By the sixteenth century the field of linked verse did indeed offer hopes of financial and economic success to those of modest social backgrounds.
By his late teens the young man's interest in linked verse led him to seek instruction in the art, in which he showed talent immediately. Thus when the prominent renga master Shukei visited Nara, Jha used the opportunity to make a connection that would be crucial to his professional ambitions. A disciple of Sgi's student and literary heir Sseki, Shukei was one of the central literary figures of Kyoto at the time; he counted Sanjnishi Sanetaka and other nobles as patrons and had a thriving literary practice. With the master's encouragement, it would seem, Jha took the tonsure—giving himself the name by which he is known to history—at age nineteen, signaling his decision to dedicate himself to the literary life. A year later, in 1544, he left Nara and joined Shukei in Kyoto.
In the capital Jha continued his study of linked verse and of classical literature with increased energy. The death of Shukei in 1544 was a misfortune that turned into an opportunity in that Jha became the disciple of Shukei's own chief disciple Satomura Shkyu, a vigorous man of thirty-five who by happenstance now became one of the foremost poetry masters of the capital.
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