Masaoka Shiki
This new selection of [Shiki's] poems, from the hand of a distinguished scholar and translator, is particularly welcome.... It was Shiki, the short-lived critic, essayist and poet, who launched a major reform of haiku in the Meiji Era and revitalized the miniature poem for the century ahead. In place of the word-games and imitation to which haiku practice had by then descended, Shiki suggested the 'shasei' or 'sketch from life.'(Japan Times)