Karai Senryū


Karai Senryū, whose real name is Karai Hachiemon was a Japanese poet and poetry judge. He popularized a form of haiku called senryū, which is named after him. "Senryū" was the nickname that he adopted when he started judging poetry, and other poetry judges after him also adopted this name. The word senryū means "river willow" in Japanese.

Biography

Hachiemon was a government official in the Asakusa district of Edo, a post that he inherited from his father.
Karai became the judge of Maekuzuke competitions in Edo. The Maekuzuke was a popular style at the time which consisted of a participant adding their own verses to an already existing verse. Karai would judge these verses with a point system. And from there, he collected a hundred thousand of these poems each year, the best of which were distinguished and published. There is a monument for him at the location where he judged the first Maekuzuke in Japan. It has been said that Senryū judged over 2,300,000 verses in his lifetime.
In 1765, Senryū's disciple published an anthology of Senryū's selected haiku called Willow Barrel that reflected Senryū's sense of humor and style. He later published several other anthologies throughout his lifetime that gained in popularity. During the Meiji era, this style of poems became known as senryū. The first 23 volumes of Willow Barrel were published while Senryū was alive. Overall, 167 volumes were published.