The Way of Shikishima: Waka Theory and Practice in Early Modern Japan

by Roger Thomas and Roger Thomas

Though the haiku is the best known Japanese verse form in the west, its appearance in the early modern period (1600-1868) was preceded by at least a millennium of waka poetry, whose thirty-one syllable version, tanka, had dominated Japanese letters among the aristocracy from the beginning of the tenth century. By the dawn of the seventeenth century, waka appeared to be more bound by convention than ever before, and class privilege in its practice...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0761839801
• ISBN13: 9780761839804
• Release Date: December 2007
• Publisher: Globe Pequot Publishing Group Inc/Bloomsbury
• Length: 244 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 8.9"