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Kobayashi Issa

Japanese poet

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Reflecting the popularity and interest in Issa as man and poet, Japanese books on Issa outnumber those on Buson and almost equal in number those on Bashō.

Biography

Issa was born and registered as Kobayashi Nobuyuki (小林 信之), with a childhood name of Kobayashi Yatarō (小林 弥太郎), the first son of a farmer family of Kashiwabara, now part of Shinano-machi, Shinano Province (present-day Nagano Prefecture). Issa endured the loss of his mother, who died when he was three. Her death was the first of numerous difficulties young Issa suffered.

He was cared for by his grandmother, who doted on him, but his life changed again when his father remarried five years later. Issa's half-brother was born two years later. When his grandmother died when he was 14, Issa felt estranged in his own house, a lonely, moody child who preferred to wander the fields. His attitude did not please his stepmother, who, according to Lewis Mackenzie, was a "tough-fibred 'managing' woman of hard-working peasant stock."

He was sent to Edo (present-day Tokyo) by his father one year later to make out a living. Nothing of the next ten years of his life is known for certain. His name was associated with Kobayashi Chikua (小林 竹阿) of the Nirokuan (二六庵) haiku school, but their relationship is not clear. During the following years, he wandered through Japan and fought over his inheritance with his stepmother (his father died in 1801). He wrote a diary, now called Last Days of Issa's Father.

After years of legal wrangles, Issa managed to secure rights to half of the property his father left. He returned to his native village at the age of 49 and soon took a wife, Kiku (菊). After a brief period of bliss, tragedy returned. The couple's first-born child died shortly after his birth. A daughter, Satoyo (里世), died less than two-and-a-half years later, inspiring Issa to write this haiku (translated by Lewis Mackenzie):

露の世は露の世ながらさりながら
Tsuyu no yo wa tsuyu no yo nagara sari nagara
This dewdrop world --
Is a dewdrop world,
And yet, and yet . . .

Issa married twice more late in his life, and through it all he produced a huge body of work. A third child died in 1820. Then Kiku fell ill and died in 1823, when Issa was 61. Issa's response was this haiku:

生き残り生き残りたる寒さかな
Ikinokori ikinokoritaru samusa kana
Outliving them,
Outliving them all,
Ah, the cold!

He died on January 5, 1828, in his native village. According to the old Japanese calendar, he died on the 19th day of Eleventh Month, Tenth Year of the Bunsei era. Since the Tenth Year of Bunsei roughly corresponds with 1827, many sources list this as his year of death.

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