Japanese poetry is
poetry of or typical of
Japan, or written, spoken, or chanted in the
Japanese language, which includes
Old Japanese,
Early Middle Japanese,
Late Middle Japanese, and
Modern Japanese, and some poetry in Japan which was written in the
Chinese language or the
ryuka written in
Ryukyuan: it is possible to make a more accurate distinction between Japanese poetry written in Japan or by Japanese people in other languages versus that written in the Japanese language by speaking of
Japanese-language poetry. Much of the literary record of Japanese poetry begins when Japanese poets encountered
Chinese poetry during the
Tang Dynasty (although the Chinese classic anthology of poetry,
Shijing, was well known by the literati of Japan by the 6th century). Under the influence of the Chinese poets of this era Japanese began to compose poetry in Chinese (
kanshi); and, as part of this tradition, poetry in Japan tended to be intimately associated with pictorial painting, partly because of the influence of Chinese arts, and the tradition of the use of ink and brush for both writing and drawing. It took several hundred years to digest the foreign impact and make it an integral part of Japanese culture and to merge this
kanshi poetry into a Japanese language literary tradition, and then later to develop the diversity of unique poetic forms of native poetry, such as
waka,
haikai, and other more Japanese poetic specialties. For example, in the
Tale of Genji both
kanshi and
waka are frequently mentioned. The history of Japanese poetry goes from an early semi-historical/mythological phase, through the early
Old Japanese literature inclusions, just before the
Nara period, the Nara period itself (710 to 794), the
Heian period (794 to 1185), the
Kamakura period (1185 to 1333), and so on, up through the poetically important
Edo period (1603 and 1867, also known as "Tokugawa") and modern times; however, the history of poetry often is different than socio-political history.