writing poems in her early years, although she did develop on her own as an independent figure with her own unique voice. She was well aware of being considered Bashō's heir and on a portrait of Bashō she wrote in calligraphy: She appears to say that while she did listen to him, she also did not copy him, "not to listen, fine too." In around 1720 she married a servant of the Fukuoka family of Kanazawa, and had one child with him, a son, who died in infancy. Her husband died of disease not long after in 1722. She valued her independence too much, and despite her loneliness, she did not remarry, so she returned home to her parents. It may be that after her husband's death Chiyo-ni lived with and cared for her elderly parents and worked in the family’s scroll mounting business. She wrote: After her parents died, she adopted a married couple to carry on the family business and in 1754, at the age of fifty-two (by East Asian age reckoning), Chiyo-ni chose to become a Buddhist nun. "Not", she said, "in order to renounce the world, but as a way 'to teach her heart to be like the clear water which flows night and day." Chiyo-ni shaved her head and started to live in a temple with other nuns and took the Buddhist name Soen. She continued her writing and lived the rest of her simple yet peaceful life in the manner of haikai. In 1764, she was chosen to prepare the official gift for Maeda Shigemichi, the daimyō of her region, to the Korean Delegation led by civil minister Jo Eom. Chiyo-ni crafted and delivered 21 artworks based on her twenty-one haiku. Chiyo-ni died in 1775. In popular culture The American rock band Red House Painters adapted one of Chiyo's haiku for the chorus of their song "Dragonflies". See also Japanese literature List of Japanese authors List of Japanese women writers References 1703 births 1775 deaths Japanese women poets Japanese writers of the Edo period 18th-century Japanese poets 18th-century Japanese women writers 18th-century Buddhist nuns Japanese Buddhist nuns Japanese haiku poets