SOURCE: "Hagiwara Sakutarō and the Japanese Lyric Tradition," in Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, Vol 11, No. 1, January, 1976, pp. 47-63.

In the following essay, Tsukimura provides an analysis of Hagiwara's poetic techniques.

Hagiwara Sakutarō had published over 200 tanka before he began his career as a poet writing in the free modern style at the age of twenty-seven. His earliest published compositions are five poems in the tanka form which appeared in 1902 under the general title "One Night's Bond" ("Hitoyo enishi") in the alumni magazine of the Maebashi Middle School where he was then a third-year student. In them, the young Hagiwara expressed his feelings for the beauty of Kyoto in spring:

 nagarekite
Kamogawa samuki
haru no yoi
Kyo no obashima
hito utsukushiki

As I drift along to
the Kamo River, it flows cold
this spring evening,
lovely are the Kyotoans
by the railing. 

and:

 akebono no...