instead of home
the cool moon’s
straw mat
—Inoue Shiro

In the past hundred years, haiku has gone far beyond its Japanese origins to become a worldwide phenomenon—with the classic poetic form growing and evolving as it has adapted to the needs of the whole range of languages and cultures that have embraced it. Here one of the leading haiku scholars of the West takes us on a tour of haiku poetry’s evolution, providing along the way a wealth of examples of the poetry and the art inspired by it.

While haiku is one of the best-known forms of poetry, it is less known that traditional haiku were often accompanied by calligraphy and paintings. In this history of both the poetic and visual art forms, all aspects of the development of haiku are fully explored—deepened by a look at the role of haiku paintings, called haiga. Full of examples of the poems and the paintings, including full-color reproductions of forty haiku paintings, this is one of the few histories of haiku that also explores the visual aspect of the art.