Kaga no Chiyo Comments

in her biography (on this page) it is stated: ''At age 12, she became the disciple of the great poet Matsuo Bashō''. It couldn't be, of course, since Chiyo-ni's birth-date is 1703: 7 years after Bashō's death (: Nov.28,1694) . Her teachers were two of Bashō's disceples.

Kaga no Chiyo 加賀千代 Chiyo from Kaga or Kaga no Chiyo-Ni 加賀千代（尼）/（かがのちよ(に) - JO 女 means woman, often added to the name of a haiku poetess. NI 尼 means nun, taken on when she became a Buddhist nun. *** KAGA is the placename, from where she came. *** as a nun, she took the name 'SOEN'. Being a Buddhist nun in those days did not mean living in a monastery or nunnery. Soen/Chiyo-ni continued her simple life of writing and friendship. Another of her friends was a fellow nun, Kasenjo, who had been a prostitute in her youth. This isn't as strange as it sounds, as Japanese culture considered prostitutes socially marginal but not shameful or sinful, so they fairly often became nuns in their later years.

Fukuda Chiyo-ni (Kaga no Chiyo) (福田 千代尼) is considered one of the foremost women haiku poets. She began writing at the age of seven and studied under two haiku masters who had themselves apprenticed with the great poet, Basho. ''... In 1755, Chiyo became a Buddhist nun - not, she said, in order to renounce the world, but as a way 'to teach her heart to be like the clear water which flows night and day.' '' (Jane Hirshfield)