This book contains works by brilliant haiku masters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Masaoka Shiki, Takahama Keshi, Taneda Santoka, Natsume Soseki, Akutagawa Ryunosuke and others, whose names are as iconic for the Japanese reader as the names of Blok and Khlebnikov, Gumilyov and Yesenin are for the Russian reader. Remaining faithful to the precepts of Basho, Buson and other haiku patriarchs of the Edo era, young reformers challenged the dilapidated medieval canon. In their poems, Zen contemplation does not contradict the intense search for new literary horizons and bold experimentation. In an era of grandiose cultural transformations, they were able to lay the foundations of the aesthetics of the “spiritual revolution,” creating an amazing fusion of old and new. The tercets of the “silver” age reveal to the reader the mystery of Being in refined images generated by the immortal Tradition.