The Essentials of Haikai

In the autumn of 1895 a blind poet asked Masaoka Shiki how to begin writing haiku. Shiki, twenty-eight years old, just back from the Sino-Japanese War and gravely ill, answered with this book: a short, fierce, practical guide that ran in the newspaper Nihon from October to December and became a founding handbook of modern haiku.

Shiki starts from first principles. Haiku is a part of literature, and literature a part of the fine arts, so one standard of beauty must judge them all. Then he gets practical. Write what you think, even half a verse. Do not be ashamed to show your work. Learn the seasonal words and what they call to mind. Prefer the real scene to the stock conceit, and beware the stale "monthly-meeting" manner of the old masters. Dozens of verses by Bashō, Buson, Kikaku, Yayū, Issa and many others, good and bad, are weighed one by one. The book ends with linked verse: Shiki mocks its rules, then reads an eighteen-verse memorial sequence by poets of Buson's circle link by link.

Translated complete and unabridged from the Japanese, with every verse set as verse, a translator's note, endnotes on seasonal words and wordplay, and source information.