Wasi

The Wasi of ChiyoNi Ishi -- [Entrance ] [Courtyard ] [Library ] [Study ]

ChiyoNi's Friends (3)

	* MaiHosho Enkidu
	* Otafuku Balam
	* KaoriOhara Chattian

More of ChiyoNi's 3 Friends...

ChiyoNi's Journals

Chiyo-ni (Kaga no Chiyo), considered one of the foremost women haiku poets, began writing at at an early age. She studied under two haiku masters who had themselves apprenticed with the great poet, Basho.... At the end of her life she took holy orders, becoming a nun - not, she said, in order to renounce the world, but as a way 'to teach her heart to be like the clear water which flows night and day.'

At right: painting and calligraphy by Chiyo-ni. The poem reads:

Butterfly on a maiden's path
now behind
now in front.

Chiyo-ni's poem at death when she was 74 (in 1795):

having gazed at the moon
I depart from this life
with a blessing