Tsuda-Kyūho is a
haiku poet of the Edo Period who is praised for his moral integrity in
Saikaku-nagori-no-tomo. But Tsuda’s different profile can be seen in his essay about the travel from Osaka to Murotsu reprinted in
Harima-sugihara, a miscellaneous
haiku anthology. In the preface of the anthology the editor likens him to a “gourd floating on the water” which correctly refers to his opportunism. In the essay, for example, the author eulogizes Osaka Castle transferred to the possession of the Tokugawa government, but this is in stark contradiction with his loyalty to Ukita-Hideie, one of the five elders of the Toyotomi government, which he expresses in
Tsuda-Kyūho-kabun-maki. In the sequence of Akashi he recollects that he was honorably invited to stay there by the postulant of Bodai-ji Temple in his early twenties. In this episode one can see his desire to show that he was regarded as a respectable person already in his early career. Thus his self-representation in the travel essay unexpectedly reveals another aspect of the poet.
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