Kobayashi Issa — The Poet of Compassion, 65 Years of Composing Through Poverty and Loss

Boyhood in Kashiwabara, Shinano (1763-1777)

Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) was born in 1763 at Kashiwabara Village, Minochi District, Shinano province (present-day Shinano-machi, Kamiminochi District, Nagano Prefecture). His real name was Yatarō, later Nobuyuki. “Issa” (一茶) is his pen name — meaning “a single cup of tea” — evoking his humble life.

The family was a farming household. His birth mother Kuni died when Issa was 3. At 8 he got a stepmother, Satsu. When she bore Issa’s half-brother Senroku, she came to dislike Issa, and the household grew tense. This early loneliness echoes throughout Issa’s later poetry.

“Come to me — a fatherless sparrow, come play with me” — Issa likens himself, motherless in childhood, to a fatherless sparrow.

Apprenticeship in Edo and Haikai Training (1777-1791)

In 1777, at 15, Issa was sent to Edo as an apprentice, because of the friction with his stepmother. For the next 30 years, he had no extended stay in his hometown, moving through western Japan, based in Edo.

The apprentice houses in Edo are known only vaguely. By his early 20s Issa was deeply into haikai and had joined the Katsushika school (led by Ni-roku-an Chikua, Somaru, and others). Katsushika was a Shōfū branch, but influenced by the point-scoring haikai of the mid-Edo period. Issa learned the basics here while beginning to seek his own path.

The Western Wandering and 30 Years of Travel (1791-1812)

From 1791, Issa began his “western wandering.” He toured Matsuyama, Kumamoto, Nagasaki, Kagoshima, and other places in western Japan, staying with fellow poets and composing along the way. Where Bashō and Buson consciously made journeys into “works,” Issa’s journey was life itself. The network of fellow poets who put him up and fed him was his subsistence.

His verses from this period had not yet reached the distinctly Issa-like manner. Many are within the Shōfū-Buson mainstream. But from his late 30s, gradually, his signature gaze on the weak, on small animals, and on himself began to emerge.

Return Home and the Inheritance Dispute (1812-1815)

In 1812, at 50, Issa returned to Kashiwabara. His father Yagobei had died in 1801, and the inheritance was contested between Issa and his half-brother Senroku. Issa produced his father’s will and claimed half of the property. After three years of negotiation, in 1814, a settlement was reached: Issa received half of the family house.

An inheritance battle at over 50 is hardly a heartwarming story. But with it, Issa had his own home for the first time in his life. Settled residence after 30 years.

Marriage and Family — Successive Losses (1814-1827)

First Wife Kiku (1814-1823)

Right after his return, in 1814, Issa (52) married Kiku, 24 years his junior (age 28). They had three sons and one daughter, all of whom died in infancy:

• Eldest son Sentarō: born 1816, died at one month
• Eldest daughter Sato: born 1818, died of smallpox at just over one year
• Second son Ishitarō: born 1820, died within months
• Third son Kinsaburō: born 1822, died at half a year

Sato’s death is described in Issa’s Ora ga Haru (a diary of the year 1819, published posthumously). Famous verse:

“Tsuyu no yo wa / tsuyu no yo nagara / sarinagara” — “This world of dew is a world of dew — and yet, and yet…”

Then in 1823, Kiku herself died at 37.

Second and Third Marriages

In 1824, at 62, Issa remarried to Yuki, but they divorced within a few months. In 1826, at 64, he married a third time to Yao. In 1827 the house burned in a great fire, and Issa lived in the ruined storehouse. In 1828, at 65, he died without seeing his son Yata (Hachitarō) — who was born posthumously.

Yata was born safely and lived out his life in Kashiwabara. The current Kobayashi family is said to descend from Yata.

Issa’s Style — Compassion and Haikai Self-Deprecation

Issa’s style has three distinctive characteristics different from Bashō’s and Buson’s.

1. The Gaze on the Weak and on Small Creatures

“Yase-gaeru / makeru na Issa / kore ni ari” — “Skinny frog, don’t lose — Issa is here!” — Cheering on a frog he sees in a fight.

“Yase-gaeru, makeru na Issa, kore ni ari” is Issa’s representative verse of compassion for the weak. Bashō’s frog was a sound-making creature; Buson’s frog was part of a scene. Issa’s frog is “a fellow creature equal to me.”

“Suzume no ko / soko noke soko noke / o-uma ga tōru” — “Baby sparrows, get out of the way, the horse is passing” — Addressing tiny sparrows.

“Yare utsu na / hae ga te wo suri / ashi wo suru” — “Don’t strike — the fly is rubbing its hands and rubbing its feet” — Interpreting the gesture as a plea.

2. Thoroughgoing Haikai Self-Deprecation

Many of Issa’s verses mock himself humorously.

“Kore ga maa / tsui no sumika ka / yuki go-shaku” — “This after all is my final dwelling — five feet of snow.” (Ochujin humor about his 50-year-old return to snowy Kashiwabara.)

“Ganjitsu ya / jōjō-kichi no / asagi-zora” — “New Year’s Day, the utmost auspicious pale-blue sky.” (There’s a bitter undercurrent: poor and lonely, exclaiming outsized praise on New Year’s.)

3. Colloquial Vocabulary and Dialect

Issa avoids the classical elegant diction of haikai and actively uses everyday, colloquial language and Shinano dialect. “Soko noke soko noke,” “kore ga maa,” “makeru na,” “yare utsu na” — these calls and commands bring the verse close to the reader.

This is a democratization of haikai. Away from Bashō’s classicism and Buson’s pictorialism, Issa made haiku a form anyone could read. That’s why textbooks from the Meiji period on have consistently featured Issa’s verses.

20,000 Verses — Overwhelming Output

Issa left an estimated ~22,000 verses in his life. Compared to Bashō’s ~1,000 and Buson’s ~3,000, this is a staggering output.

Two reasons:

1. Throughout his 65 years he composed daily — for Issa, haiku was the means of living itself
2. He left massive diaries and verse collections (Nanaban Nikki, Hachiban Nikki, Ora ga Haru, etc.), preserving most of his output

Modern Issa scholarship can reconstruct his daily life in fine detail from these diaries — a study of “the daily life of a poet” unavailable for Bashō or Buson.

Death and Later Reevaluation

In the winter of 1827, Issa’s house burned in a great fire in Kashiwabara. Living in the burnt-out storehouse with his wife Yao, he died on November 19, 1828, at 65. In 1829 his son Yata was born.

After his death, his verses were published by his Edo disciples, but until the early Meiji, Issa wasn’t nearly as widely known as Bashō and Buson. In the late Meiji through Taishō, Masaoka Shiki and Kawahigashi Hekigotō led an Issa revival, placing him beside Bashō and Buson as one of the three great masters of Edo haikai.

Today, in terms of school-textbook exposure, the order is often Bashō > Issa > Buson. This is because Issa’s verses reach children directly — the universality of his compassion and self-deprecation.

Toward the Next Article

We’ve covered the three Edo giants: Bashō (late 17th century), Buson (late 18th century), Issa (early 19th century). But Edo-period haikai then entered a period of decline. In 1892 in Meiji Japan, a 26-year-old young man criticized both the Kokinshū tradition and the late-Edo haikai, and fundamentally rebuilt the form under the concepts of “shasei” and “haiku.” His name was Masaoka Shiki. To the next article.