SOURCE: Introduction to Bashō and his Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary, Stanford University Press, 1991, pp. 1-11.

In the following excerpt, Ueda situates Bashō and his use of haiku in their historical and literary contexts; he also surveys the critical response to Bashō's poetry from eightheenth-century Japanese commentators to contemporary Western critics.

Renga, Haikai, and Hokku

As is well known, the Japanese verse form called hokku or haiku consists of three phrases (often referred to as “lines” in English) of five, seven, and five syllables. Historically it evolved out of renga, a major form of Japanese poetry that flourished especially in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Renga, literally meaning “linked poetry,” was usually written by a team of poets under a set of prescribed rules. First the team leader, normally the honored guest at the gathering, would write a hokku (“opening verse”) in the 5-7-5 syllable pattern...