Escape. This is an essential theme for my tanka. Feelings of wanting to escape. What I am talking about here is different from feelings of wanting to run away when being chased. It refers to a state of mind in which one feels like a bird in a cage. A bird with its wings clipped lives a miserable existence, in that cage. What drives my tanka poetry is often the despair of no escape. At other times, I also feel hope that I might be able to escape. I constantly sway between hope and despair. Those must be my honest feelings. I was once told that I had at most ten years of vision remaining. But...

Since I joined academia in the United States, I have taken every opportunity to provide lectures on tanka. I have presented my tanka poems at professional conferences and workshops, because of my belief that "emotions" are a universal language. Living, studying, and teaching in Japan, the U.S. mainland, and Guam (American territory) have provided me with many experiences that led me to think about the components of my daily life. During this time, writing tanka and short essays has become an important part of my life, just like writing a journal or keeping a diary. I am fond of both tanka...

Tanka stresses love, beauty, and hope, in parallels between human life and nature. What is sought within the very simple form (five lines in English) is to express the essence of a yearning with a depth in which all the emotions are intermingled. The vivid expression of that which has touched the heart has the power to evoke a wealth of associations. Tanka is a wonderful medium of expression. Because of its brevity, it is a form in which poets can produce highly "memorable" and "memoizable" works. Like haiku, tanka often employs natural imagery and settings to evoke thoughts or feelings....

I sat in a cold room in a college dormitory, making slow progress on my doctoral dissertation. I felt like I was groping my way through a pitch-black tunnel with no end in sight. But I knew that it was far too late to go back the way I came. In the days and years of intense solitude during my long-term study abroad, tanka helped me to keep going. Since I joined academia as a faculty member, I have taken every opportunity to provide lectures on tanka, simply because of my profound belief that "emotions" are a universal language. Without writing tanka poems, I probably could not have survived...

The day I enter my Third Life. I thought it was still a long way off. But it is finally here. Without any warning, the day came for me too. The ten years between the ages of seventy and eighty comprise the last mentally and physically active phase of life. What should people do in these final ten active years of their lives? What should people do before the wind of impermanence signals that it is time to leave this world? I have never taken life more seriously. To enrich my Third Life, I will free myself from invisible chains: letting go of the burdens from my past. It is good to have a...

At the time in my life when I was most beautiful, the sky was blue. Bright red flowers were in full bloom. The chirping of birds led me into a green forest. Dozing off in the forest I had a dream. It has been such a long time since then. What on earth have I been doing for so many years? When I look in the mirror, I do not see "youth" or "beauty."How merciless the years can be. Growing old is sad and cruel. Love, beauty, and even hope decay with the merciless passage of time. I have long thought about aging in this way. But this age is also a time of letting go of the sadnesses and pains of...

The beauty of flowers adds color to the season. The shapes and colors of flowers not only attract us at large but also influence our moods and emotions to a great extent.The quarter of a century that I have lived on the island of Guam seems like an extremely long time. At other times, it seems to have passed so quickly. Guam has been home to the most productive years of my life. At the same time, flowers (such as hibiscus, bougainvillea, plumeria, and flame tree blooms visible everywhere in the island) became friends who soothed me. Flowers populate my tanka poems.After living on a small...