I recently learned that 川柳 (せんりゅう) are short, humorous poems, with a haiku-like 5-7-5 mora pattern. I came across the following one (shown first in kanji, and then in kana):

犯人を
オモチャの様な
刑事室

はんにんを
オモチャのような
けいじしつ

The translation given for it is:

In the detectives' room
Treating the offender
Like a play-thing.

I won't even try to find this funny, but could some at least tell me what anyone could find funny in it?

Also, what is one to make of the fact that katakana is used to write おもちゃ? Does it mean that the humor of the poem requires reading it rather than hearing it?

TIA!

Wikipedia says "Senryū tend to be about human foibles while haiku tend to be about nature, and senryū are often cynical or darkly humorous while haiku are more serious", which suggests that maybe "humorous poems" is a slightly misleading definition?

This one's my favourite:


Three elephants,
In a bathtub.
No soap radio.

The arrow is shot
It hits the boy
and miss the old man

Is this haiku or senryuu?

Omocha is often written in katakana, there's nothing special about that.

Hmm, is that translation for the first one really correct? I thought when x is a noun, ｘのような～ means 'an x-like/x-ish ~' or 'a ~ that looks/sounds/feels/seems like x'.

Also, 刑事室, what does that mean? Edit: Apparently it also means 'wife (of someone of high rank)' so perhaps there's a double-meaning with 'room'?

Edit 2: If you're interested in stuff that uses wordplay that requires writing, try kyoka (See this paper from my How the Brain Processes Kanji thread: http://www.reference-global.com/doi/abs/...R.2007.012 or the work of Robin D. Gill - such as Mad in Translation (try doing a search in that book for 'visual', for example).

nest0r Wrote:Hmm, is that translation for the first one really correct? I thought when x is a noun, ｘのような～ means 'an x-like/x-ish ~' or 'a ~ that looks/sounds/feels/seems like x'.

Also, 刑事室, what does that mean?

I believe its an interrogation room. I may be wrong, though. I should replay Persona 4.

EDIT

I forgot to comment on the main point of the post. Well, to be honest, I don't find this one funny at all, but just so you know the humor in this type of poem usually comes from the final line (usually one word). Also, the joke is usually about breaking the expectation of the reader. My guess is 刑事室 might have been substituted in as a pun on another similar poem. No idea though.

Also, the translation is really bad. But it's hard to accurately translate these things.

Senryuu don't have to be funny. Haiku have many more rules than just the 5 7 5 pattern. A senryuu is just a haiku that doesn't follow those rules, and is generally about daily life.

川柳：江戸中期に発生した雑俳の一。前句付けの付句が独立した17字の短詩で、その代表的な点者であった初世柄井川柳の名による。季語や切れ字などの制約はなく、口語を用い、人生の機微や世相•風俗をこっけいに、また風刺的に描写するのが特色。

That's the definition I pull from my dictionary. Where did you read that Senryuu don't have to funny? While I agree they don't have to make you laugh out loud, they certainly have to include something ridiculous or satirical, no?

A long-overdue thanks for all the responses!

nest0r Wrote:Edit 2: If you're interested in stuff that uses wordplay that requires writing, try kyoka (See this paper from my How the Brain Processes Kanji thread: http://www.reference-global.com/doi/abs/...R.2007.012 or the work of Robin D. Gill - such as Mad in Translation (try doing a search in that book for 'visual', for example).

Wow, there's a lot of good stuff there! I'll be digesting it for a long time. (All by itself, learning that there's a scholarly journal devoted entirely to humor made my day.) Being funny in a foreign language, especially with wordplay, is the "black belt" of foreign-language fluency in my book, and even just understanding wordplay in a foreign language is not too far below as far as skill level goes. Unfortunately, I'm years away from even being able to "get" Japanese humor.

Similarly, I'm years away from being able to "get" Japanese poetry. Japanese poetry mystifies me in many ways (and the same goes for Chinese poetry, which I gather is the original model here). Even when I understand all the words, I just don't get the aesthetics of it. For one thing, I don't understand why these poems are always so short. They look to me more like riddles than poems. From my limited exposure to Japanese poetry it is tempting to conclude that Japanese poets must regard such extreme brevity as an essential requirement for poetic beauty. If this is conclusion is correct, I would like to understand the origin of such a peculiar bias.

I was also blown away to learn recently that rhyming plays no role at all in Japanese poetry. In his The Sounds of Japanese Vance makes the case that the difference between English and Japanese poetry in this respect is due to the fact that English is stress-accented while Japanese is pitch-accented. I think it's really cool to see how the underlying phonetic rules of a language determine its poetic forms. It is all the more mystifying that the Japanese based their poetry on models coming from a family of languages (Chinese) that are phonetically so disparate from Japanese.

Tobberoth Wrote:Omocha is often written in katakana, there's nothing special about that.

Maybe the poem is not special in this respect, but the fact that omocha is often written katakana is special, isn't it? It is not gairaigo, as far as I can tell. Is there any particular reason for using katakana for this word?