Abstract

Makoto (sincerity, truth, or faithfulness) is an important concept in haikai (Japanese comic linked verse) poetics. The discussions on makoto by the seventeenth-century haikai master Uejima Onitsura (1661-1738) clearly refer to the Daoist discourse on ziran (the Natural), and the clarification of this intertextuality is crucial to the understanding of the theoretical connotations of the term