Chōka: Another Old Kind of Waka

I have a list-type post where I talk about different meters, but I feel that this one possesses a greater level of completeness at the moment (though it's possible that's a wrong assumption). 


So, to begin. Chōka is spelled with the kanji for long, which is 長, and the kanji for poem/song, which is 歌. Therefore the chōka means long poem/song, see? This makes sense, as you'll see further on, in the "The Pattern" section, but first imma tell you somethings about its history. 

History Facts 
The chōka  is an outmoded/uncommon kind of meter that got kinda left at the wayside, along with the sedōka.

It was popular during the first part of the 700s (that's during the Nara period, if you're interested), though I've read people kept using it in the Heian period -- for a bit. But, though people used it longer than the sedōka,  the end of the 700s was the end of the chōka  as well, pretty much. Why?  Well, why bustles, pre-ripped jeans, neon-colored icing, glue-on fingernails and Roombas? Exactly.

However. There's something you might wanna know about the chōka -- a little something from the land of 'hey -- wait a minute!'. 

It is this: while I've seen that the chōka became totally unused, there's also words out there that say it's just not a meter people commonly use. Or commonly used... History, right? *Sighs*, moving on.


The Pattern
The chōka's syllable pattern is thus: 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables, etc.... until you're ready to write the last two lines, both of which are 7 syllables. Except, there was one  book that seemed to imply the end two lines didn't have to be 7 syllables.

Writers of chōka, so far as it's been seen, tended to stop after a couple dozen lines. But there were times when a poet wrote a longer chōka. In the Nara period poetry anthology, the Man'yōshū (compiled, I think, in 759 AD), the longest chōka goes for 150 lines.

Hanka 
It was a thing to put a tanka (or several) after your chōka in order to develop it's theme(s) more or explain your chōka better. The explanatory tanka was called the hanka, whose kanji is thus: 

反歌 

This is either translated as 'repeat poem' or 'envoy'. Dunno how that works out linguistically. I get the feeling one isn't exactly a totally truthful translation.

References
As always, for your perusal, my references are below. Enjoy! Also, if you want some old chōka, look no further than the aforementioned Man'yōshū. There's 260 chōka in there.

"Murmured Conversations: A Treatise on Poetry and Buddhism by the Poet-Monk Shinkei"; 心敬, Esperanza U. Ramirez-Christensen; 2008 

"The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse";Anthony Thwaite ; 2009


"Història del Japó"; Oriol Junqueras i Vies, Dani Madrid i Morales, Guillermo Martínez Taberner, Pau Pitarch Fernández; 2011

"The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics"; Roland Greene, Stephen Cushman, Clare Cavanagh, Jahan Ramazani, Paul F. Rouzer, Harris Feinsod, David Marno, Alexandra Slessarev; 2012

"Literary Creations on the Road: Women's Travel Diaries in Early Modern Japan"; Keiko Shiba, Motoko Ezaki; 2012

Encyclopedia Britannica: Hanka Japanese Poetry

Encyclopedia Britannica: The Significance of the Man'yōshū