The Thirty-six Immortals of Haikai Verse (Haikai sanjūrokkasen 俳諧三十六歌僊) 1799

Yosa Buson created this woodblock printed book, "The Thirty-six Immortals of Haikai Verse" in Japan, sometime before his death in 1784. Buson was not only a visual artist but also a haikai poet, so this work speaks to a specific set of aesthetic and literary practices. The Thirty-Six Immortals of Poetry was a canon of exemplary waka poets of the past, selected during the Heian period. This canon functioned as a kind of 'Hall of Fame,' a means of standardizing poetic and aesthetic values, and promoting them through the cultural institutions of the court. In Buson’s time, a parallel canon of haikai poets was assembled, reflecting a cultural effort to legitimize haikai as a literary genre. Buson’s style is informal, even comical. These are not the portraits of solemn worthies, but approachable, human figures. For an art historian, a work like this becomes an opportunity to investigate the social function of literary and aesthetic canons, and the cultural work required to maintain them.