Which poet wrote 'The falling flower I saw drift back to the branch — it was a butterfly'?

Arakida Moritake wrote the poem about a falling flower that seems to drift back to its branch, only to be revealed as a butterfly. The poem is commonly translated: “A fallen blossom / returning to the bough, I thought— / but no, a butterfly.”

Moritake was a Japanese poet of the late Muromachi period who excelled in waka, renga, and haikai. He was also a Shinto priest from the Arakida family, which had hereditary connections to the Inner Ise Shrine. At the age of 69, he became its head priest.

The poem’s central effect is a moment of mistaken perception. A falling flower appears to reverse direction, creating a brief image of impossibility. The final line resolves the illusion: the object is not a flower returning to the tree but a butterfly flying past it. This playful transformation helped make the poem one of Moritake’s best-known works.

Moritake is sometimes discussed as an important precursor to later haiku, but he predates Bashō, Buson, and Issa. That chronology is a useful way to avoid confusing him with the better-known Edo-period masters.