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context: poetry > haiku
Masaoka Shiki 1867-1902
Shiki's brief career started in the 1890s with newspaper criticism of old haiku, launching his fame with an attack on Basho. This was exaggerated in its negativity, but the form certainly needed someone to reboot it. Shiki wanted fresh, natural, youthful, less trammelled haiku, rather than lifeless copying of the past. He continued as a critic, campaigner and editor, and wrote many haiku, especially about Japan, reacting against the big trend towards Westernisation at the time. I like his imagery best: "Yü-zuki ya / ume chiri-kakaru / koto-no-ue", or "Evening moon / Plum blossoms start falling / On the koto [lute]," is a very beautiful image, easy to imagine as a late Edo print, or a Western still life oil painting.