Yosa Buson was born in Naniwa in 1716. Around the age of 20, he came to contemporary Tokyo and learned poetry under the tutelage of Hayano Hajin. Yahanraku was published in 1777. His seminal works are Shumpu-batei-Kyoku (The Sage of the Horse Dyke in the Spring Wind), Denga-Ka (The Song of the Dull River) and Hokku (The Old Nightingale), in which Buson combines the new with the traditional and the Chinese with the Japanese. He also earned a reputation as a literary painter. His lifelong pursuit was to "turn away" from the ordinary. Yosa Buson died in Kyoto in 1784.