Word: waka
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...event of Japan's literary season, the annual poetry party, went into its lyrical finale. Seated before a huge golden screen, Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagako harkened approvingly to verse by 15 finalists chosen from a record 17,238 entrants trying their hand at the formal 31-syllable waka. Then they listened solemnly while their own poems were read. The imperial family does not compete in the contest itself, this year featuring the subject of "Clouds." Hirohito's effort, read five times...
...stern exception to this easygoing rule is 70-year-old Mrs. Waka Yamada, who looks on concubines in about the way that Carry Nation looked on saloonkeepers. Sometimes admitted to the courts as a "special attorney," Mrs. Yamada argues her cause eloquently. Last January she won a precedent-shattering acquittal for a wife who admitted having murdered her husband's concubine...