Book record
Bathhouse and Other Tanka
Ishii Tatsuhiko
Translated from Japanese by Hiroaki Sato
Bathhouse and Other Tanka, by Ishii Tatsuhiko and translated by Hiroaki Sato, places the reader inside one of Japanese poetry’s most compressed forms. Tanka depends on brevity, turn, and the ability to let a small scene hold emotional afterlife. The bathhouse as title image is wonderfully bodily and social: steam, nakedness, cleansing, routine, exposure, and public intimacy. Sato’s translation gives English readers access to that form without pretending English can simply duplicate Japanese measure. I would read this book for the pleasure of compression. A tanka does not need much space to change the temperature of a room. It can offer a glimpse, a breath, a body entering water, and let the feeling continue after the poem has ended.
- Published
- 2023
- Publisher
- New Directions Publishing Corporation
- Language
- Japanese
- Country
- Japan
- ISBN
- 9780811231343