Dew on the Grass: The Life and Poetry of Kobayashi Issa

Brill's Japanese Studies Library #20

by Makoto Ueda

This book sketches the life and poetry of Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828), a Japanese poet popularly known as one of the Three Pillars of Haiku. While Basho with his mystic asceticism and Buson with his romantic aestheticism immeasurably enriched the haiku tradition, it was Issa who, with his bold individualism and all-embracing humanism, helped to modernize the form to a degree matched by no other poet. Based on the most recent scholarship, the book attempts to identify the sources of his originality in terms of his long checkered life. It traces his growth and maturity by examining his motherless childhood, struggling youth in Edo, wanderings in western Japan, restless existence as a haiku master, return home to Kashiwabara, three brief marriages, and last years as an old poet.

Genres: Poetry, Japan, Biography, Japanese Literature

208 pages, Hardcover

First published March 12, 2004

About the author

Makoto Ueda (上田 真 Ueda Makoto, born 1931) is a professor emeritus of Japanese literature at Stanford University.

He earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature in 1961.

In 2004-2005 he served as the honorary curator of the American Haiku Archives at the California State Library in Sacramento, California. He was given that honor "in recognition of Ueda’s many decades of academic writing about haiku and related genres and his leading translations of Japanese haiku." The library added that "Ueda has been our most consistently useful source for information on Japanese haiku, as well as our finest source for the poems in translation, from Bashô to the present day." His work on female poets and 20th century poets "had an enormous impact".

He is an author of numerous books about Japanese literature and in particular Haiku, Senryū, Tanka, and Japanese poetics.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Matthew Stolte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meaty, a long historical account.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably only interesting to you if you're already pretty deeply interested in haiku -- but if you are, good stuff. Issa is considered one of the 3 (sometimes 4) canonical Great Masters of Japanese haiku and this is a very good introduction to his work and biography. He is often considered the most down-to-earth & human of the masters -- his trademark haiku are sympathetic toward the lowest of the low, common bugs, etc. The biography is fair to him but also doesn't shy away from talking in detail about his very human flaws (extended property disputes with family members & poor treatment of his wife, among other things). Good mix of biography and discussion of his haiku.

[John Porcellino · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are interested in the history and human background of haiku, this is a must-read. So glad a book like this exists!