Aiko Maki

The poetical style of Takarai-Kikaku in his late career is often called "chic." But the epithet is hardly intended to convey the quality of his work; rather it ironically refers to the frivolous and vulgar style of the Edo school, a poetical circle founded by him. Certainly his elaborately rendered poems seem to be too sophisticated and "chic" in the negative sense of the word. But those poems are more than merely mannerist, for they are constructed on economies in concept and context, a method of strictly refining words and phrases. Thus paradoxically his style is "chic," this time in the positive sense of the word.