One Thin Body by Ozaki Hōsai

About the book

Ozaki Hōsai (1885–1926) spent his final years as a hermit-priest on a small Japanese island, writing haiku until his death at forty-one. One Thin Body brings together fifty-two of his most essential poems in new English translations, offering a chapbook-length introduction to one of Japanese poetry’s most distinctive and least-known voices.

These are not poems of enlightenment or resolution. They are poems of continuation: a coin still warm from running through wind, a shadow moved just to see it move, a clam that won't open. Hōsai wrote from inside poverty, illness, and deep solitude, and his poems carry that plainness without complaint or drama.

Edition details

• Catalogue: ASP 002
• Published: 31 March 2026
• Edition: 26 copies
• Copies for sale: 25, numbered by hand
• Format: Small square, 148 × 148 mm
• Extent: 36 pages
• Binding: Saddle-stitched
• Interior: 120 gsm recycled uncoated paper
• Cover: 250 gsm recycled uncoated stock
• Translation: Marc Brüseke
• Production: Designed, printed, assembled, numbered, and stamped by Analog Submission Press in York

About the poet

Ozaki Hōsai (1885–1926) is widely regarded alongside Taneda Santōka as one of the defining figures of free-verse haiku. Born in Tottori Prefecture, he studied law at Tokyo Imperial University before a broken marriage, a succession of abandoned careers, and declining health led him away from conventional life entirely. He remains little known outside Japan.

About the translator

Marc Brüseke is a writer and academic based in York, England. His work explores memory, travel, and the fragmentary nature of experience. He holds a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing and is the founder of Analog Submission Press.

The Small Run

Read a conversation with Marc Brüseke about lineation, plainness, and translating the silences of Ozaki Hōsai’s haiku into English in The Small Run 002.