Ryokan
Quick answer: Ryokan craft guide: what the Zen hermit's plain diction, humour, self-portraits and moon imagery teach modern poets, with the best poems to read first.
Not every important poet builds a career. Ryokan, a Zen monk who lived from 1758 to 1831, built the opposite: after training in the Soto school he refused temple positions and lived for decades in a small mountain hut called Gogo-an, in Echigo province on the Japan Sea coast. He begged for his rice, played hide and seek with village children, and wrote poems in classical Chinese, in the waka form, and occasionally in haiku, most of them never intended for publication.
He signed himself Daigu, Great Fool, and the name is a craft statement as much as a joke. Ryokan's poems demonstrate how far plainness can go: no ornament, no performance, a voice so unguarded that the artlessness turns out to be the art. Poets drowning in their own cleverness should read him as medicine.
A hermit by conviction
Ryokan was born in the village of Izumozaki, the son of the village headman, and entered Zen training as a young man. After receiving certification from his teacher he chose wandering and then hermit life over any official role, and stayed poor deliberately.
Near the end of his life a young nun named Teishin became his student and close friend. After his death she compiled his poems in the collection Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf, which is why his private writing survived at all. His calligraphy, loose and childlike, is now among the most prized in Japan, a detail he would have found funny.
The signature moves
Ryokan's simplicity is made of identifiable choices.
What you can learn from him
Try writing a poem in which every word would be understood by a child, and see how much feeling survives; whatever survives is the actual poem. Practise self-description that is honest about your own absurdity without fishing for sympathy, which is one of the hardest tones in poetry and one of the most winning.
Ryokan also teaches something about audience. He wrote mostly for nobody, and the freedom shows. Draft at least some poems that no one will ever see, because the voice you find there is the one worth publishing later.
Where to start reading
Begin with One Robe, One Bowl, John Stevens's translation of his Chinese and Japanese poems, or Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf translated by John Stevens, which includes Teishin's compilation. Great Fool: Zen Master Ryokan, by Ryuichi Abe and Peter Haskel, adds the poems' religious context. Look for the burglar and moon poem, his verses on playing with village children, and the late exchanges with Teishin.
What poets can take from this
- Write one poem using only words a ten year old knows.
- Describe your own worst habit in a poem with affection instead of apology.
- End a poem on weather or light rather than a conclusion.
- Keep a private notebook of poems you promise yourself never to publish, and notice how the voice changes.
- Let one recurring image, like Ryokan's moon, accumulate meaning across many poems instead of explaining it in one.
Try it yourself
Write a poem about the thing a thief could not steal from your home. Do not name the feeling of loss or safety; let the object or light carry it.
Questions
What kind of poetry did Ryokan write?
He wrote kanshi, poems in classical Chinese, along with Japanese waka and some haiku. His themes were hermit life, poverty, children, snow country weather and Zen experience, all delivered in unusually plain language.
Was Ryokan famous in his lifetime?
Locally he was a beloved, eccentric figure, but he held no position and published nothing. His reputation grew after his death, largely because the nun Teishin preserved his poems, and today he is one of Japan's most loved poets.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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