prodigious number of productions, my estimate will show, I believe, that even a dozen good Hokkus in one’s whole life would not be regarded as a bad crop. In fact, the Hokku poems produced in the time before great Basho’s appearance (1644–1694), when, under the influence of Teitoku, Teishitsu, and Soin Nishiyama, the school of art for art’s sake, from the point of intricacy, mannerism, and affectation, was finally formed under the name of Danrin or “Forest of Consultation,” are certainly not better than the butterfly poem quoted above; although Basho and his disciples (it is said that this Basho had three thousand disciples or followers in his life’s days) rescued poetry from the hands of such a school of artistic vulgarity, the Shofu or “The School of Righteous Wind” which he established, we might say, with the power of faith and prayer, became soon again sadly degenerated; and it was Buson Yosano, who, now putting aside the brush for the picture, as he was an eminent artist of his own days, cried out for the so-called poetical revival of the Tenmei period. There was no more popular poetry once than this Hokku form, and still popular it is even to-day, when our insularity, poetical or otherwise, has been irrevocably broken. It goes without saying that where was a great master was a great Hokku poem which never makes us notice its limitation of form, but rather impresses us by the freedom
