Hori Bakusui

Hori Bakusui 堀麦水 (1718-1783) was a major Japanese poet of the Matsuo Bashō revival, writing traditional style haiku poems.^[1]

Biography

Little is known of Bakusui's life apart from his poems. He came from Kanazawa in the middle Edo period, and studied under Otsuyu.^[2] He is considered romantic by temperament, and he attempted to revive the early style of the classical Haiku poet Matsuo Bashō from the book Minashiguri. in 1770 he wrote a book of laconic comments on Bashō's hokku, called Jōkyō shōfū kukai densho (Orthodox style of the Jōkyō era: Verses with critical commentary).^[3]

Haiku

One of Bakusui's poems, on the popular haiku theme of the dragonfly, runs:

Dyeing his body
autumn—
the dragonfly.

— Bakusui^[4]

See also

• Haikai

References

1. Crowley, Cheryl. "Collaboration in the 'Back to Bashō' Movement: The Susuki Mitsu Sequence of Buson's Yahantei School," Early Modern Japan, Fall 2003, page 5.
2. Addiss, Stephen (2009). Haiku: An Anthology of Japanese Poems. Shambhala Publications. p. 165. ISBN 978-0-8348-2234-4.
3. Ueda, Makoto (1995). Bashō and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary. Stanford University Press. p. 418. ISBN 978-0-8047-2526-2.
4. Addiss, Stephen (2009). Haiku: An Anthology of Japanese Poems. Shambhala Publications. p. 63. ISBN 978-0-8348-2234-4.