Trivia

A tanka is a Japanese verse form of 31 syllables in five unrhymed lines, the first and third having five syllables each, and the others seven.

Tanka is a poetic form that requires 31 onji, and is divided into 5 lines of 5-7-5-7-7 onji each. A Tanka is further divided rhythmically; the earliest Tanka were divided at the end of the 12th onji with a new rhythm beginning at the 13th and continuing to the end of the poem. Later, the trend became to divide the poem rhythmically at the end of the 17th onji and begin a new rhythm from the 18th onji to the end (or the last two 7 onji lines). Modern Tanka utilizes either rhythm break position, but though the break point is less important today than earlier times, rhythm and rhythm changes as an integral part of the structure of Tanka is of primary importance still.