Kobayashi Issa reminds us that the realm of sympathy and concern is limitless. He is a Japanese haiku poet from the late 1700s. 'Issa' in Japanese means 'Cup-of-Tea’. He is regarded as one of the four haiku masters in Japan, along with Bashōō, Busonand Shiki — "the Great Four. His catalogue of poems is vast – some 20,000 haikus. Issa wrote 54 haiku on the snail, 15 on the toad, nearly 200 on frogs, about 230 on the firefly, more than 150 on the mosquito, 90 on flies, over 100 on fleas and nearly90 on the cicada, making a total of about one thousand verses on such creatures. Issa was a lay priest in the True Pure Land Buddhism school. Issa’s mother died when he was young. He was perpetually impoverished and sick, occasionally homeless. He was a widower and the father of three children who perished in infancy. Issa lost his house and was forced to live in a windowless storehouse. This building was designated a National Historic Site of Japan in 1933. Just before his death, his disciples asked him to give them a last verse, he opened his eyes and murmured 'A bath when you're born, a bath when you die, how stupid.
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