Talk:Renga

This article is part of WikiProject Poetry. Please read the guidelines set out there before editing the page.


 * Nobody needs to read any guidelines before editing this, or any other, page. Everyone should feel free to edit the page as they see fit. --Camembert

Nobody's saying the guidelines have to be adhered to, just asking for them to be read. Bmills 14:10, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)


 * I know it's just a request, but it sounds a bit like an order, and I just want to make it clear that it isn't. --Camembert

I wrote out History and Terms, and will try to make a section "How to make a Renga" by taking previously written parts apart. Revth 16:13, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

This article is mostly about Japanese renga. Should there also be mention added about the English-language six verse derivative of the renga called the rengay, created by Garry Gay? see:

http://www.baymoon.com/~ariadne/form/rengay.htm

gK 9 October 2004

No, gK. Despite its name, Mr. Gay's rengay cannot be described as a derivative of the renga. The sine qua non of renga is shift from the uchikoshi, while the rengay, by contrast, is themed.Yumegusa (talk) 22:44, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

number of errs
This artical is getting better but it still contains many errs.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.59.26.165 (talk • contribs) 04:16, 11 March 2006 (UTC).
 * 1) "A Renga consists of at least three ku"-- many eraly renga are tsukeku, or 2 ku renga.
 * 2) "the opening stanza of the Renga chain (the hokku), later became the basis for the modern Haiku style of poetry."  Very missleading
 * 3) "As the Renga was a popular poetry form,"  WHEN???
 * 4) "The most favored form of Renga is Kasen"  This is only true in the Edo period.
 * 5) "Kasen means Great Waka Composers."  True but this need to mention the import of the number 36.
 * 6) "The earliest recorded Renga appeared in the late of Heian period."  Yoshitomo cites the songs of Izanami and Izanagi from the Kojiki.
 * 7) "Two of the most famous masters of Renga were the Buddhist Priest Sogi (1421 - 1502) and Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694)."  neither man was truly a Buddhist Priest


 * I've reworked the article primarily to clean up the rather untidy writing, but I'm no renga expert. I've done what I can to incorporate your points, as follows:


 * Changed, now reads "two ku"
 * Not really sure how this is misleading, and actually the article text appears to be correct given what I've read -- the first renga stanza, i.e. the 5-7-5 hokku, is what has become the modern haiku. If you can add or edit the text to read more clearly based on your own understanding, then be bold and do so.
 * Judging from the long span of dates simply between the lives of Sogi and Bashō, I don't think we can easily say precisely when renga were popular, so I fudged and simply added "for many centuries".
 * Kasen now noted as popular during the Edo period.
 * The bit about kasen also meaning "the great poetic sages" struck me as largely irrelevant, so I deleted it. If you think it's important enough to merit inclusion, please go ahead and add it.
 * I added bit about Izanami / Izanagi song, but who's Yoshitomo here? And can you add a citation?
 * The text reads to me as only indicating that Sogi was a priest, but not Bashō. Given that the Wikipedia article on Sogi does actually say he was a priest, I left the article text here as-is.


 * If I've goofed anywhere, by all means edit as you see fit. Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 17:50, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

This article is really very 'organic' - i.e. all over the place. One day when I have time I'll start from scratch. But for the moment, some errors/proposals:

Yumegusa 22:12, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) "As the renga was a popular poetry form..." This para is at best peripheral, and probably entirely irrelevant. Certainly out of place in its current position. Should be moved to end, or better, deleted.
 * 2) (History) "The number of stanzas was reduced to 36". No, the 36-verse Kasen became the most popular form of renga. The Hyakuin continued to be written up into the Meiji period.
 * 3) (History) "Masaoka Shiki claimed that" -> "Masaoka Shiki, although himself a participant in several renga, claimed that"
 * 4) (History) "particularly in the UK" -> "including in the UK". Live renga are also growing in popularity in other countries such as USA, Ireland, etc.
 * 5) (How to write a renga) "Three to four is the minimum number for a renga". No; solo renga have been and continue to be written. Three or four (or more) participants is usually considered better.
 * 6) (Renga terms) "waki (脇)" -> "waki (脇)/wakiku (脇句)". The two terms are synonymous.

Most of the above done. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yumegusa (talk • contribs) 13:38, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

Clean-up
Looks like we might need an expert on Japanese poetry now to make sure this is on the level. I've done all I can for copy-editing. See the above and the article source for further details on items I'm aware of that need help. Cheers, Eiríkr Útlendi | Tala við mig 17:56, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

How to write a renga (or not?)
This section appears to be inappropriate to the project. See WP:NOTGUIDE: "While Wikipedia has descriptions of people, places, and things, a Wikipedia article should not read like a how-to style manual of instructions, advice (legal, medical, or otherwise) or suggestions, or contain how-tos." I think a lot of the info in the section could be re-cast into a less prescriptive description of how a renga typically is/was written. Thoughts? --Yumegusa (talk) 15:37, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Reference needed for this paragraph:

The essence of renga is in the idea of "change" (変化 henka?). Bashō described this as "newness (新み atarashimi?), and as "refraining from stepping back". The fun is in the change, the new, the different, and the interesting verses of others.

