“I tilt the bottle/ wanting to trap/ the sparkling fireworks/ inside the glass marble of/ my 'ramune' soda.”

Minami Towada, a junior high school first-year student, composed this tanka, beautifully capturing a fleeting sensory moment.

She is holding a bottle of ramune, the Japanese carbonated soft drink sealed with a glass marble in a Codd-neck bottle. As fireworks bloom overhead, their light glitters in the liquid and in the curved glass.

Towada’s poem is among the works selected for this year’s “Gendai Gakusei Hyakunin Isshu” student tanka contest, held annually by Toyo University. The university recently announced the winning entries—a collection in which scenes of youth are distilled into tanka’s 31 syllables.

From approximately 55,000 submissions, each chosen poem shines with fresh, vivid sensitivity.

As expected, many poems depict classrooms and........

© The Asahi Shimbun