In terms of intentions or rules, the "short poems" of the collection The Japanese of the West are on the side of the Western reading of tanka. However, the rule of thirty-one syllables is maintained throughout, with the first stanza consisting of three lines (5-7-5 syllables) and the second containing two lines (7-7 syllables).

Based on the rules of tanka, the transfer of ideas and interpretation of passages belonging to authors such as Marcel Proust, Friedrich Nietzsche, George Steiner, Walt Whitman, William James, Henrik Ibsen, W.G. Sebald, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Marco Polo (through Rusticello da Pisa) was made.

The "short poems" of the collection, as a research-exercise, can be considered transcriptions, as this designation brings forth a deliberate resonance, an adaptation in the sense of "translation" of the translation, as well as a paraphrase or other rendition of the meaning of the original texts and ideas, in different words.