I think a graded anthology of haiku or tanka might make an excellent
chrestomathy for learning kanji and japanese.

Are there any appropriately-licensed (e.g. creative commons / public domain)
haiku or tanka anthologies in electronic form that could be used as the basis
for this?

**EDIT** : (in response to sawa's comments, I've added "and tanka" to this
question.
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resources poetry
Redistributable Anthology of Haiku or Tanka in Electronic Form
If you want to learn Japanese, you don't need to be reading Tanka. That would
be like learning English by reading Beowulf. If you want a "learning curve is
almost 90 degrees" tough-love approach to learning the Japanese writing system
and its vocabulary, I recommend [Japanese Newspaper
Compounds](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0804809194). It's kanji
boot camp.
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One such resource for haiku is [Wikisource's collection of Matsuo Basho's
Haiku](http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Complete_Basho_Haiku_in_Japanese). There
are also quite a few [pre-modern poetry
anthologies](http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/texts/chronology_hor-
premodern.html) transcribed at the [University of Virginia's Japanese Text
Initiative](http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/hyakunin/hyakua.html),
including a transcription of the [Ogura Hyakunin
Isshu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyakunin_Isshu) (a collection of 100 waka
poems by 100 different authors).

The original Japanese poetry is all in the public domain and as such should be
redistributable without any issue; any translations, however, are likely under
copyright and more restrictive licenses than you will find desirable.

The University of Virginia also has a selection of [modern
selections](http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/japanese/texts/chronology_hor-
modern.html) with which you may need to exercise more care, as some of them
may still be under copyright.
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I agree with Mike that haiku and tanka are by far too difficult for learning
Japanese. Native japanese needs dictionaries and explations to understand them
too.

I found very useful when studing Japanese alone the Tanaka corpus. About
200000 sentences translated in Japanese-English.

<http://www.edrdg.org/wiki/index.php/Tanaka_Corpus#Tatoeba_Project>

Now it's hosted on the tatoeba project where you can browse it:

<http://tatoeba.org/eng/>

It's also used by jwb online dictionary:

<http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-
bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1Q%C2%E7%B3%D8%C0%B8_1_>
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## pmana.jp

Here is a website specializing in "easy haiku" testing:
<http://pmana.jp/pm32.html>

When they say "easy", it means easy for Japanese people, though...

Unfortunately, the content is not open and they are talking about 525円 per
month. There is a free sign up but I haven't tried, it might give you access
to some of the content.

The website designed for cellphones, so it might behave strange sometimes.

## wikisource.org

I also like to work with open resources, so that I can transform and share
them. Wikisource has some Japanese poetry (mostly seems to contains the Matsuo
Basho pointed out by rintaun, actually):

<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Category:Japanese_poetry>
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