Last Days of Issa's Father

[citation needed] Kobayashi Issa (1763–1828), one of the four great haiku masters of Japan (along with Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson and Masaoka Shiki), describes the last days of his father in this account, which begins when his father suddenly developed fever and became seriously ill, and continues until a week after his death.

Issa vividly describes both the gradual weakening of his father, who was then 68, and his own conflicts with his stepmother and his halfbrother.

Kobayashi Issa was the first-born son of a farmer in Kashiwabara, Province of Shinano (now part of Shinano-machi, Nagano Prefecture).

Issa's mother died when he was three and he was cared for by his doting grandmother, but his life changed dramatically when his father remarried five years later.

It was well bound with a title page by Ogihara Seisensui and preserved at Issa-kan, a museum related to Issa in Takayama-mura, Nagano Prefecture.