Buson, Haiku Poet

In 1897 the young poet and critic Masaoka Shiki published a bold claim: that the great haiku poet nobody had ever matched Bashō against was already there, a hundred years forgotten. His name was Yosa Buson, and the public knew him only as a painter.

Shiki sets Buson beside Bashō, verse by verse, and measures him by what he calls positive beauty, objective beauty, the beauty of human affairs, ideal beauty, complexity, and fine detail. Peonies and summer rains, hazy moons and foxes, courtesans and cuckoos, a ferry in the rain, a fan with a painted deutzia: hundreds of Buson's verses pass in review, each in its own stanza, with Bashō's alongside for contrast. Later chapters turn to Buson's diction, syntax and grammar, his strange sources and subjects, his age, his temperament, and the long poem Shunpu batei kyoku.

This is the essay that made Buson famous again. It is also a lively, opinionated lesson in how to read haiku. Translated complete and unabridged from the Japanese, with a translator's note, endnotes for allusions and wordplay, and source information.