Oceanic Anthology

Abstract

Most of this article deals with an oceanic anthology of “Tanka”, which is a traditional Japanese poem composed of five lines each having 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables, except for cases with extra or fewer syllables. This article is composed of three chapters: (1) an anthology composed and selected by the author, mainly related to fisheries oceanography; (2) an anthology of 54 poems related to the Kuroshio, all composed by various famous poets and classified into six categories; and (3) an essay entitled “Kuroshio and Japanese”. Since composing “Tanka” oneself and evaluating those composed byo thers are both difficult tasks, my selection of “Tanka” in this article might be arbitrary. As far as “Tanka” that are related to fisheries oceanography or to the Kuroshio, however, my unique experiences hopefully make a contribution in describing human and social aspects of Japanese oceanography.