Gogyohka () is a five-line, untitled, Japanese poetic form. Unlike
tanka
is a genre of classical Japanese poetry and one of the major genres of Japanese literature.
Etymology
Originally, in the time of the influential poetry anthology (latter half of the eighth century AD), the term ''tanka'' was used to disti ...
(57577 syllables), Gogyohka has no restrictions on line length.
Poets such as
Kenji Miyazawa
was a Japanese novelist, poet, and children's literature writer from Hanamaki, Iwate, in the late Taishō and early Shōwa periods. He was also known as an agricultural science teacher, vegetarian, cellist, devout Buddhist, and utopian social ...
,
Jun Ishiwara
Jun Ishiwara or Atsushi Ishihara (石原 純; January 15, 1881 – January 19, 1947) was a Japanese theoretical physicist, known for his works on the electronic theory of metals, the theory of relativity and quantum theory. Being the only Japanese ...
,
Yūgure Maeda,
Hakushu Kitahara, Toson Yashiro and
Shinobu Orikuchi
, also known as , was a Japanese people, Japanese ethnologist, linguistics, linguist, folklorist, novelist, and poet. As a disciple of Kunio Yanagita, he established an original academic field named , which is a mixture of Japanese folklore, Jap ...
have written five-line poetry as free-style tankas since the
Taishō period around the 1910s. However, they did not name the form.
In 1983, Enta Kusakabe named it Gogyohka () and for the first time laid out the five rules of five-line poetry. He trademarked Gogyohka in Japan. The form of English Gogyohka is the same as that of free English tanka because both are untitled and are written in five free lines. As of 2018, at least five Gogyohka magazines existed: ''Gogyohka'', ''Hamakaze'', ''Minami no kaze'', ''Sai'' and ''Kojimachi club''.
Kojimachi club
/ref>
Five rules
Five rules of Gogyohka by Enta Kusakabe (1983).
*Gogyohka is a new form of short poem that is based on the ancient Japanese Tanka and Kodai kayo.
*Gogyohka has five lines, but exceptionally may have four or six.
*Each line of Gogyohka consists of one phrase with a line-break after each phrase or breath.
*Gogyohka has no restraint on numbers of words or syllables.
*The theme of Gogyohka is unrestricted.
Sources
* Enta Kusakabe,Gogyōka o hajimeru hito no tameni,Shisei-sha(1997),
* Enta Kusakabe,Matthew Lane,Gogyohka (Five-line Poetry), Shisei-sha (2006),
* Peter Fiore, text messages: American Gogyohka Poetry,Mushroom Press(2009).
* José Luis Vázquez (Author), Janeth Carolina Piña Alpuche (Editor),Editorial Dreamers(2016)
* Cat Ellington, Memoirs in Gogyohka: A Book of Short Poems and Memoirs, Quill Pen Ink Publishing (2019),
See also
* Japanese poetry
Japanese poetry is poetry typical of Japan, or written, spoken, or chanted in the Japanese language, which includes Old Japanese, Early Middle Japanese, Late Middle Japanese, and Modern Japanese, as well as poetry in Japan which was written in th ...
* Cinquain
* Limerick (poetry)
A limerick ( ) is a form of verse that appeared in England in the early years of the 18th century. In combination with a refrain, it forms a limerick (song), limerick song, a traditional humorous drinking song often with obscene verses. It is wri ...
* Waka
References
External links
Saiun Publishing Corporation
Japanese poetic forms
Japanese poetry
{{Poetry-stub