The closest disciple of the great renga (linked verse) poet In Sgi, Saiokuken Sch collaborated in the composition of some of the masterpieces of the renga art, the most widely practiced literary genre in medieval Japan. He was also a prolific chronicler who left five diaries detailing his travels and cultural life. The longest, Sch shuki (The Journal of Sch, 1522-1527), is one of the major works of self-representational literature remaining from the medieval period. While situated firmly in the orthodox tradition of poetic travel narratives (kik bungaku), the journal also gives an unprecedented voice to unconventional or comic haikai elements, exemplifying in one volume the collision of cultural spheres that occurred during the Sengoku jidai (Age of the Country at War).

Sch, as he would later be known, is thought to have been born in 1448 in Shimada, a post town in Suruga Province (Shizuoka Prefecture) on the...