Tangled Hair

By Akiko Yosano (Shō Hō), Sanford Goldstein (translator), Seishi Shinoda (translator)

Book cover of Tangled Hair: Selected Tanka from Midaregami

Book description

Akiko Yosano's Tangled Hair, published in 1901, had a sensational impact on Japanese literature, and we are pleased to make this highly praised translation (originally published 30 years ago) available once again in a revised Cheng & Tsui edition. Akiko reshaped the tanka, the most popular form of Japanese poetry…


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Why read it?

1 author picked Tangled Hair as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Yosano was a Japanese author, poet, pioneering feminist, pacifist, and social reformer, active in the late Meiji period as well as the Taishō and early Shōwa periods of Japan. She is one of the most noted, and most controversial, post-classical woman poets of Japan.

Akiko, an imaginative, creative soul, succeeded in turning traditional tanka poetry, which had gotten lifeless and boring, into an unexplored, uninhibited dimension of passion and never seen before seduction. Being a pioneer with her tempestuous poetry, she makes you see the rawness and beauty in mundane things we take for granted. Sensational, authentic poetry from one…

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