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Simply Haiku: An
E-Journal of Haiku and Related Forms
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Who is Yosa Buson? botan chirite uchi kasanari-nu nisan ben Peony having
scattered, two or three petals lie on one another.
Buson settled in Kyoto in the late 1750s. He was active in Mochizuki Sooku's (1688-1766) poetry circle and was also actively painting in the Chinese-inspired bunjinga style. By practicing both poetry and painting, he aspired to the ideals of the bunjin (Ch: wen-ren or wen-jen; literati) of China. One of Buson's commissions involved collaborating with Ike No Taiga on a landscape series based on Chinese poems, Juben jugi (1771, Ten Conveniences and Ten Pleasures), now a National Treasure. In 1770 he took the name of Yahantei the Second (Midnight Hermitage) for his studio. His haikai teacher Hajin was the First Yahantei. In painting, he used the names of Sha Cho-Koh, Shunsei (Spring Star) and others during his earlier years in Kyoto. Master of Poetry and Painting: Buson found his distinct voice partly from association with two dissimilar poets, Tan Taigi and Kuroyanagi Shoha (d 1772), both of whom helped him develop his spontaneous and sensual style. Following their passing, Buson emerged as the central figure of a haikai revival known as the "Return to Basho" movement. In 1776 his own poetry group built a clubhouse, the Bashoan (Basho Hut), for their haikai and linked-verse gatherings. Buson also prepared several illustrated scrolls and screens, including the text of Oku no hosomich, which helped canonize Basho as a grand saint of poetry. Although Buson sought to emulate Basho, his own poetry is clearly different and versatile. Buson read classics extensively and studied different styles of Chinese and Japanese paintings. Poetry and painting affected each other in his art. His poems were, diversely enough, rich in imagery, clearly depicting fine movements and sensual appearances of things, dynamic with wider landscapes, lyrical, sensitive to human affairs, romantic with hidden stories, graceful, and longingly time-conscious. Buson completed his own style of painting in his later years when he was using the name of Sha-In. Freed from the influence of China, he created genuine Japanese landscapes. [This description is adapted from Japan: An Illustrated Enclyclopedia, p.150; 1993, Kodansha; Tokyo] [Portrait by Keibun, from Haikai Buson Anthology; Collection of Sekkasha] Buson Haiku Website: Haiku Poems of Buson This information is presented with the kind permission of Hiroo Saga. He is the professor of Educational Media study at the National Institute of Multimedia Education, Japan. His main research interests include cognitive and motivational processes of learning with media, expressional styles of visual media as an affecting factor in learning, and poetry and art of Yosa Buson. He has been a Fulbright Researcher at the Teachers College, Columbia University, and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Education, University of London Copyright
2003/2004 Simply Haiku |
Early
Career: Born near Osaka, as a youth Buson went to Edo (now Tokyo). For five
years (1737-42) he
belonged to a haikai linked-verse circle over which Hayano Hajin (1676-1742)
presided.
Here he learned the traditions of the Basho school haikai as transmitted
by Hattori Ransetsu and Takarai Kikaku. After Hajin's death Buson spent
much time around Yuki, north of Edo, where he painted, practiced haikai,
and worte Hokuju Rosen wo itamu (Elegy to the old poet Hokuju), the first
of his innovative poems that foreshadow modern free verse. Buson also
visited places in northeastern Japan famed in Basho's poetic diary, Oku
No Hosomichi (1694; tr The Narrow Road to the Deep North, 1966).