Translations of modern tanka poetry

The article describes the peculiarity of modern tanka on the base of analysis of 100 tankas that were translated into Russian language for the first time. Tanka is a genre of Japanese poetry. It is a thirty-one syllable poem with 5-7-5-7-7 metrical form. The criteria of selecting tankas for translation were time frames (all poets are our contemporaries) and poetic activity (authors were prizewinners of national tanka’s competition). Eight poems published in the article represent stylistic devises used by modern poets. Modern Japanese poetry is simplified version of classical tanka. It is still popular and it can be said that tanka is prospering in modern Japan. Traditional themes of classic Japanese tanka poetry are still used. But at the same time new themes appear too, for example themes of everyday life’ problems. As a rule, modern tankas are written in kougo, but there are poets who use old Japanese’s forms. One of the peculiarities of modern tanka is a great number of borrowings. Classical tanka poetry’s prosody was not changed, but there are differences in modern tanka such as breach of metrical form and a larger number of syllables. Modern tanka did not lose their artistry, but in our opinion they present not elite art but a type of popular culture.