Travel and Encounter in Early Modern Japan Main Menu Course Description Edo Period Ihara Saikaku Matsuo Bashō

Unit 3.1

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There are many different genres of poetry, each of which has its own rules and conventions, and it’s incumbent upon the practitioner of poetry to keep these rules and conventions straight.  If you’re called upon to write a poem at a banquet, at a party, or at an important diplomatic function, you need to be able to do it. Thus, you’d be willing to pay someone like Bashō or Saikaku to teach you the rules that keep you from being humiliated. 
 
The genre that Bashō is famous for is a genre known as haiku, which originally emerges out of the communal practice of “linked verse” (renga), in which participants take turns alternating verses and completing each other’s poems. These composition sessions would begin with a short three-line poem known as a hokku (opening verse). Over time, these opening verses acquire a cultural gravity of their own, and Bashō is famous for contributing to the emergence of the hokku/haiku as an independent genre.