Haibun & Tanka Prose Resources Links

This set of links is unfinished. If your journal, blog or personal webpage has resources that are not listed here, please consider sending articles and links. If the piece is in print, if you can send a word document, we'll format it for inclusion. If you have an unpublished work, visit the submissions information for details about how to get it added to this website.

The banner above by Tosa Mitsuoki (1617-91) shows a cherry tree in bloom, while its mate on the entry page displays the brilliant red and gold foliage of maples in autumn. Courtiers assisted Mitsuoki by inscribing the narrow strips with quotations of appropriate seasonal poetry from twelfth- and thirteenth-century anthologies. Slips of poetry, called tanzaku, are hung from the blossoming limbs, a visual metaphor the remaining evidence of a human presence. The pair of screens represent Mitsuoki's meditation on the inevitable passage of beauty by depicting the melancholy hours after the departure of the courtiers.