Rather than resist the vast social and cultural changes sweeping Japan
in the nineteenth century, the poet Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) instead
incorporated new Western influences into his country's native haiku and
tanka verse. By reinvigorating these traditional forms, Shiki released
them from outdated conventions and made them more responsive to newer
trends in artistic expression. Altogether, his reforms made the haiku
Japan's most influential modern cultural export.
Using extensive readings of Shiki's own writings and accounts of the
poet by his contemporaries and family, Donald Keene charts Shiki's
revolutionary (and often contradictory) experiments with haiku and
tanka, a dynamic process that made the survival of these traditional
genres possible in a globalizing world. Keene particularly highlights
random incidents and encounters in his impressionistic portrait of this
tragically young life, moments that elicited significant shifts and
discoveries in Shiki's work. The push and pull of a profoundly changing
society is vividly felt in Keene's narrative, which also includes sharp
observations of other recognizable characters, such as the famous
novelist and critic Natsume Soseki. In addition, Keene reflects on his
own personal relationship with Shiki's work, further developing the
nuanced, deeply felt dimensions of its power.