Buson (1716-1784) , Japanese painter and haiku poet of the Edo period (1600-1868), also known as Yosa Buson. He was born in a suburb of Ôsaka, Japan, and apparently lost both parents while he was still young. In 1737 he moved to Edo (now Tokyo) to study painting and haiku poetry in the tradition of Bashô, a Japanese master of haiku. After the death of one of his poetry teachers in 1742, he toured northern areas associated with Bashô and visited western Japan, finally settling in Kyoto, Japan, in 1751.

Particularly active as a painter between 1756 and 1765, Buson gradually returned to haiku, leading a movement to return to the purity of Bashô's style and to purge haiku of superficial wit. He married about 1760. In 1771 he painted a famous set of ten screens with his great contemporary Ike no Taiga, demonstrating his status as one of the finest painters of his time. The poetry group that he formed published its first book in 1772. His haiku poems, considered to be second only to Bashô's, show a more objective, pictorial style than Bashô's humane, wide-ranging work. In 1776 his group built a Bashôan (Bashô house) for gatherings. Also that year his daughter married, although this unhappy marriage grieved Buson. Despite his poetic brilliance, Buson was remembered more as a painter until essays by modern Japanese writers Masaoka Shiki and Hagiwara Sakutarô revived his reputation.
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