Tanka had been able to present itself as a major representative form of waka until modern times. Upon the arrival of western poetry in Japan, however, "Shintaishi-sho" [Selections from Poems in the New Style] (1882) and many other works started to explore the new realms of Japanese poetry beyond waka. Thus, its poetic quality stood challenged; on the weak grounds of merely being a form of waka, tanka now had difficulty with presenting itself as modern poetry. Since then, it became essential for tanka not only to follow the form of waka, but also to have the meaning as a different genre from waka.

During the first half of the 20th century, tanka was frequently dismissed (or denied) as inadequate to establish a genre of modern literature. This sort of "Tanka Metsubo Ron" [criticism that dismisses tanka as ruined] revealed the problems of tanka-as-literature and kept resurfacing in many variants, but it would always lead tanka poets to sophisticate their own theories and fertilize their works, which eventually constituted an outline of tanka-as-literature.

When the tanka poets explored the outline, their main focus was on how to establish tanka as self-expression. Two major schools of modern tanka, namely "Myojo" [Venus] and "Araragi" [Yew], are often considered to represent the opposite poles of the debate (romanticism and realism, respectively), with their contrasting slogans ("jiga no shi" [poem of myself] by Yosano Tekkan from "Myojo", and "shasei" [realistic observation] by Masaoka Shiki whose successors formed "Araragi"). In retrospect, however, they can be regarded as two variations of the exploration of self-expression in tanka.

Until sometime around the '80s, tanka-as-literature had repeated a way of self-expression, in which a "self-image" appearing in your work is regarded as yourself, and had suggested that this attitude had significance in literature. The "self-image" in this context can vary from an author in reality to something constructed in a fiction to an abstract notion in a simile/metaphor. In any case, a piece of tanka is supposed to make you imagine the inner mind of someone who wrote the text, leading to suggest his/her "self-image".

From the '80s, when the standard value of literature started to be shaken, this style of tanka that focused on the expression of one's "self-image" was hugely unsettled too. One of the most symbolic phenomena was the sensational response towards Tawara Machi's "Sarada Kinenbi" [Salad Anniversary] (1987). Let alone its massive commercial success with 2.5 million copies sold to this date, the book had a sophisticated style of expression that emphasized something other than "self-image"; deliberately choosing a conventional type of "self-image", the author employed colloquialism, rather than literary style of the traditional tanka, to depict the contemporary scene of everyday life. With "Sarada Kinenbi" in mind, you inevitably get a different perspective of the history of tanka after modern times.

When Masuno Koichi emerged in the mid '90s, the outline of tanka-as-literature had already become extremely uncertain since the "Sarada Kinenbi" phenomenon. He provoked yet another new wave for the world of tanka: while traditional tanka - under restraint of "self-image" - has always tried to express universality from one particular individual's point of view, Masuno doesn't adhere to that old attitude. In his style, a universal perspective can be found through the eyes of one of our contemporaries.

Aiming at being common rather than being special - being just one of our contemporaries rather than being an outstanding individual - but at the same time, being something new rather than being a mediocrity, his style tends to exclude the specific legacy of the history of tanka expression. It might be difficult for readers to get a clue to see him in the past history of tanka. However, if you read his works along with traditional tankas, you'll be able to regard the whole body of contemporary tanka as something richer and wider.