A n g l o - J a p a n e s e   T a n k a   S o c i e t y

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Events 2007

 

Tanka: Art and Creative Writing

Symposium - Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Tuesday 24 July 2007

A one-day symposium to explore the synergy of creative writing and fine art practice in response to Japanese Tanka poetry.

The symposium is open to all and free of charge although places are limited.

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Seminar and Book Launch

organised by The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation

The Floating Bridge: Tanka Poems in English

by

Hisashi Nakamura

Date: 4 April 2007  2:00pm - 4:00pm

Venue: Daiwa Foundation Japan House

13/14 Cornwall Terrace

London NW1 4QP

Tel: 020-7486 4348

Nearest Underground: Baker Street

Entry is free. Details may be obtained from the Daiwa Foundation website: www.dajf.org.uk

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This seminar will explore the significance of classical tanka poetry in the context of Japanese culture and will introduce the content and background of The Floating Bridge.

The first part of the programme will focus on the 8th Imperial Anthology, Shin Kokin Wakashu (New Collection of Japanese Poems Ancient and Modern), the compilation of which was celebrated in 1205. It will also examine the far-reaching influence tanka poetry has exerted on the aesthetics of No theatre, tea ceremony and Japanese ceramic art, on haiku poetry from the 17th century, and on British and American Imagist poets of the early 20th century.

The author will then introduce The Floating Bridge, a collection of 70 short poems which he has composed in Britain and other parts of Europe over the past few years, following the forms and aesthetic of traditional Japanese tanka poetry, which has an unbroken history of more than 1,300 years. It also contains new translations of 21 classical tanka which are at least 800 years old.

 

The Donation of a Manuscript of Tanka: Poems in Exile

 Produced and Signed by Jun Fujita (1888 - 1963)

 

The Anglo-Japanese Tanka Society is deeply honoured to receive the kind donation of a black-bound notebook, containing a carbon-copy, on onionskin paper, of the manuscript that became Jun Fujita's seminal English tanka work: Tanka: Poems in Exile. The donor is Mr Rand B. Lee who lives in Santa Fe, USA, and the Society received it on 7 March 2007. The typescript is to be permanently displayed, with related materials, at the C4C (Collaborating for Creativity) Centre of York St John University, Lord Mayor's Walk, York YO31 7EX, UK. The postal address of the Society is care of the University.

Jun Fujita was probably one of the first poets in the world to write tanka poems successfully in English, but he is little known in Japan today as he emigrated to the USA and died there. His Tanka: Poems in Exile, published by Covici-McGee Co. in Chicago in 1923, was very positively reviewed in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse in April 1925. The reviewer, Harriet Monroe, is considered to be a "midwife of Modernism" as she was the founder and long time editor of Poetry which published poems written by such poets as Ezra Pound, T. S. Elliot, H. D., William Carlos Williams, and Carl Sandburg.

Harriet Monroe quoted the following two tanka by Jun Fujita in her review.

Among the brittled grasses

Frosting in the moon glare,

Tombstones are

Whiter tonight.

---------------------------------------------------------

Milky night;

Through slender trees in drowse

A Petal-

Falling.

The 365 copies of Tanka: Poems in Exile printed by Will Ransom at his private press seem to have scattered in the world, and in the UK the British Library and Cambridge University have a copy each.

Jun Fujita was born in Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan, but developed his careers as a  photographer, poet and artist in the USA. He worked as a newspaper photographer for the Chicago Evening Post and possibly for the Chicago Daily News as well. Later he developed his own commercial photography business. His photographic negatives collected by the Chicago Historical Society include portraits of Al Capone, Albert Einstein and Price Takamatsu of Japan.

How Fujita's manuscript has come to the Anglo-Japanese Tanka Society from the USA

The mother of Mr Rand B. Lee, the late Catherine Brinker Lee (née Catherine Fox Brinker) was an actress who worked in Chicago in the 1930's under the name Kaye Brinker. It was there that Mr Lee believes she met Jun Fujita. They became friends, and they stayed in contact after she met and married Mr Lee's late father, Manfred B. Lee (co--author with Frederic Dannay of the "Ellery Queen" detective novels). Jun Fujita gave her the manuscript as a token of his esteem. She passed it on to one of her children, Mr Rand B. Lee, after Fujita's death.  Mr Lee believes that his mother offered to return it to Mrs Fujita (Florence Carr Fujita) at the time, but the lady graciously declined.

Respecting the poetry and historical values of Tanka: Poems in Exile and the personal sentiments and thoughts of those who have been associated with it, the Anglo-Japanese Society will not treat the kind donation of Mr Lee as a rare book commodity, but as the treasure it is, and preserve it in perpetuity, while trying to carry out activities to throw light on Fujita's work.

The Anglo-Japanese Tanka Society would be pleased to hear from anyone who has information about the life and work of Jun Fujita so that it can be used to help to make him more widely known.

 

Events 2006

 

City of London Festival Public Lecture

Thursday 6 July 2006, 18:00 - 19:00

Japanese Women in Tanka Poetry

 

 

As part of the City of London Festival Hisashi Nakamura will introduce Japanese women poets who lived between the 4th century and the 13th century. The talk, with over 100 visual images, will include reading of 35 classical tanka by Ria Ulleri. Admission is free.

Venue: Gresham College

Barnard's Inn Hall, Holborn, London EC1 (Underground: Chancery Lane)

 

 

Image: Catherine Scriven, York St John University College

Tanka & Art

Free Exhibition

17 July - 14 August 2006

The Bar Gallery, Curzon Soho, 99 Shaftsbury Avenue, London W1D 5DY 

                                           (Underground:   Piccadilly Circus or Leicester Square)

                                           An exhibition of Japanese tanka compiled between 905 and 1205, newly translated into English,  

                                           along  with work by young artists from York St John University College who have been inspired by studying   

                                           classical tanka.

 

 

 

Events in 2005

 

Inaugural Meeting of the Anglo-Japanese Tanka Society

Celebration of the 1,100th and 800th Anniversaries of Two Imperial Anthologies of Japanese Poems

News Report by the Embassy of Japan in London:   Tanka Embassy

 

Tanka Art Exhibition in London

Fleeting Beauty

An exhibition of British art works inspired by classical tanka which were written in Japan between the 9th century and 1205. The works were produced by Art and Design students at York St John College and the exhibition was hosted in conjunction with the Embassy of Japan in London and the Anglo-Japanese Tanka Society.

News Report by the Embassy of Japan in London:  Fleeting Beauty

 

Tanka Art Exhibition in Japan

Tsukanoma no Bi 

An exhibition of British art works inspired by classical tanka which were written in Japan between the 9th century and 1205. The works were produced by Art and Design students at York St John College and the exhibition was hosted in conjunction with Hida Takayama Museum of Art, Takayama City, the Anglo-Japanese Tanka Society and Japan Airlines.

News Report (in Japanese):  中日新聞ホームページへようこそ

 

 


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