Okayama University Tanka Club took second place at the 4th Intercollegiate Tanka Battle, which was held in Tokyo on March 3 by Kadokawa Culture Promotion Foundation. The club reached the podium for the second year in a row—last year, they achieved the outstanding feat of taking first place in the event, in which they participated for the first time. A tanka is traditional Japanese poem of thirty-one syllables.

In the Intercollegiate Tanka Battle, the Tanka Clubs that have passed the preliminary round compete with one another in the form of uta-awase, where two teams produce poems on a range of set themes. This year eight clubs including one from Okayama University participated in the final round. Three members from Okayama University Tanka Club—Yuko Shiramizu (pen name, then-senior at the Faculty of Letters), Rin Hasegawa (then-senior at the Faculty of Engineering) and Haru Kase (pen name, then-junior at the Faculty of Letters)—participated.

Although Okayama University Tanka Club defeated Miyasho Tanka-kai in the first match of the final round and Ritsumeikan University Tanka Club in the semi-final match, they lost the final match to Waseda University Tanka Club. Haru Kase was chosen as the best kataudo (poet) for her poem she produced on the theme of a fly: 蝿の眼を内から見上げているようなプラネタリウムに星の涼しさ. I imagined as a writer of this article, “When I am seeing bright stars in the summer night sky in a planetarium, I’m feeling like looking up from inside a fly’s eye.”

Looking back on the event, Haru Kase said, “I was very nervous, because I knew that many people were watching the live broadcast of the event through a video streaming service on the web. I felt sorry that we were beaten in the final match, but I was happy that we did well in the competition for two consecutive years.”