José Watanabe Varas (Trujillo, March 17, 1945 - Lima, April 25, 2007), was a renowned Peruvian poet.

Watanabe was one of the most characteristic voices among the Peruvian poets of the 70s, a generation characterized by his experiments with colloquialism, his break with the Peruvian poetic tradition before them, and his ideological radicalism.

Also called a wise poet, Watanabe seeks to transcend his poetry. From his father, he not only learned to control emotional manifestations, which he calls restraint; but also and above all the poetic form of haiku, the best achieved expression of the oriental gaze of the world that, by the paths of Zen Buddhism and Taoism, seeks pure and real nature, radiating its mystery in every observation. It is through this disinterested, serene and simply testimonial view that the poet describes the phenomena that he perceives in his innocent beauty in a hurry to live, in all ideology and in all passion