Masaoka Shiki is one of the most crucial authors in the history of haiku, as it marks a panorama of novelty between classical and contemporary haiku. Shiki has bequeathed us an unrepentant love for the brush, with which he drew and wrote. Both his prose and his poetry make us see in him a key figure to understand the new aesthetic dawn of Japan in the first decades of the twentieth century.
Haiku is a form of traditional Japanese poetry of 17 syllables organized in a three-verse scheme (5-7-5). It has no title or rhyme because it intends, with the utmost simplicity, to convey an appreciation of reality by spiritualizing it and elevating it above its small transcendence. Haiku, which has remained for centuries intimately linked to traditional Japanese culture, has now been universalized in such a way that we can finally consider it the heritage of the human being.