Masaoka Tsunenori, better know by the sobriquet Masaoka Shiki, was a “revivalist of haiku,” (Britannica, Masaoka Shiki). He was born into a samurai family. He went to Tokyo to study in 1883 and began to write poetry in 1885. He studied at Tokyo Imperial University and began working at a publishing firm a few years after. Later, joined the Japanese army where he became plagued by tuberculosis but “ his views on poetry and aesthetics, as well as his own poems, appeared regularly,”(Britannica, Masaoka Shiki). As a poet he had strong beliefs and opinions. He “believed that a poet should present things as they really are and should write in the language of contemporary speech,”(Britannica, Masaoka Shiki). It can be said that “Masaoka Shiki was influential in developing a modern style of Japanese haiku and tanka, writing essays on the subject. His own haiku described contemporary life: as he was dying from tuberculosis, he composed haiku depicting his illness,” (Poetry Foundation). Perhaps his greatest achievement was “when he officially made hokku an independent poem in the 1890s called haiku (singular and plural spelling) and brought haiku into the 20th century,” (Summers). He died in 1902, but is still considered one of the greatest poets and he is technically the creator of haiku.