WHITE PETALS by Harue Aoki. Shichigatsudo, 2008, 126 pp., ¥1,500 (paper)
The hefty bilingual edition of the classic poetry collection "Hyakunin Isshu" has a nonce subtitle on the inside: "100 Poets: Passions of the Imperial Court." The rationale informing the passionate lives of emperors and court officials is described in a helpful introduction by the distinguished modern poet Mutsuo Takahashi, who sets this work on a par with "The Tale of Genji."
Consider, though, how extraordinary it is that all the poems take the same form precisely: the 31 syllables (5-7-5-7-7) of the tanka, or waka, as it was originally known. This short, evidently representative collection "spans more than five hundred years," while the form itself has been around for more than a thousand, and is still widely used today. This is hardly thinkable in a Western context, where few literary traditions stretch back quite that far, especially in the same language.