Many Japanese poets followed a similar lifestyle and past. Most would spend a number of years traveling, sleeping, and visiting monasteries and inns while practicing their writing. The majority eventually became teachers at some point in their life, and passed on their knowledge to the younger. Most, but not all, were middle class, enabling them to live a comfortable life and focus on composition rather than everyday concerns. They could afford to spend years studying the art of the haiku. The biggest sources of inspiration for haiku were tragedy and nature; poets traveled around Japan for years looking for things to serve as a subject. Journey, to the Japanese, was a metaphor. Travel is life. There is no end to travelling, and one is both born and dies on the road. One who travels is not a sightseer, they have left behind the majority of their belongings, and so have transformed into a beggar (Narrow Road to the Deep North).
Bashō, known as the master of the haiku, was born in city of Ueno. His father was a samurai of lower rank in service of the Todo family. Bashō didn’t enjoy this lifestyle, so went to work in Edo, and soon after moved into the seclusion of a small house by a river. He began to study Zen meditation, but never achieved Nirvana, leaving him with one foot stuck in each world. This spiritual suffering was obvious in his poems despite his attempts to cure it, and so was his struggle to find his own form of expression. One day his house burned down in a fire, again changing his outlook on life and subject of his poems. This shows how the events of a poet’s life shape the themes of their poems. However, like many other poets of the time, his greatest influence and inspiration was the excitement of visiting a place that he had never been to before. Many of his greatest poems were composed under this circumstance, as was the same with Kobayashi Issa, another famous poet who studied in Edo. The tragedies he experienced were arguably greater than those of Bashō: his first wife and three sons died, then his house burned down, his second marriage was unsuccessful, and in his third marriage he spent much time away from his wife because he was travelling. These served as material for his best poetry.
Image source: https://kudoswall.com/index.php/easyblog/entry/top-ten-poetry-contests-for-teens
Bashō, known as the master of the haiku, was born in city of Ueno. His father was a samurai of lower rank in service of the Todo family. Bashō didn’t enjoy this lifestyle, so went to work in Edo, and soon after moved into the seclusion of a small house by a river. He began to study Zen meditation, but never achieved Nirvana, leaving him with one foot stuck in each world. This spiritual suffering was obvious in his poems despite his attempts to cure it, and so was his struggle to find his own form of expression. One day his house burned down in a fire, again changing his outlook on life and subject of his poems. This shows how the events of a poet’s life shape the themes of their poems. However, like many other poets of the time, his greatest influence and inspiration was the excitement of visiting a place that he had never been to before. Many of his greatest poems were composed under this circumstance, as was the same with Kobayashi Issa, another famous poet who studied in Edo. The tragedies he experienced were arguably greater than those of Bashō: his first wife and three sons died, then his house burned down, his second marriage was unsuccessful, and in his third marriage he spent much time away from his wife because he was travelling. These served as material for his best poetry.
Image source: https://kudoswall.com/index.php/easyblog/entry/top-ten-poetry-contests-for-teens