or Sōgi
born 1421, Japan
died Sept. 1, 1502, Hakone
Japanese poet.
Sōgi was a Zen monk in Kyōto before becoming, in his 30s, a professional renga (linked-verse) poet. He is considered the greatest master of renga because of two sequences, Minase sangin (1488; "Three Poets at Minase") and Yuyama sangin (1491; "Three Poets at Yuyama"), in each of which poets led by Sōgi took turns at composing short stanzas (links) to form a single poem with many shifts of mood and direction. The foremost poet of his age, he left more than 90 works, including anthologies, diaries, poetic criticism, and manuals.