Masaoka Shiki: Selected Poems

Translated by Burton Watson

"This new selection of [Shiki's] poems, from the hand of a distinguished scholar and translator, is particularly welcome. . . . It was Shiki, the short-lived critic, essayist and poet, who launched a major reform of haiku in the Meiji Era and revitalized the miniature poem for the century ahead. In place of the word-games and imitation to which haiku practice had by then descended, Shiki suggested the 'shasei' or 'sketch from life.'" — Japan Times

Related Subjects

• Asian Literature

Series

• Modern Asian Literature Series

About the Author

Burton Watson is one of the world’s best-known translators from the Chinese and Japanese. His translations include The Lotus Sutra, The Vimalakirti Sutra, Ryokan: Zen Monk-Poet of Japan, Saigyo: Poems of a Mountain Home, and The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century, all published by Columbia.

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