Thanks for the information, Allyn. I'm replying to this publicly to add
just a little bit more information.
On Sun, 23 Jan 2000, allyn yonge wrote:
At the time, according to his rank he might ask
for pen and paper to write his farewells. . . .
There are a few studies on death haiku written by samurai in this
circumstance. I'm not able to find book titles at the moment, but here's a
good web page with some beautiful samples of such:
Japanese Death Poetry
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Flats/1120/
Colleen