The most beloved of Japan's wandering monk-poets. Born Satō Norikiyo, he served as a guard to the retired Emperor Toba but renounced the world at twenty-three in 1140, living on Mount Kōya and at Yoshino and making long journeys to the far north and to Shikoku. His plain, deeply felt poems on nature, solitude and the passage of life influenced generations of poets, above all Bashō. The Shin Kokinshū contains ninety-four of his poems, more than any other poet. He died, as he had wished in a famous poem, beneath the cherry blossoms in the second month.
嘆けとて 月やは物を 思はする
かこち顔なる わが涙かな
Nageke tote tsuki ya wa mono o omowasuru / kakochigao naru waga namida kana
Does the moon command me to grieve, forcing these thoughts upon me? No — and yet my tears keep falling, as if to blame the moon.