Observer999 (talk) 05:34, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Overlap with renku - proposal
There is a good deal of overlap between this article and the one on renku. In its most usual sense, 'renga' is used in contradistinction to 'renku' to describe the classical courtly ('ushin') linked verse as practised by Sogi, Socho etc. and does not normally include haikai no renga or renku. My proposal is to revise this article so as to avoid the overlap referred to above, confining it to classical renga and moving any appropriate sections to the renku article. All input with regard to this proposal gratefully received. --Yumegusa (talk) 22:32, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Reversion of removal of an EL
With this edit User:Bagworm has reverted my removal of an external link. My reasoning for removing it was that it was an old link to the (defunct) personal website of some guy named Sean Price, who claims to have translated four renga sequences, but its relevance to an article on renga in general is questionable. He himself does not appear to be notable, and we have no indication within the article of the significance of these for renga in particular. He included the Japanese, but for some reason it is formatted so that the 10th/11th/12th/13th/14th characters of each link are separated, making it difficult to read. He also admits that his translation is "rough", and while he promised almost 6 years ago to continue updates once he settles into his new job, he does not seem to have kept it up. This link's relevance to the article is extremely questionable -- if it is meant solely to provide a limited set of examples, we can do that in the article itself, since these works are all in the public domain, and quoting published (not self-published) translations qualifies as fair use (individual poems never form more than maybe 1% of a published work). elvenscout742 (talk) 00:53, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
 * You raise a number of points, some relevant, some not.


 * Whether a url where something first appeared subsequently became defunct is obviously irrelevant, since the EL in question is to the Wayback machine, not the original url. Your description of the EL you removed as 'dead' here is therefore simply incorrect.
 * Price's translations (including revisions of those in question here) have appeared in print, so your claim that he is not notable is baseless.
 * Your suggestion that the translation of four Shomon renga is irrelevant to an article on renga does not even merit a response.
 * Of course the Japanese texts are in the public domain, but since most readers of this article would be unable to read them, that is irrelevant. Afaik there are no English translations that are in the public domain, but if you are aware of any then please let us know.
 * (Purely out of curiosity, how many hours did your "self-imposed topic ban" on poetry articles last? :) ) --gråb whåt you cån (talk) 15:31, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I'll address your last point first, since it's the most important for my posting here at all. My activity on poetry articles has massively decreased over the last 2 weeks. I have not made any significant attempt to improve my pet project since then. I have limited myself to simple, open-shut edits like this.


 * "Dead" was a poor choice of words on my part, and I apologize for that, but the fact is that links to personal websites are inappropriate for Wikipedia. See WP:ELNO, point 11: this link is explicitly banned on Wikipedia unless Mr. Price meets the GNG, and if he does, please make an article on him and post a link to his personal website there.
 * His translations having appeared in print are not evidence of notability. MY translations have appeared in print, but I'm not interested in my personal website being promoted on Wikipedia.
 * The translations are irrelevant until proven otherwise. Basho and several of his followers already have Wikipedia articles, and links to their poems belong there, not in a general article on the genre they wrote in (a genre that predates Basho by several centuries).
 * The Japanese texts are in the public domain, and quoting of individual copyrighted poems (with appropriate citation/attribution) is acceptable under WP:NFC. Please see Renku for an example. If the poems are indeed relevant in demonstrating the history or other aspects of renga itself, and they compromise only a small portion of the published text, then they should be considered fair use.
 * In light of Wikipedia's fair use and public domain rules, it is fair to say that Mr. Price's website violates point 1 of WP:ELNO as well, since the lack of any extensive body of content that can't be incorporated into the article is obvious.
 * (Mr. Price's personal website, however, is not a reliable source from which to quote the poems, and so print sources or peer-reviewed journals should be used instead.)
 * elvenscout742 (talk) 08:03, 22 December 2012 (UTC)


 * As to whether Mr. Price's translations having appeared in print make him a notable, reliable source in this area: Google Scholar and Google Books and Amazon indicate absolutely no serious credentials on Mr. Price's part. Does he have an undergraduate degree in Japanese and translation studies and then go on to translate this stuff in his free time? Because I do that, but I'm still not a reliable source for Wikipedia. General Google search seems to bring up little other than this page, other Wikipedia mirror sites' versions of this page, and other archived versions of Mr. Price's personal homepage. Who exactly published his translations, and when?? elvenscout742 (talk) 00:48, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Just remembered that famous quote: that his personal website featured self-published translations is in fact evidence that he is not someone whose translations of Japanese poetry have been widely published and read in print. elvenscout742 (talk) 00:51, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Source for date for jūnichō
The article currently cites Mr. Higgison's personal homepage. WP:RS is pretty clear that links to such self-published sources are unacceptable except when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. While an Amazon search did indeed indicate that Higginson's books have been published by third-party publisher's, all of those works have "haiku" in the title and do not seem to cover renga in detail. While he may know something about renga (I have no doubt that he does), his published works clearly are not in the relevant field (Wikipedia's emphasis) unless we take that field to be the (probably too broad) "Japanese poetry". The published books also seem to be focused mostly on poetic composition rather than historical or literary criticism.

Can someone provide more objective evidence that Mr. Higginson is an established expert in the field of renga? Otherwise, can we get a better source than his personal website?

elvenscout742 (talk) 13:55, 4 January 2013 (UTC)