Shintaishi

Shintaishi (literally "new form poetry") has its origins in the Meiji period.[1] It refers to poetry with a fixed form and written in classical Japanese.[1] Early Japanese bilingual dictionaries of French and English generally translated the words poème and poem as shi (詩),[1] but in the early Meiji period this word almost exclusively referred to kanshi (poetry in Classical Chinese).[1] Toyama Masakazu and Ryōkichi Yatabe, as well as Inoue Tetsujirō in his preface to a verse by Longfellow, expressed the necessity that Meiji poetry be written in a new form unlike the classical styles of Japanese poetry.[1] The word shintaishi is modeled on kotaishi ("old form poetry", the Japanese name for gushi) and kintaishi ("modern form poetry", the Japanese pronunciation of jintishi).[1]

Shintaishi were meant to express emotions, concepts and so on that were seen as too "modern" to be addressed in traditional poetic forms such as haiku and waka.[1]

Early works in the shintaishi form include those included in Takeuchi Setsu's edited volume Shintai-shiika (新体詩歌) and Yamada Bimyō's edited volume Shintaishi-sen (新体詞選), both of which became bestsellers.[1] Yuasa Banketsu's "Jūni no ishizuka" and Ochiai Naobumi's White Aster are usually taken as early representative examples of the form.[1]

The form reached its zenith of popularity at the turn of the twentieth century, specifically the "Meiji 30s", or 1897 to 1906, in Japanese historiographic terms.[1] In the following decade, however, under the influence of Naturalism and the vernacular free-form poetry movement (口語自由詩運動), it saw a decline and effectively disappeared.[1]