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An updated version of Elena Dyakonova's lecture for Arzamas University (http://arzamas.academy/uni/eastwest) How to see the great in the small, how to fit nature, people, feelings, beauty, great events, small details, life and death, finally, into a short poem of 31 syllables or even shorter - 17 syllables - (and it is from such short forms that Japanese poetry consists)? Genres of small forms, the five-line tanka and the later three-line haiku, have existed in written form for more than 1700 years, they have been predicted to perish many times, but they do not fade. The reasons for the gravitation of classical Japanese culture to small forms that contain many meanings are not entirely clear. Although attempts to find an explanation for this have been made repeatedly, such explanations are numerous. Some came from China, where small forms easily coexisted with large ones and were not perceived as dominant. The main thing is that they turned out to be surprisingly organic for the Japanese themselves, and over time they became symbolic for Japan: the image of this country in the eyes of foreigners was long perceived as a miniature - "Fuji in a saucer", as the poet Mikhail Kuzmin said at the beginning of the 20th century. New course "Japanese Culture in Five Subjects" by art historian Anna Egorova in the "Radio Arzamas" app: https://arzamas.academy/radio/announc... *** Arzamas is an educational project about the history of culture https://arzamas.academy/. Our courses and podcasts can be listened to in the "Radio Arzamas" app http://arzamas.academy/radio. And to stay up to date with new materials, follow us on social networks: Instagram: / arzamas.academy FB: / arzamas.academy VK: https://vk.com/arzamas.academy Twitter: / arzamas_academy Telegram: https://t.me/ArzamasLive