“Kiro Byoto” is a tanka sequence by Masanori Kuwahara. Through the modern setting of aging, care, and a hospital ward, it observes the pain borne by families and society in compressed language.

The sequence lets the strain around aging, family, and society resonate beneath the quiet of a hospital ward.

“Toki Geiei” is a sequence included in Yuriko Matsumura’s tanka collection Oonna Densetsu. Images of the sea and whales are layered with distant memory and female bodily experience, setting individual life within a broad sense of time.

Following the shadow of a distant sea, the sequence turns memory and the body’s depth into tanka.