was a seventeenth-century (

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

) Japanese poet and

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...

who studied under

Matsuo Bashō born then was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative '' haikai no renga'' form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest ma ...

. Masahide practiced medicine in Zeze and led a group of poets who built the Mumyō Hut.Ueda, Makoto. "Basho and His Interpreters." ''

Stanford University Press Stanford University Press (SUP) is the publishing house of Stanford University. It is one of the oldest academic presses in the United States and the first university press to be established on the West Coast. It was among the presses officially ...

''. 1995
342
Retrieved on April 14, 2009.

Examples

Barn's burnt down

My barn having burned to the ground
I can see the moon.

Alternate translation:http://docs.rwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=rr

Since my house burned down
I now own a better view
of the rising moon

When bird passes on

When bird passes on --
like moon,
a friend to water.

Masahide's Death Poem

while I walk on
the moon keeps pace beside me:
friend in the water

References

Samurai 1657 births 1723 deaths Japanese writers of the Edo period 17th-century Japanese poets {{japan-poet-stub