The 5th Hoshi-to-Mori International Tanka Contest Comments on the Selection, Japanese Field 　'The Snow' has stimulated our feeling in various ways since the most ancient times. The snow is fleeting and beautiful, and reminds us of something serious, sever, tender and peaceful, and before anything else, of purity. And it has stirred the interests of us, the committee members to see how it would be sung at the present day. The harmonized world with cold snow and hot feeling..., affections being librated in front of the pure snow, an everlasting scene being spreaded in the quiet snow as if the time came to a halt..., the selection went on with the expectation to get further unexpected discovery. YUKI-NO-FURU NIOI-WO-KANJIRU HITO-TO-ITE JIBUN-WO-SHINJITE MIYOU-TO-OMOU Hoshi-to-Mori Grand Prize winning tanka by Ms. Yumi Kagami: (the gist: together with the person feeling the smell of the falling snow, I think I would believe in myself.) 　This is an excellent tanka in which the writer sings delicately the joy of a young, pure woman having met the person she can entrust with her future.The thing the writer intends to entrust is that the person can feel the smell of the falling snow, and at the same time her own reliance on herself to have accepted him. A man can believe what he saw or heard, but we need courage to place smell as the central motive in one's life. The writer who can sing such an impression as this,is probably an artist, and her first-class sensibilities have excited our deep sympathies. The melody of this tanka is in the spoken language, but it does not lose elegance and succeeds the current of the traditional tanka. SAYASAYA-TO FURI-TSUMU-YUKI-NI SARASARE-TE WATASHI-WA-CHIISANA MAYUDAMA-NI-NARU Hoshi-to-Mori Supplementary Prize winning tanka by Ms. Shizuko Tamura (the gist: Being bleached by the snow calmly falling and piling, I am becoming a little cocoon.) 　The writer sings a refreshing and dry atmosphere, which is very musical with the good effect of S sounds. We can feel the ultimate sign of transfiguration. The writer is considered perhaps to have recollected her own life, and to be ready for giving up something under a certain determination. The earnest question toward living is sung in the posture of asking the snow about it, not with the impatience get an answer for it, and meanwhile the tanka is curing the hearts of both the writer and the listeners. It is understandable that this tanka was compased at the time when the writer got in one body together with something bigger than the self of the writer which was stopped in front of the pure white snow. HATSUYUKI-TO TOMO-NI-ORI-KURU KANRANSHA-NO SHOUJO-NO-SHUWA-WA KOI-WO-TSUGEORI Also, Hoshi-to-Mori Supplementary Prize winning tanka by Mr. Tadashi Kakiuchi (the gist: the sign language by the girl in the Ferries wheel descending with the first snow, is telling her love.) 　The scene of this tanka clearly comes on our mind and it makes us aware of the thing that the eternal time lies behind the scene in a moment. The unconditional love of the writer toward the leading life of human being is the life of this tanka. Even if the girl's love would be destined to be broken down, the writer would find it possible to accept her life and his own one affirmatively by watching her love and retaining it in tanka. The melody, which is sung comfortably and massively, is remarkable. The above are the simple comments on the selections. 5 July 2003 The Selection Comittee, Japanese Field Hoshi-to-Mori International Tanka Contest Translated by: Misao Okimoto Go to the award of the 5th contest Go to the top Copyright(C)2001 Hoshi-to-Mori, All Rights Reserved.