[6] Matsuo Bashō is one of the most famous poets of the Edo period and the greatest figure active in Japanese haikai during the latter half of the seventeenth century.
[8] In contrast to the traditional Japanese poetry of his day, Bashō’s haikai treated the ordinary, everyday lives of commoners, portraying figures from popular culture such as the beggar, the traveler and the farmer.
[citation needed] A new group of poets emerged in the mid-1700s who "condemned the commercialized practices [of] contemporary haikai and argued for a return to the ideals of Matsuo Bashō".
"[O]ther major 'Back to Bashō' poets were Tan Taigi 炭太祇 (1709–1771), Katō Kyōtai 加藤暁台 (1732-1792), Chōmu 蝶夢 (1732–1795), Kaya Shirao 加舎白雄 (1738–1791), and Hori Bakusui (1718-1783).
[10] In the late Meiji period, the poet and literary critic Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902) first used the term haiku for the modern, standalone verses of haikai that Bashō had popularized.