was a Japanese

haikai ''Haikai'' (Japanese 俳諧 ''comic, unorthodox'') may refer in both Japanese and English to ''haikai no renga'' (renku), a popular genre of Japanese linked verse, which developed in the sixteenth century out of the earlier aristocratic renga. I ...

poet. He was born in

Kanazawa is the capital city of Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 466,029 in 203,271 households, and a population density of 990 persons per km2. The total area of the city was . Overview Cityscape File:もてな ...

, and spent most of his life in

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

working as a doctor. Bonchō was one of

Matsuo Bashō 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 the greatest ma ...

's leading disciples and, together with Kyorai, he edited the Bashō school's '' Monkey's Raincoat'' (''

Sarumino is a 1691 anthology, considered the ''magnum opus'' of Bashō-school poetry.Shirane 1998, 20 It contains four kasen renku as well as some 400 hokku, collected by Nozawa Bonchō and Mukai Kyorai under the supervision of Matsuo Bashō.Mayhew 1985 ...

'') anthology of 1689. Sieffert, René. ''Bashô et son école Haïkaï'', Les éditions Textuel, 2005, He participated in numerous

renku , or , is a Japanese form of popular collaborative linked verse poetry. It is a development of the older Japanese poetic tradition of ''ushin'' renga, or orthodox collaborative linked verse. At renku gatherings participating poets take turns provi ...

with Bashō and other members of his Shōmon school. A famous

hokku is the opening stanza of a Japanese orthodox collaborative linked poem, ''renga'', or of its later derivative, ''renku'' (''haikai no renga''). From the time of Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), the ''hokku'' began to appear as an independent poem, an ...

by Bonchō: 市中は物のにほひや夏の月　''Machinaka ha / mono no nioi ya / natsu no tsuki'' :Downtown
the smells of things…
summer moon
(trans. Sean Price)

References

External links

The Haiku and Poems of Nozawa Bonchō
*, a 1691

(collaborative linked poem), by Bonchō, Bashō and Kyorai, translated by Sean Price 1640 births 1714 deaths People from Kanazawa, Ishikawa Japanese writers of the Edo period 17th-century Japanese poets Japanese haiku poets {{japan-writer-stub