Takarai Kikaku, 宝井其角 also known as Enomoto Kikaku, was a Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese haikai

Haikai

Haikai is a poetic genre that includes a number of forms which embrace the aesthetics of haikai no renga, and what Bashō referred to as the "poetic spirit" , including haiku, renku , haibun, haiga and senryū ."Haikai" is sometimes used as an abbreviation for "haikai no...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 and among the most accomplished disciples of Matsuo Bashō

Matsuo Basho

, born , then , was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as a master of brief and clear haiku...

.. His father was an Edo

Edo

, also romanized as Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868...

 doctor, but Kikaku chose to become a professional haikai poet rather than follow in his footsteps.

Kikaku is best known for his haiku, such as the one in this anecdote

Anecdote

An anecdote is a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always presented as based on a real incident involving actual persons, whether famous or not, usually in an identifiable place...

 about him and his master:
One day, Kikaku composed a haiku,

Red dragonfly / break off it wings / Sour cherry

which Bashō changed to,

Sour cherry / add wings to it / Red dragonfly;

thus saying that poetry should add life to life, not take life away from life. His master is known to have denigrated Kikaku's 'flippant efforts'. Kikaku wrote of coarser subjects than Bashō, and in this respect his poetry was closer to earlier haikai. Kikaku set the tone for haikai from Bashō's death until the time of Yosa Buson

Yosa Buson

was a Japanese poet and painter from the Edo period. Along with Matsuo Bashō and Kobayashi Issa, Buson is considered among the greatest poets of the Edo Period. Buson was born in the village of Kema in Settsu Province...

 in the late 18th century.

Kikaku left an important historical document, describing Bashō's final days, and the immediate aftermath of his death, which has been translated into English.

In commemoration of the 300th anniversary of Kikaku's death, Nobuyuki Yuasa led an international bilingual (Japanese and English) renku, or collaborative linked poem, which opened with the following hokku

Hokku

is the opening stanza of a Japanese orthodox collaborative linked poem, renga, or of its later derivative, renku . From the time of Matsuo Bashō , the hokku began to appear as an independent poem, and was also incorporated in haibun , and haiga...

 by Kikaku:

鐘ひとつ賣れぬ日はなし江戸の春

Springtime in Edo,

Not a day passes without

A temple bell sold.

External links

• A selection of Kikaku's haiku translated into English
• Kikaku's An Account of Our Master Basho's Last Days
• Springtime in Edo, the international renku composed in memory of the 300th anniversary of Kikaku's death