| • Science | • People | • Locations | • Timeline |
An accomplished haiku poet revered as the last of the four great masters, he is known as a critic of Matsuo Basho and often credited with single-handedly revitalizing the art form. He also was among a number of poets who helped to revitalize the tanka form at the beginning of the 20th Century.
Shiki attended college in Tokyo with Natsume Soseki and Akiyama Saneyuki, later dropping out to work as a columnist for the newspaper company Nippon. He suffered from tuberculosisTuberculosis is also called TB consumption (TB seemed to consume people from within with its symptoms of bloody cough, fever, pallor, and long relentless wasting), wasting disease White Plague (TB sufferers appeared markedly pale), phthisis (Greek for con and was cared for in his final days by his mother and sister. With the aid of others, he was able to dictate his final haiku from his futonA futon is a type of mattress that makes up a Japanese bed. Japanese futons are flat, about 5cm thick with a fabric exterior stuffed with cotton or synthetic batting. They are often sold in sets which include the futon mattress shikibuton , a comforter ka.
Shiki claimed that Japanese poetry should be modernized, and coined the terms haiku (replacing hokku ) and tanka (replacing wakaSee Waka (disambiguation) for other usages. Waka or Yamato uta is a genre of Japanese poetry. Waka literally means Japanese poem in Japanese. The word was originally coined to differentiate native poetry from the kanshi Chinese poems that all educated Jap). His contribution as a critic is rediscovery of Man'yoshuMan'yoshu or Anthology of a Myriad Leaves is the first great Japanese poetry anthology, compiled by the poet Otomo no Yakamochi around 759. The most important poetic forms in the anthology are the choka (long poem), consisting of alternate lines of five a and revaluation of Minamoto no SanetomoMinamoto no Sanetomo ( , September 17, 1192 February 13, 1219, r. 1203 1219) was the third shogun of the Kamakura Shogunate and the last head of the Minamoto clan of Japan. Sanetomo was the second son of the founder of the Kamakura shogunate Minamoto no Y, the third shogun of Kamakura Shogunate. He also rehabilitated the opinion of the haiku of Yosano Buson.