Leading literary scholar and critic Koji Kawamoto examines traditional Japanese poetry and shows how the deceptively simple metrics of seven and five syllables packs information and intense emotional content into a short space. The book also provides an overview of the development of the waka and haiku forms.
Foreword vii Haruo Shirane Preface xi Autumn Dusk 1(44) ``Forlorn Autumn Dusk 1(9) Shaping the Essential Implications 10(16) The ``Three Dusks and Their Context 26(16) Conclusion 42(3) The Poetics of the Haiku 45(128) The Expressive Capacity of Seventeen Syllables 45(34) Hyperbole and Oxymoron 79(48) Orienting Significance 127(24) ``Shizukasa ya 151(20) Conclusion 171(2) A Metrics of Sevens and Fives 173(120) Seven-five Rhythm and Quadruple Time 173(9) Characteristics of Japanese Moraic Meter 182(10) The Pioneers of Japanese Metrics 192(29) The Metrics of Japanese Verse 221(69) Moraic Meter and the ``Epic in Japanese Poetry 290(3) Appendix I: The Japanese Mora 293(5) Appendix II: Translations of Shimazaki Tosons ``Oyo and ``Yashi no mi 298(5) Notes 303(30) Bibliography 333(6) Index 339
Koji Kawamoto teaches literature at the University of Tokyo.
