Japanese poet (1644–1694)
He walked Japan's back roads in the 1600s turning three-line poems into an art form that outlasted empires. Bashō made haiku what it became — though he thought his real genius was in the collaborative verse chains almost no one remembers now.
Born Matsuo Kinsaku in 1644, he came to poetry young and by the time he'd settled into Edo's intellectual circles he was already known across Japan, teaching for a living. Then he walked away from it — left the urban literary scene and spent years wandering west to Kyoto and Nara, east, deep into the northern wilderness, chasing what the road could teach. His travel essays like Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton in 1684 carried that restlessness into prose. He worked in haikai no renga, the collaborative linked-verse form, and believed that's where his real work lived — "Many of my follower…
Sourced, dated quotes from Matsuo Bashō
Even if you have three or four extra syllables—or as many as five or seven—you need not worry as long as the verse sounds right.
Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
I feel lonely as I gaze at the moon. I feel lonely as I think about myself, and I feel lonely as I ponder upon this wretched life of mine.
It rains during the morning. No visitors today. I feel lonely and amuse myself by writing at random. These are the words: Who mourns makes grief his master.
It was a rainy day when I crossed over the Hakone Barrier, and all the mountains were veiled in clouds.
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