, whose real name is Karai Hachiemon () was a
Japanese poet and poetry judge (''tenja'').
He popularized a form of poetry similar to
haiku
is a type of short form poetry that originated in Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases composed of 17 Mora (linguistics), morae (called ''On (Japanese prosody), on'' in Japanese) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern; that include a ''kire ...
called
senryū, which is named after him.
"Senryū" was the nickname that he adopted when he started judging poetry, and other poetry judges after him also adopted this name. The word ''senryū'' means "river willow" in Japanese.
Biography
Hachiemon was a government official in the
Asakusa district of Edo, a post that he inherited from his father.

Karai became the judge of ''Maekuzuke'' competitions (川柳評万句合, Senryūhyō Manku Awase) in
Edo. The Maekuzuke was a popular style at the time which consisted of a participant adding their own verses to an already existing verse. Karai would judge these verses with a point system. And from there, he collected ten thousand of these poems each year, the best of which were distinguished and published. There is a monument for him at the location where he judged the first ''Maekuzuke'' in Japan. It has been said that Senryū judged over 2,300,000 verses in his lifetime.
In 1765, Senryū's disciple published an anthology of Senryū's selected haiku called ''Willow Barrel'' (''Haifū yanagidaru'', commonly known as just ''Yanagidaru'' in Japanese) that reflected Senryū's sense of humor and style. He later published several other anthologies throughout his lifetime that gained in popularity. During the
Meiji era
The was an Japanese era name, era of History of Japan, Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feu ...
, this style of poems became known as
senryū. The first 23 volumes of ''Willow Barrel'' were published while Senryū was alive. Overall, 167 volumes were published.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Karai, Senryu
Japanese haiku poets
1718 births
1790 deaths
18th-century pseudonymous writers
People of the Edo period