In what year was Matsuo Basho born?

Matsuo Bashō was born in 1644 near Ueno, in Iga Province, now part of Mie Prefecture, Japan. He became the most celebrated poet of Japan’s Edo period.

Bashō was born Matsuo Kinsaku into a family of samurai or privileged landholding status. As a young man he studied and composed haikai no renga, a collaborative linked-verse form. The opening 5–7–5 verse of such a sequence was called a hokku; the term “haiku” became common only later, so calling Bashō a haiku poet is historically convenient but somewhat retrospective.

He adopted the name Bashō after a disciple gave him a banana plant, or bashō, for his garden in Edo. His reputation grew through teaching, linked verse, travel writing, and poems shaped by direct encounters with landscapes and ordinary life.

Bashō died in 1694, aged about 50. His best-known travel work, *Oku no Hosomichi* (*The Narrow Road to the Deep North*), describes a journey begun in 1689. The distractor years do not match the standard biographical dating.