Famous Haiku Poems: The Classics by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Shiki
Anthology · Classic haiku · Updated 2026-07-22
The most famous haiku ever written is Matsuo Basho's frog poem, composed in the spring of 1686: furuike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto - the old pond, a frog jumps in, the sound of water. After that the standard canon runs through Basho's death-bed verse of 1694, Yosa Buson's rape blossoms with the moon east and the sun west, Kobayashi Issa's skinny frog and his dewdrop world, and Masaoka Shiki's persimmon at Horyu-ji in 1895.
Below is an index of those poems with the poet, approximate date, season word, translator, and what each one is famous for. Every English version here is a translation, and translations of the same 17 sound units disagree line by line - so the second table sets three renderings of the old pond beside each other.
The famous haiku index
| First line (romaji) | Poet | Approx. date | Season / kigo | Translation note | Theme |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| *furuike ya* (the old pond) | Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) | Spring 1686 | Spring - *kawazu*, frog | Translated into English 100+ times; Hiroaki Sato collected a hundred versions in *One Hundred Frogs* | Stillness broken |
| *kare eda ni* (on a withered branch) | Basho | Autumn 1680 (some sources say spring 1681) | Autumn - *aki no kure*, autumn's end or dusk | 30+ published English versions; *aki no kure* is read as both season and time of day | Solitude, *sabi* |
| *natsukusa ya* (summer grasses) | Basho | Summer 1689, at Hiraizumi | Summer - *natsukusa*, summer grasses | From *Oku no Hosomichi*; the closing *tsuwamonodomo ga yume no ato*, the dream-trace of warriors, is where versions diverge most | War and time |
| *shizukasa ya* (such stillness), also printed *shizukesa ya* | Basho | Summer 1689, at Risshaku-ji (Yamadera) | Summer - *semi*, cicada | Blyth and Hass differ on whether the cicadas' voices sink into or pierce the rock | Stillness inside sound |
| *tabi ni yande* (sick on a journey) | Basho | 1694, dictated days before his death | Winter - *kareno*, withered fields | Hass's *The Essential Haiku* (1994) version is the one most often quoted in English | Mortality |
| *nanohana ya* (rape blossoms) | Yosa Buson (1716-1784) | c. 1774 | Spring - *na no hana*, rape blossoms | Nearly always rendered literally; the composition, not the wording, carries it | Painterly balance |
| *asagao ya* (morning glory) | Fukuda Chiyo-ni (1703-1775) | Undated, thought to be early in her life | Autumn - *asagao*, morning glory | Circulates as both *asagao ya* and *asagao ni*; the Japanese text itself varies | Restraint |
| *yase-gaeru* (skinny frog) | Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) | 1816 | Spring - *kawazu*, frog | Issa names himself in line two, which most translators keep | Rooting for the weak |
| *tsuyu no yo wa* (this dewdrop world) | Issa | 1819, in *Ora ga Haru* | Autumn - *tsuyu*, dew | The untranslatable turn is *sari nagara*, usually given as "and yet" | Grief |
| *kaki kueba* (I bite into a persimmon) | Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) | Autumn 1895 | Autumn - *kaki*, persimmon | The temple name Horyu-ji is left untranslated in almost every version | *Shasei*, sketch from life |
| *ikutabi mo* (again and again) | Shiki | 1896, from his sickbed | Winter - *yuki*, snow | Rendered as "how high" or "how deep" the snow is, depending on translator | Illness, longing |
Two things fall out of the table. The canon is small and weighted to four poets - Basho, Buson, Issa, Shiki - exactly how Robert Hass framed The Essential Haiku (Ecco, 1994). And every one of these poems carries a kigo, a season word. That is not decoration: in the classical tradition a hokku without a season word was not a hokku.
The old pond in three English versions
The Japanese is fu-ru-i-ke-ya / ka-wa-zu-to-bi-ko-mu / mi-zu-no-o-to - 5, 7, and 5 on, the sound units Japanese counts, for 17 total. No standard English version reaches 17 syllables, because English syllables carry far more information than Japanese on. Here is how three well-known translators split the same poem.
| Version | Line 1 | Line 2 | Line 3 | Syllables |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Japanese original | furuike ya (5) | kawazu tobikomu (7) | mizu no oto (5) | 17 *on* |
| Lafcadio Hearn, *Exotics and Retrospectives* (1898) | Old pond | frogs jumped in | sound of water | 2 / 3 / 4 = 9 |
| R. H. Blyth, *Haiku* vol. 1 (1949) | The old pond; | A frog jumps in | The sound of the water. | 3 / 4 / 6 = 13 |
| Robert Hass, *The Essential Haiku* (1994) | The old pond, | a frog jumps in, | sound of water | 3 / 4 / 4 = 11 |
| Allen Ginsberg (undated, widely reprinted) | The old pond | A frog jumped in, | Kerplunk! | 3 / 4 / 2 = 9 |
Read the column of numbers. The original is 17; the English versions land at 9, 13, 11, and 9. Hearn pluralizes to frogs. Blyth keeps the present tense and a semicolon where Japanese has the cutting word ya. Ginsberg throws out the last image entirely and gives you the noise instead. Same seventeen sounds, four different poems in English - which is why you should never cite a famous haiku without naming the translator, and why a strict 5-7-5 English count is a poor target if you are writing your own.
