a classical Japanese poem: 赤き空 青かりたり根 夢がごとし 元を返るべし 汚さざらまし And here is a rough literal translation: The red sky, The origin that was once blue, Like seeing a dream, It would be best to turn back, If it were not dirtied. (Unfortunately…
Darius Jahandarie
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What is the function of 「や」 in this sentence?

古池や 蛙飛び込む 水の音 This is a haiku by Matsuo Bashō. Is the や particle doing what it normally does, listing items?
MukashiMukashi
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How to write and sing Shigin (Japanese way of chanting poem) properly?

1, Should Shigin be written in Yamato (old Japanese language)? Or an even older version of Japanese? Can I write it in modern Japanese? 2, Are there rules for Shigin? Such as setting rhythms, melodies, rhymes, etc? Is 5-7-5 form required? 3,…
BlackXIII
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Phonetic Mapping of the Hiragana System Used in the Okinawan Omoro Sōshi

The classical Okinawan poetry collection the Omoro Sōshi is written (mostly) in Hiragana, but the phonetic mapping of the characters to sounds seems to be different to their standard mapping. For example, the title "おもろそうし" was presumably (according…
Catahecassa
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Couple of classical Japanese questions

I found a poem by Nagai Kafu entitled 震災 (The Earthquake) in a volume of Japanese prose and poetry. It's a short poem about the Ansei Edo Earthquake (安政江戸地震) in 1855 which destroyed the red light district Yoshiwara. I reproduce the parts of the poem…
jogloran
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