During the 300 years since his death, Basho has turned into Japan's most famous poet, the personification of haiku culture and an icon of its perceived sensibility. He has been interpreted and reinterpreted and now, three centuries later, he is being not only rediscovered, but reinvented.
An example is the Basho Symposium that was held in London in 1994. Scholars gathered upon this 300th anniversary of the poet's death and gave a number of papers (the main body of this book); there was also a haiku "exhibition," a "composition stroll" along the Thames, followed by the compilation of some "renga," commemorative linked verses.
Later in the year, a party of British haiku poets set out on their own journey into the deep north, departing with due ceremony from Chepstow and proceeding into the Welsh Borderland hills, writing haiku all the while. A sycamore tree was "dressed" with penned haiku that fluttered leaf-like for an entire week, and there was a tea ceremony in celebration of the life and work of the poet.