Selected Haiku 1933-1962 - Paperback

by Sanki Saito (Author), Masaya Saito (Translator)

Sanki Saitō, born in western Japan in 1900, is a towering figure in twentieth-century haiku. Although he did not begin to write haiku until the age of 33, he then rapidly became a leading figure in the poetically radical New Rising Haiku movement. He was silenced in 1940 when his writing caused him to be arrested on the charge of violating the Peace Preservation Law, but he began to write again after 1945, and between 1947 and 1962 he published three major collections of haiku. Vigorous, earthy, observant, tragic, hilarious, sensuous, unillusioned, powerful, ironic - these haiku are among the major achievements in postwar Japanese poetry.