Most people think of Basho and haiku when they think about Japanese poems. Japanese poetry encompasses more than lovely nature images. The word literature conjures, at least for me, feelings of stuffiness and boredom. It’s easy to forget that what we deem literature, that is, writing representative of a time period, was the love poems…
Tag: japanese poetry
Matsuo Basho’s Life and Haiku
Each day is a journey, and the journey itself home Matsuo Bashō was born in 1644 in the town of Ueno to a minor samurai family. While he is best known for his haiku in the West, his travel journals broke ground in Japanese literature. In his teen years, Bashō entered the service of Todo…