Yosa Buson — Poet and Painter

Yosa Buson was one of the major haikai poets after Bashō and also an important literati painter. According to the Hyogo Literary Museum, he studied haikai in Edo as a young man, traveled widely, and began painting during those years. Later, centered largely in Kyoto, he produced distinguished work in both haikai and Nanga-style painting.

It would be too simple to say, “Because Buson was a painter, his poems are paintings.” Poetry and painting are different media. Yet when we notice viewpoint, height of vision, foreground and distance, and the direction of light in his haiku, a distinctive visual organization often becomes clear. In 菜の花や月は東に日は西に, the moon in the east, sun in the west, and field of rapeseed flowers are arranged almost panoramically.

Buson’s imagination also exceeds realistic landscape. He could combine history, classical literature, and imagined scenes to create compressed narratives and visual worlds. Observation and imagination need not be opposites; they can meet through precise composition.

Today, read a haiku as if you were looking through a camera. Where is the camera placed? What is nearest? What is farthest? Where does the light come from? Such questions can help us read the image structure not only of Buson but of haiku more generally.