Lineation of Tanka in English Translation

Abstract

I T is a curious fact that the two Japanese poetic forms of 5-7-5-7-7-syllable tanka and 5-7-5-syllable hokku/haiku, which are regarded as one-line forms by the majority of Japanese poets and scholars, have been almost automatically and unanimously taken to be five-line and three-line poems by their translators into English. The three outstanding students of Japanese literature in the earlier periods, W. G. Aston, B. H. Chamberlain, and Arthur Waley, all described tanka and haiku as fiveand three-line verses, although their practices differed. While Aston translated tanka into five lines and haiku into three,1 Chamberlain, who believed Japanese to be 'a language incomparably inferior [to English] as a vehicle for poetry',2 applied quatrains to tanka and couplets to haiku. Waley, who made the memorable statement that 'since the classical [Japanese] language has an easy grammar and limited vocabulary, a few months should suffice for the mastering of it,' translated tanka into five lines when he meant to 'facilitate the study of the Japanese text';3 however, for a more literary purpose, as in his translation of Genji Monogatari, he rendered them into verses of two to four lines when he did not incorporate them into the prose. The majority of modern American scholars are consistent both in theory and practice: they regard tanka and haiku as fiveand three-line verse forms and apportion corresponding numbers of lines in translating them. Their attitude has become so ingrained, indeed, that when I expressed my doubts about it in a discussion prepared for publication, Earl Miner dismissed them by saying, '[Y]ou have a bee in your bonnet,'4 even though I noted two excep-