Ihara Saikaku

Ihara Saikaku

Ihara Saikaku (井原 西鶴, 1642 – September 9, 1693) was a Japanese poet and creator of the "floating world" genre of Japanese prose (ukiyo-zōshi). Born as Hirayama Tōgo (平山藤五), the son of a wealthy merchant in Osaka, he first studied haikai poetry under Matsunaga Teitoku and later studied under Nishiyama Sōin of the Danrin school of poetry, which emphasized comic linked verse. Scholars have described numerous extraordinary feats of solo haikai composition at one sitting; most famously, over the course of a single day and night in 1677, Saikaku is reported to have composed at least 16,000 haikai stanzas, with some sources placing the number at over 23,500 stanzas.Later in life he began writing racy accounts of the financial and amorous affairs of the merchant class and the demimonde. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Ihara Saikaku has received more than 157,946 page views. His biography is available in 29 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 26 in 2019). Ihara Saikaku is the 1,392nd most popular writer (up from 1,483rd in 2019), the 320th most popular biography from Japan (up from 378th in 2019) and the 29th most popular Japanese Writer.