ABSTRACT
Daoist influence on Japanese poetry can be traced to the oldest anthology. This chapter explores the factors in the development of haikai that led to the haikai poets sustained interest in the Zhungz and how the ancient Daoist text became a source for poetry and helped to both turn the vernacular, even vulgar, haikai expressions into poetry and reinvent its compositional practice and dialogic context. Through a close examination of Bashs work this chapter demonstrates that the haikai poets use of the Daoist ideas was not mere borrowing but cross-cultural fertilization at a remarkable level. Once haikai became a popular genre during the Edo period, haikai poets faced paradoxical demands. The haikai poet's reliance on the authority of the classical text to justify haikai was not due to an inability to theorize or create but reflected an important tradition in Japanese poetry.
