was a Japanese poet and painter of the Edo period. Along with Matsuo Bashō and Kobayashi Issa, Buson is considered among the greatest poets of the Edo Period. He is also known for completing haiga as a style of art, working with haibun prose, and experimenting with a mixed Chinese-Japanese style of poetry. Biography Early life, training, and travels Buson was born in the village of Kema in Settsu Province (present-day Kema, Miyakojima Ward, Osaka). His original family name was Taniguchi. Buson scarcely discussed his childhood, but it is commonly thought that he was the illegitimate son of the village head and a migrant worker from Yoza. According to the Taniguchi family in Yosano, Kyoto, Buson was the son of a servant woman named Gen, who had come to work in Osaka and had a child with her master. A grave of Gen survives in Yosano. There is an oral tradition that the young Buson had been cared for at the Seyaku-ji temple in Yosano, and later, when Buson returned to Tango Province, he gave the temple a folding screen painting as a gift. Around the age of 20, Buson moved to Edo (present-day Tokyo). He learned poetry under the tutelage of the haikai master Hayano Hajin, who named the house he taught in Yahantei (Midnight Pavillion). After Hajin died, Buson moved to Shimōsa Province (present-day Ibaraki Prefecture). Following in the footsteps of his idol, Matsuo Bashō, Buson travelled through the wilds of northern Honshū that had been the inspiration for Bashō's famous travel diary, Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Interior). He published his notes from the trip in 1744, marking the first time he published under the name Buson. After travelling through various parts of Japan, including Tango (the northern part of present-day Kyoto Prefecture) and Sanuki Province (present-day Kagawa Prefecture), Buson settled down in the city of Kyoto at the age of 42. Around this time, he began to write under the name of Yosa, which he took from his mother's birthplace (Yosa, Tango Province). Between 1754-1757, Buson worked on the collection of haiga-style picture scrolls, Buson yōkai emaki. Buson married at the age of 45 and had one daughter, Kuno. At the age of 51, he left his wife and children in Kyoto and went to Sanuki Province to work on many works. Later work and death After returning to Kyoto again, he wrote