Fri Aug 08, 2008
By ANGELA JEFFS

In the same way that few British people have read all of Shakespeare's sonnets but many can quote at least a few lines of the lyric tradition, any adult who has gone through the Japanese school system is familiar with the Ogura "Hyakunin Isshu."

This collection of 100 waka — a classic poetic form written in lines of 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables — has been translated into English before. The first who dared was a British naval officer stationed in Yokohama in the Meiji Period who studied Japanese purely "out of personal desire."

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