“The first professional kyoka [humorous tanka] poet, Nagata Teiryu (1654-1734)...gained fame with one especially apt verse; when a Chinese-ink merchant from Nara presented the court with an unusually large stick of ink, Teiryu wrote these lines;

‘Although not the moon,
It has risen so high it dwells
Above the clouds;
I wonder what reason
There can be for this?’

[romanji text omitted] The entire interest of this poem stems from the puns on sumi (‘to dwell’ and ‘Chinese ink’) and on yuen (‘reason’ and ‘lamp black’). This display of wit so enchanted the court, even the emperor, that Teiryu adoptedthe name Yuensai (from yuen, lamp black). He soon gave up his cake business to devote his energies exclusively to kyoka, publishing his own verses and correcting those of other people.”

--World Within Walls