Matsuo Bashō

Bashō was born Matsuo Kinsaku into a family of minor samurai rank in Iga Province, near present-day Iga, Mie Prefecture.

As a young man Bashō served the local samurai heir Tōdō Yoshitada, with whom he shared a love of collaborative haikai poetry; Yoshitada's early death in 1666 ended this service.

Bashō relocated to Edo (modern Tokyo), where he established himself as a haikai teacher and gathered a circle of students.

Bashō moved to a hut in Fukagawa beside which disciples planted a banana (bashō) tree, from which he took the pen name by which he is known.

Bashō began the first of his major travels, wandering from Edo to his home province and back, and turning the experience into poetic travel literature.

Bashō wrote his best-known poem, 'an old pond / a frog jumps in / the sound of water', a touchstone of the haiku form.

With his companion Sora, Bashō began a roughly 2,400-kilometre journey through northern Honshu that became the basis of his masterpiece The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

Bashō finished polishing Oku no Hosomichi around 1694; it was published posthumously in 1702 and became one of the most celebrated works of Japanese literature.

Bashō fell ill with a stomach ailment while travelling and died in Osaka surrounded by disciples, after composing a final poem of a journey continuing over withered fields.