Yosa Buson — The Painter-Poet and the World of Pictorial Haiku

Half a Century of Silence After Bashō

After Bashō’s death in 1694, the early-18th-century haikai world was in the era of the fragmentation and decline of Shōmon Jittetsu. His disciples went their own ways in each region, and the unity of Shōfū was lost. Meanwhile, popular “score-counting haikai” (game-like verse competitions) dominated, and haikai as an art form is generally said to have receded.

Amid this, some 20 years after Bashō’s death, a man was born in 1716 who would become the mid-Edo period’s representative poet: Yosa Buson (1716-1783).

Boyhood in Kema, Settsu (1716-c. 1735)

Buson was born in 1716 at Kema (present-day Miyakojima Ward, Osaka), along the Yodo River. His family name is uncertain (Taniguchi or Yosa). His childhood name isn’t recorded either.

He was of a farming family, but Buson left his hometown around 20. The reasons aren’t recorded, but a family collapse (his mother’s death, family decline) is widely thought to have been the cause. Throughout his life, Buson would return again and again to Kema in his verse.

“The spring wind, the levee stretches on, and home is far away”

Descent to Edo and Haikai Training (1737-1751)

In 1737, Buson (about 20) went down to Edo. He entered the school of Hayano Hajin (art name Yahantei Sōa), a disciple in Bashō’s Shōmon lineage via Kikaku and Ransetsu — direct in the Shōfū line.

In 1742 Hajin died. Buson, perhaps following his master’s wishes, left Edo and set off on a wandering tour of Tōhoku and northern Kantō. Shimotate (Ibaraki), Yūki (Ibaraki), Utsunomiya and other places, staying with fellow haikai poets. For a decade in his 20s and early 30s, he studied both haikai and painting while traveling from home to home.

Settling in Kyoto and Nanga Training (1751-)

In 1751, at 36, Buson settled in Kyoto. This would be his base for the next 30 years. His life in Kyoto revolved around two axes.

1. Painting as a Nanga Artist

As a painter of Nanga — Japan’s school of literati painting, learned from Chinese Ming and Qing works — Buson made a living. Together with Ike no Taiga (the other giant of mid-Edo Nanga), he produced Jūben Jūgi Zu (1771), a masterpiece of Nanga.

His work included landscape, figure, and haiga (painting combined with haiku). Especially his late-career Yashoku Rōdai Zu (a horizontal painting of Kyoto by night in falling snow) holds a unique place in East Asian painting history.

2. Haikai Mastership

In Kyoto, Buson inherited Yahantei (the second-generation), gathered disciples, and worked as a haikai master. Chief disciple: Matsumura Gekkei (later Goshun) — the founder of the Shijō school of painting. Buson’s own combination of painting and haikai encouraged his Kyoto disciples to walk the same double path.

Shōfū Revival and the “Rizoku-Ron”

Buson revered Bashō all his life. Each year he hosted the memorial gathering on Bashō’s death anniversary (10/12), copied his verses, and held up the banner of Shōfū revival.

His famous haikai theory is “Rizoku-ron”:

“In haikai, using colloquial words and yet transcending the colloquial — this is what haikai honors.”

Haikai uses everyday, familiar language, but with that language it must build a world beyond the everyday. This resonates with Bashō’s karumi, and Buson considered himself Bashō’s successor.

But his actual style differs greatly from Bashō’s. Where Bashō was centered on stillness, wabi, resonance, Buson centered on motion, splendor, image.

Buson’s Masterworks — Pictorial Haiku

“Nanohana ya / tsuki wa higashi ni / hi wa nishi ni” — Rape Blossoms (c. 1774)

Composed when Buson (about 59) traveled at the foot of the Rokkō mountains near Kobe (there are alternative attributions). Buson’s most famous verse.

