Word: waka
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...Samurai's Waka...
...Imperial Palace, hosing dust and soot from the drooping needles. The harbor itself, and the once limpid Sumida River where warrior-poets repaired, are now thick with wastes-both human and industrial. Yet there is scarcely a resident of Tokyo who could not compose a stately, sympathetic waka in the shade of his humble eaves...
...verses* whose aim is to evoke a moment or a mood, rather than convey a moral or tell a story, as in Western poetry. One of the top features of Tokyo's Mainichi Shimbun (circ. 3,568,000) is its Sunday selection of the ten best haiku and waka culled from some 500 it receives weekly. Last week an amateur poet named Akito Shima achieved the rare distinction of having had his work printed in the paper's poetry section for 17 successive weeks. Even by the melancholy standards of most Japanese poetry, they are unusually poignant...
Shima's waka, reminiscent at times of Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol, were inspired by a book of poetry sent him in jail by the wife of his former schoolmaster. Poetry writing has long been considered an effective form of rehabilitation in Japanese prisons. There are utakai, or poetry clubs, in all of Japan's 73 penitentiaries, with an average membership of no each; the number of poetasters behind bars is estimated at more than 16,000. *Prison magazines are filled with their efforts, and several prison wardens are famed versifiers. Explains the director...
...haiku consists of 17 syllables, usually arranged in three lines; the waka, of 31 syllables, usually in five lines. * Despite such enthusiasm, say prison officials, inmates would be too "ashamed" to enter their work for Emperor Hirohito's annual poetry-reading party. Held last week, it was televised for the first time, attracted 31,621 entries, including 74 in Braille, 53 poems from non-Japanese...