Tanka Poems
Poetry, Prayer & Narration
Free · In‑App Purchases · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
Read 84 sacred tanka poems and an ordered prayer collection with four narrators, synchronized highlighting, downloadable offline audio, and serene imagery from Japan.
Tanka Poems is a quiet reading and listening space for sacred Japanese tanka poetry and prayer.
ALSO FULLY AVAILABLE IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE
The complete Brazilian Portuguese edition includes all 84 poems and the full prayer collection, with synchronized text and narration by all four voices—Leonard, Rachel, Steven, and Lauren. Follow along with highlighting and switch between Portuguese and Japanese playback while preserving the original English and Japanese content.
READ SLOWLY
Explore 84 tanka poems in English and romanized Japanese, presented with careful typography and serene photography from Japan.
PRAY WITH THE BOOK
Move through a source-faithful prayer collection in its intended order, rendered as clear native text rather than page scans.
LISTEN YOUR WAY
Choose Leonard, Rachel, Steven, or Lauren for four distinct spoken readings. Choose Warm or Reflective prayer delivery—or turn prayer audio off. Synchronized word highlighting follows the narration, and any voice can be downloaded for offline listening.
A BOOK-LIKE READER
Turn pages with graceful book motion, adjust text size and reading font, choose Light, Dark, or System appearance, search the collection, and save poems for later.
BEGIN FREELY
Amatsu Norito, The Lord’s Prayer, and three selected poems remain free. A single, restorable in-app purchase unlocks the complete poetry and prayer collection permanently. There is no subscription.
PRIVATE BY DESIGN
No account or sign-in is required. Tanka Poems contains no advertising, cross-app tracking, or behavioral analytics. Your reading position, saved poems, and preferences remain on your device.
Take a quiet moment. Read slowly. Listen closely.
Bilingual readings now play all the way through. English-then-Japanese and Portuguese-then-Japanese continue into their Japanese second half instead of stopping partway.
Cleaner spoken titles on the Makoto and Seichi poems. The title announced at the start of pages 25, 26 and 37 through 40 was garbled or preceded by a stray sound. Each narrator's affected readings have been corrected.
A much smaller download. Narration and full-resolution photography now arrive on request instead of travelling inside the app, bringing the download from about 557 MB to under 100 MB.
Narration Downloads. Open Reading Settings > Narration Downloads to keep the voices you use on this device. Downloaded narration then plays with no connection.
The Sacred Grounds Gallery now presents its photographs at full resolution, with an optional slideshow you can turn on in Reading Settings.
The developer, Lab Architect, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
- Purchases
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Lab Architect
- Size
- 89.2 MB
- Category
- Books
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 15.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 15.0 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 15.0 or later. - iPod touch
Requires iOS 15.0 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 12.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- In-App Purchases
Yes
- Tanka Poems — Full Collection $6.99
- Copyright
- © 2026 Lab Architect. All rights reserved.