Who is master Basho?

The 17th-century Japanese haiku master Basho was born Matsuo Kinsaku near Kyoto, Japan, to a minor samurai and his wife. In Basho’s time, poets were beginning to take the hokku’s form as a template for composing small standalone poems engaging natural imagery, a form that eventually became known as haiku.

Did Matsuo Basho create haiku?

However, Shiki was also instrumental in making Bashō’s poetry accessible in English, and to leading intellectuals and the Japanese public at large. He invented the term haiku (replacing hokku) to refer to the freestanding 5–7–5 form which he considered the most artistic and desirable part of the haikai no renga.

What inspired Matsuo Basho to write haikus?

Basho is thought to have gravitated toward Kyoto, where he studied the Japanese classics. Here, also, he became interested in the haiku of the Teitoku school, which was directed by Kitamura Kigin.

What is the significance of Matsuo Basho?

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), is Japan’s most famous poet, certainly its most famous haiku poet. He was historically important in developing the form during the Genroku Period, the high point of the Japanese Renaissance, which has so much in common with the Elizabethan Period in England, which came just 100 years earlier.

Is Basho real?

Bashō, in full Matsuo Bashō, pseudonym of Matsuo Munefusa, (born 1644, Ueno, Iga province, Japan—died Nov. 28, 1694, Ōsaka), the supreme Japanese haiku poet, who greatly enriched the 17-syllable haiku form and made it an accepted medium of artistic expression. Bashō, statue in Tateishi, Japan.

How did Basho get his name?

Matsuo became educated in classical Japanese poems. First he named himself Tosei (桃青) meaning “unripe peach in blue”. He planted the plant and called himself Basho because it became his favorite tree in his garden.

What is the famous haiku of Japan?

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) made about 1000 haiku poems through the lifetime, traveling around Japan. His writing “The Narrow Road to the Deep North ” is the most famous haiku collection in Japan.

Who created haikus?

Bashō is usually credited as the most influential haiku poet and the writer who popularized the form in the 17th century. Outside Japan, Imagist writers such as Ezra Pound and T.E. Hulme wrote haiku in English.

How did Matsuo Basho get his pen name?

On occasion he withdrew from society altogether, retiring to Fukagawa, site of his Bashō-an (“Cottage of the Plantain Tree”), a simple hut from which the poet derived his pen name.

Why did Matsuo Basho change his name?

According to Japanese custom, he is usually called Basho without his family name, and his signature as a poet does not include his house name. Basho took this name because he admired a Chinese poet, Li Po whose name means plum in white. He quit samurai life 1666, and in 1675 he moved to Edo, today called Tokyo.

Where is Matsuo Basho from?

Iga ProvinceMatsuo Bashō / Place of birth
Bashō, in full Matsuo Bashō, pseudonym of Matsuo Munefusa, (born 1644, Ueno, Iga province, Japan—died Nov. 28, 1694, Ōsaka), the supreme Japanese haiku poet, who greatly enriched the 17-syllable haiku form and made it an accepted medium of artistic expression.