Matsuo Basho Haiku Analysis

When a samurai gets a taste of poetry, you would never guess what happens! With the samurai’s passion for poetry and ambition to become the best, you can guess what happens. The master of the haiku, Matsuo Basho is one of the most celebrated Japanese poets from the 1600s. Basho met Yoshitada as a kid, who helped him publish his first poem in 1662. Later in life, Basho became ill, but continued to live out his dreams of writing and teaching.
Biographical Information Most of Basho’s childhood is unclear. The resources believe that he was born in Iga Province in 1644 and died in 1694. Matsuo Kinsaku was his birth name. His father was a samurai without a high reputation. While Basho was young, he went to serve Todo Yoshitada. Yoshitada became

Matsuo Basho’s career started in 1662, when he published his first poem with Yoshitada. His career started to develop rapidly for a while, until Yoshitada died in 1666. Yoshitada showed Basho multiple different styles. After his death, Basho began to practice Chinese poetry. In his late twenties, he moved to Edo, currently Tokyo, and gathered up enough students to open the Basho School. During this process, he started becoming ill (Norman 2). Matsuo Basho’s students loved to learn from him. His school was one of the first ones on poetry. They mostly just worked on revising and editing poems to make them better. There was not a lot of different types of poetry being practiced at this time. His sickness kept growing stronger and his students began to notice it. His students cherished Basho and wanted to do something for him. They knew how much poetry meant to him so they built a small house called the poet in 1860 for him. They wanted to have something represent him around the building. They put up a stock of basho tree, which is a species of a banana tree. Basho was astonished at the work they did for him. Due to this, Basho changed his name from his various names and stuck with Matsuo Basho as his poetry name. Soon after, in 1682, his house was burned down with most of Edo.

Matsuo Basho started studying haikai, modern day haiku (meaning beginning verse), which has 3 different phases. The first phase has five syllables, the second has seven syllables, and the third has five syllables again with a nature essence to it. Basho published his first haiku under various names, all of which had a preference on the name. He continued to write haikus as he traveled around on his journeys. When he opened up his school, he was able to start teaching his style of poetry, the haiku, to other people who wanted to know. This was the beginning of the haiku and how it became to be (Norman 2,