Poem on Japan disaster among contest winners

TOKYO (AP) — A poem about a coastline in northeastern Japan devastated by last year's disaster is among the winners of this year's Imperial Palace poetry contest.

The poem, by 39-year-old Yueko Sawabe of Fukushima prefecture, was read Thursday at a solemn ceremony at the palace. Fukushima was hit hard by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Coincidentally, the theme for this year's reading of "tanka," or traditional five-line Japanese poems that date back to the shogun periods, was "shore."

Emperor Akihito, Empress Michiko, their two sons and other royalty attended the annual event, which is part of the palace's New Year celebrations.

The earthquake and tsunami left nearly 20,000 people dead or missing, and set off the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986.