Collection: Sarumino (Monkey's Raincoat)

Background and compilation

Sarumino ("Monkey's Raincoat"), published in 1691, is an influential haikai anthology assembled under the direction of Matsuo Bashō together with his followers. It gathered hokku and linked-verse sequences produced by members of Bashō's circle during the late 1680s and early 1690s, a moment when the group was articulating a shared poetic sensibility. The collection reflects both collaborative salon practice and Bashō's role as mentor, editor, and exemplar.
The work served as a snapshot of a lively school rather than a single-author volume, preserving the interplay between an accomplished master and his disciples. Its compilation demonstrates how Bashō's experiments in tone, subject, and mode of composition were being formalized into a recognizable aesthetic that others could study and emulate.

Form and content

Sarumino mixes standalone hokku with linked-verse fragments and full renku sequences, showing the variety of contexts in which haikai language operated. Hokku appear as distilled moments of perception, while the linked-verse passages reveal how those moments could be woven together through pivoting images, seasonal placements, and tonal shifts. The anthology emphasizes brevity and immediacy without sacrificing complexity, allowing compressed lines to resonate across the unfolding chains.
The poems often prioritize concrete, sensory details, weather, light, small domestic scenes, set against a lean verbal frame. This economy of language encourages multiple readings: a single image functions as both an everyday record and an entry point to deeper feeling or associative leaps, a strategy that became central to later haiku practice.

Aesthetic principles

Sarumino helped articulate key principles associated with Bashō's approach: a preference for "karumi" (lightness and deftness), a measured use of "sabi" (lonely elegance), and an emphasis on naturalness and spontaneity over ornate cleverness. The collection models a balance between humor and seriousness, showing how playfulness and depth can coexist in short verse. Bashō and his circle pursued a plainness that nevertheless opened onto subtle emotional and philosophical registers.
The anthology also codifies methods for handling season words, linking devices, and shifts in mood, techniques essential to good renku and to the independent hokku that would later be called haiku. Its practice-oriented examples demonstrate how restraint and imaginative association combine to make a single image reverberate.

Editorial practice and voice

Bashō's editorial hand is visible without overwhelming the contributors' voices; selection and arrangement guide readers toward preferred models of taste while preserving variety. The ordering of pieces and the juxtaposition of different approaches suggest explicit pedagogical aims: to show what was admired and what to avoid. This subtle curatorial strategy helped shape an emerging canon and offered a practical curriculum for poets learning the Bashō way.
The voice that emerges from Sarumino is communal yet discerning, revealing a mentor-led school that values both individual insight and the collaborative energy of linked-verse composition. The anthology exemplifies how editorial curation can teach by example rather than by theoretical exposition.

Legacy and influence

Sarumino became a cornerstone for the Bashō school and a touchstone for subsequent generations of haikai and haiku poets. Its mix of exemplary hokku and renku provided a model for integrating concise sensory observation with associative depth, and its published form helped transmit Bashōan principles beyond immediate social circles. Later critics and poets looked to Sarumino as a concise statement of innovations that shaped the course of Japanese short-verse poetry.
The anthology remains important for understanding the transition from collaborative haikai practice to the modern haiku sensibility, and for appreciating how a small book of short poems can codify an approach that emphasizes subtlety, tonal nuance, and the power of a single well-placed image.