“Salad Phenomenon” is the phrase coined to describe the impact of this book on Japanese society. Tawara herself became an instant celebrity, besieged with requests for autographs, interviews, public lectures, guest columns in newspapers and magazines, and TV and radio appearances—all the while keeping up a busy eight-to-five teaching schedule, Mondays through Saturdays. She has had two weekly television shows. There have also been a couple of televised serial dramas and a musical revue based loosely on Salad Anniversary, not to mention a full-length movie.

Critical reaction has also been highly favorable, despite cavils from purists offended by Tawara’s modern adaptation of a classical verse form. “August Morning,” the book’s opening 50-poem sequence, was awarded the coveted Kadokawa Tanka Prize—an unheard-of achievement for a young woman fresh out of college. The entire book was also named by the Association of Modern Poets as the outstanding poetry collection of 1987.

Besides producing a book of essays and a second slender collection of poems, Tawara came up with a sort of telephone version of the “Prairie Home Companion”: touched by the massive outpouring of fan mail she began to receive, and determined somehow to respond, she made short, semi-monthly recordings to chat about her latest doings and announce upcoming events. Meanwhile, the Salad Phenomenon has also brought us comics, choral works by a distinguished composer, and even a CD of “Salad Classics”—Chopin and Debussy—to play while leafing through the book.

Perhaps the most amazing response to Tawara’s work has come directly from readers themselves: inspired by Tawara’s seemingly effortless sketches of modern life and love, done in an age-old form, many have decided to try their own hand at poetry. Letters have come pouring in by the tens of thousands—and with them, well over 200,000 tanka. Nearly 1,500 of these, selected by Tawara, have also been published in book form. The oldest contributor is a 91-year-old man; the youngest, an 11-year-old girl. One struggles to think of a comparable level of response to any other single work of literature: an identification so complete that readers—people from all walks of life—do not stop at passive enjoyment, but begin a spontaneous creative outpouring of their own.

What is all the fuss about? Tanka (short poems of thirty-one syllables in a 5-7-5-7-7 pattern) have a venerable history of at least 1,300 years in Japan. In modern times, however, they have suffered from an image problem: dealing traditionally with set themes (the beauties of nature, confessions of emotion), tanka tended to become stale and conventional; this difficulty was compounded by poets’ continued use of outmoded “literary” language which made the poems hard to understand and kept them seemingly remote from daily experience. Poets who sought to revitalize tanka by avoiding classical formulas, on the other hand, often seemed to achieve modernity at the expense of rhythm and grace. Part of Tawara’s achievement lies in her ability to use fresh, contemporary language—skillfully incorporating bits of natural conversation, borrowed words from English like “photographer,” and modern icons like McDonald’s—without sacrificing the traditional tanka virtues of concision, evocativeness, and musicality.