Righteous Cause or Tragic Folly: Changing Views of War in Modern Japanese Poetry

This paper explores the functions of morpheme-based rendaku, or “sequential voicing”, in Eastern Old Japanese poetry, with a focus on its function of maintaining rhythmic stability in poetic verse. It is argued that this function is implemented to avoid a hypermetrical line when no adjacent vowels exist as candidates for synchronic elision. Furthermore, a comparison with synchronic vowel elision is conducted. Based on the results, it is argued that morpheme-based rendaku is preferred to synchronic vowel elision when both are available options for maintaining the rhythmic stability of a line. Linguistic constraints blocking morpheme-based rendaku are also discussed to explain hypermetrical examples with potential, yet unrealized, morpheme-based rendaku.

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Chūya Nakahara jako twórca japońskiego sonetu: perspektywy przekładu

Gdańskie Studia Azji Wschodniej ◽

10.4467/23538724gs.20.058.13498 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 19 ◽

pp. 196-208

Author(s):

Krzysztof Olszewski

Keyword(s):

Comparative Analysis ◽

Japanese Language ◽

Research Practice ◽

Japanese Poetry ◽

European Languages

Chūya Nakahara as the author of Japanese sonnet: Translation perspectives This article offers a reflection – against the historical and literary background of the epoch – on Chūya Nakahara’s work (1907–1937), who was the precursor of the Japanese syllabicaccentual verse (particular of the sonnet). Comparative analysis of his poem Mata kon haru (Spring comes again) and its Polish translation (included in the only Polish anthology of contemporary Japanese poetry entitled Cherries bloomed in winter) aims at shedding light on how difficult was the adaptation of the sonnet to the Japanese language. The OJAD (Online Japanese Accent Dictionary) service seems to offer a new promise for the research practice, proving that the intonation cadence may be treated similarly as feet in the poetry written in European languages.

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Formative Elements in the Japanese Poetic Tradition

The Journal of Asian Studies ◽

10.2307/2941636 ◽

1957 ◽

Vol 16 (4) ◽

pp. 503-527 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Robert H. Brower ◽

Earl Roy Miner

Keyword(s):

Literary Criticism ◽

Direct Analysis ◽

Vantage Point ◽

Successive Generation ◽

Poetic Tradition ◽

Japanese Poetry ◽

Poetic Expression ◽

Complex Expression

The poetry of every nation and age is a complex expression of the history, spirit, and individual genius of a people; and, as each successive generation evaluates a native or an alien poetic tradition from its own historical and cultural vantage-point, it discovers meanings and values as well as limitations and weaknesses in the poetry it reads. Each generation must reassess for itself the glory that was Greece or the grandeur of Japan—so that the attempt to describe the formative elements which underlie Japanese poetic expression is more than a single essay, individual, or generation can accomplish. But the undertaking nevertheless seems necessary today, when we can no longer be satisfied with the older extremes of Victorian condescension towards “Japanese epigrams”; the exclusively historical or biographical treatment which evades direct analysis of the poetry; or that simple-minded exoticism which prefers ignorant rapture to the disciplined effort of literary criticism. For the Westerner as well as for the Japanese, poetry lives only as it is understood and felt, and our experience of Japanese poetry today must reflect contemporary critical standards and techniques of analysis—the means of understanding given us by our own age and culture.

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