Scholars have described numerous extraordinary feats of solo haikai composition at one sitting; most famously, over the course of a single day and night in Saikaku is known to have composed 1, haikai verses [ 1 ] and an amazing 23, verses in a single day and night in Later in life he began writing racy accounts of the financial and amorous affairs of the merchant class and the demimonde.
These stories catered to the whims of the newly prominent merchant class, whose tastes of entertainment leaned toward the arts and pleasure districts. Ihara Saikaku was born in into a well-off merchant family in Osaka.
From the age of fifteen he composed haikai no renga linked verse. In at the age of twenty he became a haikai master. Under the pen name Ihara Kakuei, he began to establish himself as a popular haikai poet.
During this time he owned and ran a medium-sized business in Osaka. In he changed his pen name to Saikaku. However, the death of his dearly beloved wife in had an extremely profound impact on him. A few days after her death, in an act of grief and true love, Saikaku started to compose a thousand-verse haikai poem over twelve hours. It was the first time that Saikaku had attempted to compose such a lengthy piece of literature. The overall experience and success that Saikaku received from composing such a mammoth exerise has been credited with sparking the writer's interest in writing novels.
Shortly after his wife's death, the grief-stricken Saikaku decided to become a lay monk and began to travel all across Japan, thus leaving behind his three children one of whom was blind to be cared for by his extended family and his business by his employees.
