Machi Tawara
Machi Tawara (俵万智, Tawara Machi; born December 31, 1962) is a contemporary Japanese writer, translator and poet. Tawara is most famous as a contemporary poet. She is credited with revitalizing the tanka for modern Japanese audiences.
Machi Tawara

デコ活 · 環境省ホームページ · https: ondankataisaku.env.go.jp/decokatsu/sentei.html · CC BY 4.0
- Born
- 1962. · Osaka.
- Nationality
- Japan.
- Occupation
- poet, writer, translator and secondary school teacher.
- Fields
- Japanese poetry, tanka and translating activity.
- Education
- Fukui Prefectural Fujishima High School, Waseda University and School of Literature I.
- Honours
- Murasaki Shikibu Prize and Wakayama Bokusui award.
- Languages
- Japanese.
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Documentary summary
Machi Tawara (俵万智, Tawara Machi; born December 31, 1962) is a contemporary Japanese writer, translator and poet. Tawara is most famous as a contemporary poet. She is credited with revitalizing the tanka for modern Japanese audiences.
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Machi Tawara (born 1962) is a poet, secondary school teacher and translator, among other activities, of Japanese nationality. The poet was born in Osaka.
Machi Tawara was educated at Fukui Prefectural Fujishima High School and Waseda University, School of Literature I. Activity centred on Japanese poetry, tanka and translating activity.
Languages used include Japanese. Honours include Murasaki Shikibu Prize and Wakayama Bokusui award.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 26 September 2026
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wikidata · Q1240077 · wikipedia · Machi Tawara
In this article
Biography
Biography
Her skill as a translator consist of translating classical Japanese into modern Japanese, for example books such as the Man'yōshū and the Taketori Monogatari.
Machi Tawara studied at Fukui Prefectural Fujishima High School and Waseda University, School of Literature I. the recorded working language is Japanese. The field of work recorded is Japanese poetry, tanka and translating activity. Distinctions recorded are Murasaki Shikibu Prize and Wakayama Bokusui award.
She was born in 1962 in Osaka Prefecture, and moved to Fukui Prefecture when she was 14 years old. In 1981, she graduated from Waseda University with a degree in Japanese literature. Under the influence of the poet Sasaki Yukitsuna, she began to write tanka. After graduation, Tawara began teaching at Kanagawa Prefecture's Hashimoto High School, and she taught there until 1989. She wrote a 50 poem sequence, August Morning (八月の朝), which received the 32nd Kadokawa Tanka Prize. She combined this collection with other small groups of tanka to release her first major collection of poems, Salad Anniversary (サラダ記念日) in 1987. It became a bestseller, selling well over 2.6 million copies. This collection went on to receive the 32nd Modern Japanese Poets Association Award. Salad Anniversary started a phenomenon known as "salad phenomenon", comparable to "bananamania" (coined for the phenomenon caused by the first major book of Banana Yoshimoto). Tawara became a celebrity, and hosted television and radio shows where she extolled the virtues of tanka, and encouraged everyone to write them. She eventually released a collection of tanka sent to her by her fans, edited and selected by her. Tawara's popularity is mainly intertwined with her skill with tanka. She deftly combines modern Japanese subjects with classical poetic forms and grammatical constructions, which both hearken back to the classical days but also makes the tanka more accessible to Japan's modern youth. Also, as opposed to the tanka of the classical era, Tawara's poems possess a lighter attitude and a crisp tone, as well as a universality that helps to make her poetry understood by all.
Major works
Major works
Salad Anniversary (サラダ記念日) [1987] Salad Anniversary, trans. Jack Stamm. Tokyo: Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 1988 Salad Anniversary, trans. Juliet Winters Carpenter. Kodansha America, 1990. ISBN 0-87011-920-6. The Palm of the Wind's Hand (かぜのてのひら) [1991] Chocolate Revolution (チョコレート革命) [1997]
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 1 entries
1962
Machi Tawara born at Osaka.
Honors
Medal with Purple Ribbon (2023)
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Lowitz, Leza. A long rainy season: Haiku & Tanka. Stone Bridge Press. 1994. 1-88065615-9.
- 2.Buckley, Sandra. Encyclopedia of contemporary Japanese culture. Routledge. 2002. 0-415-14344-6.
- 3.Carpenter, Juliet Winters. Tawara Machi: "To Create Poetry Is to Live". Japan Quarterly. 36. 2. 193. 1989.
- 4.Tawara Machi's Chocolate Box: My profile in English.
- 5.Stanlaw, James. Japanese English: language and culture contact. Hong Kong University Press. 101. 2004. 962-209-572-0.
- 6.Brink, Dean. Sustaining Jouissance: Commercial and Heian Intertexts in Tawara Machi's Tanka. Positions. 16. 3. 629–659. 2008. 10.1215/10679847-2008-016.
- 7.小説家の東野圭吾さんに紫綬=歌人の俵万智さんら―秋の褒章. Jiji Press.
References
Citations
References
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People, houses and institutions
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People, houses and institutions
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Studied at
1- Waseda UniversityOrganisation
Established from a fact already recorded on a verified source.
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
38,624 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Macha MérilAuthor
- Macha RosenthalAuthor
- Machado de AssisAuthor
- MachbubaAuthor
- MachonAuthor
- MacíasAuthor
- Maciej Kazimierz SarbiewskiAuthor
- Maciej RatajAuthor
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