The Finest Coffee or Music | "Tanka Time Capsule" by Naoko Higashi, Yumio Sato, and Satoshi Chiba
Tanka might be music played solely with words.
While I was looking to learn more about Tanka—which I had only encountered through vague interest and shallow knowledge—I picked up "Tanka Time Capsule," co-edited by Naoko Higashi, Yumio Sato, and Satoshi Chiba.
In the explanation regarding the creation of this book, it states:
In the autumn of 2016, the three editors gathered and discussed, "Let's compile an anthology of modern Tanka that we want to leave behind for a thousand years from now." In selecting the poets to include, we focused on those who had published collections between the postwar period and 2015. The included poems also encompass those published from 2016 onwards.
It says.
This book is a collection of Tanka by a total of 115 poets, ranging from Taeko Kuzuhara, born in 1907, to Shizuka Omori, Remi Fujimoto, and Hayato Yoshida, born in 1989, spanning a period of about 80 years in the poets' birth years.
Also, as this year, 2025, marks 80 years since the end of the war, it is a coincidence that the Tanka have been composed over a similar 80-year span of time. A small question mark popped into my head: does the difference in generations create any difference when it comes to "spinning words"?
And the answer for me was "NO."
Of course, living in different eras means there are cultures, trends, moods, and ideologies unique to each time, and I believe there are many things that influence us whether we are conscious of them or not.
However, even if influenced, the way that manifests from each person should be different, and I felt a sense of respect realizing that poets, regardless of era or generation, can filter those influences through their own original lenses and spin words like the finest coffee, carefully extracted drop by drop.
For example, these two poems:
Young girl, hold your knife deep to the early spring lemon; may you have a wonderful life.
Please don't say, as if opening an umbrella, that we can only meet while we are alive.
The first poem is by Taeko Kuzuhara, and the latter is by Shizuka Omori.
Regardless of era or generation, both are incredibly fresh, vivid, and wonderful.
The history of Tanka is old, dating back to the "Man'yoshu" about 1,300 years ago, but the character for "yo" (leaf) in "Man'yoshu" seems to represent "world" or "era," meaning it contains the wish for "bansei"—to last forever and ever.
Tanka, which has been spun and vacuum-packed by many people across many eras like that, will surely allow those who enjoy it in the future to freely travel back and forth through time.
It truly is a "time capsule."
Finally, I would like to share a poem by Hiroyuki Sasai, a poet introduced in this book whom I really, really love.
I couldn't narrow it down, so here are two.
I want to install a window for you in your later years and polish it until the sun sets.
I put the moonlight into my bag; I am so, so alone
I believe that if you pick up this book and open it, you will have an encounter filled with wonderful surprises that make you say, "What is that!"
Yes, probably, surely.
Naoko Higashi, Yumio Sato, Satoshi Chiba, "Tanka Time Capsule" (2018) Shoshi Kankanbo