This collection of criticism traces tanka from the Man'yōshū through modern and postwar poetry, examining how lyricism has taken shape and become bound to longing for and loss of a "homeland." Moving among the ancient layers of poetry, modernization, and the expressive self, it considers the meanings of memory and place in tanka.

A study that follows the lost "homeland" from tanka's ancient layers to the present, reading the forms of lyricism along the way.