• A field of rape blossoms in bloom, an evening in spring
• In the eastern sky the moon has risen (near full)
• In the western sky the sun is about to set
• Captures the instant when moon and sun are in the sky together

This is a pictorial gaze. Whereas Bashō’s “old pond” caught a single point of sound, Buson composes the entire scene as a single canvas. In fact, Buson’s haiga includes a painting of exactly this scene.

“Haru no umi / hinemosu / notari notari kana” — Spring Sea (1763)

• hinemosu: all day long
• notari notari: the onomatopoeia of gentle, sluggish waves
• The spring sea all day long, waving gently

Doubling the onomatopoeia “notari” captures the repetition and slowness of the waves within 17 syllables. A verse that catches the total mood of the spring sea by its motion.

“Samidare ya / taiga wo mae ni / ie ni ken” — Two Houses Before the Great River

• samidare: the long rains of the rainy season
• The great river is muddy and swelling
• Only two houses stand on its banks

Contrast with Bashō’s “gathering the rains, swift, Mogami River.” Bashō composed the river’s own movement; Buson composes the contrast of river and houses — the immense natural threat versus the small human dwelling. The limitation “two houses” is decisive.

“Botan chitte / uchikasanari nu / ni-san pen” — Peony Fallen

• The peony flower has fallen
• Its petals, two or three, are stacked on each other

Sharpens the visual focus to the extreme. This power of concentrated observation resembles a Western still life. A verse showing Buson’s mastery of narrow and wide pictorial scope.

“Natsu-kawa wo / kosu ureshi sa yo / te ni zōri” — Crossing the Summer River

• On a summer day, crossing a shallow river
• Holding sandals in hand, crossing barefoot
• The small joy of that little act

This is the practice of karumi. Away from grand aesthetics, engraving into 17 syllables the slight pleasure of an everyday moment. Unusual for Buson — closer to Bashō’s “small discovery.”

Comparison of Buson and Bashō

Element	Bashō	Buson
Central beauty	stillness, wabi, resonance	motion, splendor, image
Manner of composition	gaze on a single point → resonance	pictorial composition of the whole scene
Sense of color	subdued, sumi-ink-like	vivid, polychrome Nanga-like
Sense of time	from an instant to eternity	recurring time, recurring motion
Scenes	quiet mountain, pond, rock	fields of flowers, great rivers, seas

Buson revered Bashō and yet opened a wholly different road for haikai from Bashō’s. This is a critical branching point in haikai history. After Buson, haikai has two options running in parallel — the Bashō way and the Buson way.

The Yahantei Circle and Painting-Haikai Unity

Buson’s Yahantei school in Kyoto and Osaka created the tradition of the poet-painter integrating haiga. Chief disciple Matsumura Gekkei (Goshun) started from haiga and founded the Shijō school — a sibling to the Maruyama school. Buson’s influence extended beyond haikai to the whole of mid-Edo Kyoto painting.

Goshun’s Shijō school became the mainstream in Kyoto painting through the 18th and 19th centuries, producing Matsumura Keibun, Shibata Zeshin, and other important figures. Its inheritance reached even into Meiji-period Japanese painting. So Buson was a great watershed not just for haikai but also for Japanese painting.

Return to Osaka in Longing, and Old Age

In 1783, at 68, Buson died in Kyoto. He longed for his home village of Kema throughout his life, but never actually went back. He is buried at Konpuku-ji in Kyoto. There is a theory that he wished, from long before, to be buried near Bashō’s grave at Gichū-ji by Lake Biwa.

Death verse: “Shiraume ni / akuru yo bakari to / nari ni keri” — “The white plum: only in the dawning of the night, does it become itself.”

The moment when night breaks and the white plum appears — a verse thoroughly Buson-like in its pictorial quality. To the last, he was a poet of light and color.

Toward the Next Article

Buson was the giant of the mid-Edo. But another giant lived in the same late-Edo period: Kobayashi Issa. Where Buson perfected haiku through pictorial splendor, Issa composed compassion for humans and small animals amid poverty and loss. The next article traces Issa’s life and style, born in Shinano’s Kashiwabara.