7 students of the College of Literature, Department of Japanese Language and Literature residing in Professor Hioki Shunji’s Tanka Seminar was given awards of the 26th Maeda Sumitaka Award Student Tanka Contest (held by Shin-Onsencho Hyogo prefecture, Shin-Onsencho Board of Education, and Kobe Shimbun) for their presented Tanka.
※Tanka is a traditional Japanese poem containing five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables, respectively.

The Student Tanka Contest has been held since 1994, in order to draw the interest of the next generation of young students. The awards name is in honor of “Maeda Sumitaka”, who was born in Shin-Onsencho Moroyose, wrote around 2000 Tanka during his life, and was admired alongside Ishikawa Takuboku of the East, as Sumitaka of the West.

The awards and awardees are as listed below. Thanks to the students’ performance, Aoyama Gakuin University was also able to receive the Special School Award.

Professor Hioki’s Seminars have regularly produced award winning students in Tanka Contests, including the Maeda Sumitaka Award Contest. This year, students received several important awards including the Semi-Maeda Sumitaka Award.

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