Places, Images, Times & Transformations

Buson

(1716-84). Japanese haiku poet and painter. He ranked second only to Matsuo Bashō, Japanese master of haiku, among poets of the Edo period (1600-1868). Buson was born in a suburb of Osaka and apparently lost both parents while he was still young. In 1737 he moved to Edo (now Tokyo) to study painting and haiku poetry in the tradition of Bashō. After the death of one of his poetry teachers in 1742, he toured northern areas associated with Bashō and visited western Japan, finally settling in Kyoto in 1751. Particularly active as a painter between 1756 and 1765, Buson gradually returned to haiku, leading a movement to return to the purity of Bashō's style and to purge haiku of superficial wit. In 1771 he painted a famous set of ten screens with his great contemporary Ike no Taiga, demonstrating his status as one of the finest painters of his time. Buson's major contribution to haiku is his complexity and his painter's eye. Buson's technical skill as an artist is reflected in the visual detail of his poetry. (from http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Island/5022/busonbio.html)

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