Author Description

Humor has long been a lively element in traditional Japanese culture. Through parody, satire, personification, and wit, Japanese humor has a playful, subtle, and incongruous nature. Here, the benign and gentle quality of Japanese humor is presented through 120 haiku by such masters as Basho, Issa, and Buson, among others. Color reproductions of nearly fifty woodblock prints, paintings, and drawings accompany the poems.