Kobayashi Issa

Itaro Kobayashi (Issa is the name he would later adopt) was born in 1763 in Kashiwabara, in the mountainous province of Shinano (now Nagano), Japan. It was a mountainous region of great beauty, where the snow melted only in the summer and frost appeared at the very beginning of autumn.
His father was a farmer and horse breeder. His mother died when Itaro was only two years old. The painful experience of being orphaned led him to take refuge in the woods and seek the company of animals, birds, and insects. At the age of six, he began attending school, where he was introduced to Buddhist texts.
The father remarries. The stepmother then turns his life into a living hell, forcing his father to withdraw him from school. The situation becomes even more complicated with the birth of his half-brother. At the age of fourteen, his father sends him to Edo (Tokyo) with a letter of recommendation. He will remain there for thirty-seven years. He experiences cold and hunger in the early days. He begins to write haiku and attends a school founded by a disciple of Bashō.
In the spring of 1792, he shaved his head, donned a monk's habit, adopted the name Issa (meaning bubble in a tea bowl), and set out on a pilgrimage. This journey would last four years and take him to Kyoto, Osaka, and the island of Shikoku. Upon his return to Edo, the publication of his travel diary was a huge success.
In 1801 he returned to Kashiwabara and finally received his share of the family inheritance. At the age of fifty, he married Kiku, who bore him four children, all of whom died prematurely. It is to his second daughter that Issa dedicates some poignant pages in his diary. Oraga Haru (My Spring).
Issa died in 1827 following a stroke. He was buried on Mount Kamaru. An unworked stone bears the inscription:
"Will this be it?"
My final resting place -
'Under a meter and a half of snow.'
Jorge Sousa Braga, in the introduction to the book First Snow