The Year of My Life (Oraga Haru)
The most human of the great haiku masters. Where Basho achieves transcendence, Issa wallows in ordinary sorrow and finds it beautiful. His haiku about his dying infant daughter ("This world of dew / is only a world of dew / and yet... and yet...") is among the most emotionally devastating lines in all of world literature. Issa makes haiku personal in ways Basho never quite did.
Yuasa translates every haiku as a four-line English quatrain instead of the standard three, which a critic labels “unnecessary verbal padding.” The complaints compound from there: a reader who otherwise likes the book admits “so many weak poems, and the editing is a mess,” and another says plainly, “I prefer Hamill's translation,” pointing toward the rival Spring of My Life version instead. The Yuasa prose itself reads dated to some, with one reviewer noting “the translations haven't aged well and are likely on the literal side.” The haiku carry real weight around the daughter's death, but padded quatrains and rough production wear against the book getting there, and readers well versed in haiku rank Issa below the other classic masters.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
