Born the eldest son of a farming family at Kashiwabara in Shinano (Shinano town, Nagano). He lost his mother in early childhood.
Around this time his father remarried, and he did not get on with his stepmother; his childhood is said to have been lonely.
He left home to work as a servant in Edo, where amid hardship he eventually discovered haikai.
To train in haikai he set out on a journey through the Kinki, Shikoku and Kyushu, travelling for about six years.
He nursed his father at home, but his father died. A long dispute over the inheritance with his stepmother and half-brother followed, which he recorded in Chichi no Shūen Nikki.
The inheritance settled, he went back to live in Kashiwabara.
He married Kiku at home and had children, but one after another they died young.
He wrote many verses of sympathy for small creatures, such as "Skinny frog, don't give up—Issa is here!"
He wrote Ora ga Haru, a year in prose and verse including his grief at losing his daughter Sato, with the verse "This world of dew is a world of dew—and yet, and yet."
His wife Kiku died; he later remarried.
A great fire in Kashiwabara destroyed his house, and he lived in a surviving storehouse.
He died in the storehouse, having composed some 20,000 verses in his life.
Matsudaira SadanobuKatsushika HokusaiHanaoka SeishūSantō KyōdenJippensha IkkuKyokutei BakinTakadaya KaheiSatō Issai
People of the Edo period ・ People by period
Based on facts found in textbooks and biographies. Uncertain points are marked as such.