What each of the four masters is actually known for
- Basho turned the opening verse of a linked-verse sequence into a self-sufficient poem, and built his best work around travel. Two entries above come from one 1689 journey, recorded in Oku no Hosomichi.
- Buson trained as a painter, and it shows: nanohana ya is a composition before it is a sentence, with the yellow field low, the moon rising east, the sun setting west.
- Issa wrote about fleas, flies, sparrows, and skinny frogs, and about the deaths of his children. tsuyu no yo wa was written in 1819 after he lost his infant daughter; the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence is stated, then refused.
- Shiki put the word haiku into general use for what had been called hokku, attacked Basho in print, and championed shasei - sketching from life. He wrote kaki kueba in autumn 1895 and spent his last years writing from a sickbed.
- Chiyo-ni is the woman the four-master canon usually leaves out. Her morning glory poem is as widely quoted in Japan as anything by Buson.
Read Basho in a library that keeps the poet attached to the poem. Haiku ships with more than 3,000 poems from 129 poets on-device, Basho among them, and every poet comes with a Wikipedia-enriched biography. Browse by era, theme, mood, or form, long-press to highlight a line, and read the whole corpus offline. No account, no sign-in, nothing leaves your device. Download Haiku: Daily Poems & Poetry on the App Store.
How to quote a famous haiku properly
- Name the poet and the translator: "Basho, trans. Robert Hass" is the minimum. Almost no list page online does this, which is why the same poem appears in four incompatible forms across the first page of results.
- Give the romaji if you have it: The romaji is the one stable thing across translations. Terebess and the Haiku Foundation both host romaji Basho texts.
- Note the season word: A reader who knows kaki means autumn reads Shiki's persimmon differently from one who does not. See our kigo season word list.
- Hedge the date: Composition dates for pre-modern haiku are often inferred from diaries and letters. The withered-branch crow is dated to autumn 1680 by most scholars and to spring 1681 by some.
Where the anthology ends and the library begins
A list page holds a dozen poems. A reading habit needs more. Haiku puts one poem on your Home Screen and Lock Screen each morning through a WidgetKit widget, and behind it sits the full on-device corpus: 3,000+ poems from 129 poets, browsable by era, theme, mood, or form. Tap a poet's name and you get the biography; long-press a line and it goes to your highlights. No account, no signal needed, nothing leaves your iPhone. If this page made you want to read past the frog, the Author library is where that starts - and if you want to write your own, begin with why 5-7-5 is not the rule you were told it was.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most famous haiku?
Matsuo Basho's frog poem, composed in spring 1686: *furuike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto*. In English it is usually given as "The old pond, a frog jumps in, sound of water." It has been translated into English more than a hundred times, and Hiroaki Sato published a whole book of versions under the title *One Hundred Frogs*.
Who is the father of haiku?
Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) is conventionally called the father or master of haiku, because he made the opening verse of linked poetry stand on its own as art. But the word *haiku* itself was popularized by Masaoka Shiki in the 1890s; before Shiki the standalone form was called *hokku*. So Basho fathered the poem and Shiki named it.
What are the best haiku poems of all time?
The consensus core is Basho's old pond (1686), his crow on a withered branch (1680), his summer grasses at Hiraizumi (1689) and his death verse (1694); Buson's rape blossoms with moon and sun (c. 1774); Issa's skinny frog (1816) and dewdrop world (1819); Chiyo-ni's morning glory; and Shiki's persimmon at Horyu-ji (1895). Robert Hass's *The Essential Haiku* is the standard English anthology of the first three of those poets.
Are haiku translations always 5-7-5 in English?
No, and most good ones are not. Japanese counts *on*, sound units that are shorter than English syllables, so 17 *on* carries roughly what 12 English syllables carry by the Haiku Society of America's own figure, with other guidance putting it between 10 and 14. Blyth's old pond runs 13 syllables, Hass's 11, Hearn's 9. Padding a translation out to 17 English syllables adds words the poet did not write.