Matsuo Basho, the greatest master of haiku and a towering figure in Japanese literary history, wrote poems featuring insects with extraordinary concentration and Buddhist philosophical depth. His most famous haiku feature the cicada ('the cry of the cicada / gives no sign / that it is about to die'), mosquitoes, flies, and various other insects as vehicles for meditations on impermanence, the nature of consciousness, and the relationship between human and non-human life. Basho's insect haiku reflect the Buddhist tradition of finding the dharma in the smallest and most transient of creatures.

Basho's insect haiku, particularly those featuring cicadas, mosquitoes, and flies, established a tradition of serious literary engagement with insects in Japanese verse that has been enormously influential worldwide. The Japanese literary tradition of seeing in the insect's brief, intense life a mirror of human transience — deeply rooted in Buddhist philosophy — provided an alternative to the Western tradition of comic, satirical, or erotic flea/louse poetry. When Basho's haiku became widely known in the West through translation, they enriched and challenged the European insect poem tradition with a completely different cultural and philosophical framework.