Matsuo Basho

Notes on Matsuo Basho. The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

Some Questions:

1.  How does Basho conceptualize nature; how does he relate to it and describe it in his narrative?

What are the most memorable parts of the selection, in your own reading, and why so?  In other words, which descriptions and recounting of historical places or people did you find most moving or worthwhile, and why?

2.  Basho is clearly influenced by Zen Buddhist thought and practice.  What parts of the text did you find most interesting in light of that influence, and why?

3.  Can you think of a western travel narrative that you have read that you might briefly compare with Basho's?  Which is it, and what does it have in common with his narrative?  What is different?

Notes

This work has a bit of Henry David Thoreau about it, though obviously it doesn't have the American Transcendentalist or late-romantic emphasis on individualism and self-expression.  It has in common that it's a literary pilgrimage, not just an unadorned trek through nature.  Thoreau's Walden Pond wasn't only about nature, and neither was A Week on the Concord and Merrimac a simple nature jaunt with no ulterior motive.  Nature is generally a construction as far as human representations of it go.  Basho may be offering personal reflections in the presence of nature, but at the same time, it seems like he doesn't exactly reject the kigo tradition of generating or evoking emotions by linking them to certain key words drawn from a kind of seasonal lexicon of images and phrases.

You might focus on the persistent mingling of natural description/interpretation and Basho's interactions with worthy people he meets along the way, his thoughts about monuments, and so forth.  This concentration on nature along with the human element seems appropriate in an island country such as Japan, one with a lot of people in a fairly small amount of space.  People once lived very close to nature there, and then when the island became crowded, they had to work hard to recreate a sense of the natural, by means of artifice. Zen gardens are all about that kind of artifice or artful way of coexisting with the environment: they are at once natural and artificial, shaped by human hands and minds.  Basho's simple yet artful haiku poems fit into his travel narrative as focal points that sum up and memorialize his experiences, connecting them with poetic tradition.  We could also mention Sei Shonagon, the courtly medieval woman who wrote the famous Pillow Book consisting of her reflections on various topics.  Shonagon is very conscious of nature's presence in Japanese and Chinese literary tradition, and she mixes in this awareness with her naturalistic descriptions.  Basho seems very self-aware in this way.

Basho was apparently influenced by Zen Buddhism, which teaches people to become fully aware in the moment; it certainly enjoins respect for nature, too.  In Buddhism generally, the view is that worldly desire and misprision bind people to the world and to righteousness -- if you are egotistically attached to your words, actions, status, possessions, and even to your feelings, all of that attachment keeps you from doing what you need to do.  I suppose there's a sense of liberation in letting go of one's desires or need to control outcomes, but at the same time this is a poignant philosophy, isn't it?  To me, that poignancy comes through in Basho's description of his journey and its places both natural and human: things can be memorialized, revered, and so forth, and you can link your own efforts to long traditions and to the natural world that in turn links to those traditions, but all the same, to borrow a line from the Apache natives here in America, "nothing lives forever but the earth and the sky."  

An example: I have favorite coffee cup that I've had for a long, long time now -- it's white with fine-looking ladybugs and other critters glazed onto it, and the French tag, "Les amis du jardin."  I really love that cup!  Buddhism would tell me to act as if the cup were already shattered into 1,000 pieces, as perhaps someday it will be.  That's the usual fate of material possessions, no?  Eventually, you break them or wear them out through use, so trying to hang on will only make you unhappy when you lose them.  So to draw this together with our observations on Basho's narrative, his point in telling himself and us about it all probably isn't the very western one encapsulated in the tourist's ebullient "I'll remember this place or moment forever" -- it's something rather sadder, yet more meaningful, than that.  At least, that's how it seems to me.  The author's recollections are a testament to the notion that all things human pass, all is transitory.  It's a Buddhist point, so a bit more of that religion might be helpful.

The Four Noble Truths and Three Laws

1.  life is suffering

2.  suffering is a product of attachment or desire

3.  it's possible to let go of attachments

4.  there's a true path towards liberation -- meditation, self-annihilation, detached action; see the Eightfold Path from Buddha's first sermon "setting the wheel of truth in motion": right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration.

Three Laws: Anicca (impermanence); Dukkha (suffering, all phenomena unsatisfactory)' Anatta (non-self, no ego); the five precepts basically have to do with clean, peaceful living so that you don't get attached to the body and its desires or to material objects.

The straightforward message of Buddhism is that misdirected desire makes us unhappy, but right conduct and attitude can bring us peace.  On the whole, Buddha counsels reorientation of one's sensibilities and attentions away from the self and towards the community.  So how does Basho's work reveal Buddhist influences?  That's something to look for.

617.  The author describes the reason for his pilgrimage as "wanderlust," and you can see from the little poem that begins our selection that he connects himself to "the travelers of a hundred ages" who have spent their time "floating away their lives on boats."  He describes himself as possessed in this wanderlust, and the season is itself a time of change, as you can see from the haiku poem on 

617.  Basho is going into the heart of nature and poetic inspiration alike, in the form of the Shirakawa barrier.

618.  Basho's embarkation on this pilgrimage is a communal event, and his friends gather round to see him off.  As he puts it, "standing at the crossroads of the illusory world, I wept at the parting," and the haiku that follows speaks of the departure of spring, and the sorrow of nature when that happens.  Now he describes the passion that he had earlier called possession "a mere whim."  What he wants, he says, is to see a great many storied places rather than just imagine them – they are part of a long historical and literary tradition in Japan.  Nature is itself part of that tradition.  There are so many "Buddhist moments" in this text – like the one where Basho points out that all the gifts and other possessions he has ended up taking along quickly become a burden.  When he stops to rest, he meets an idyllic innkeeper who seems to him much like a bodhisattva: "I have nothing but respect for the purity of his character," says the author.  And then it is time to pay respect to the holy mountain Nikko.

619.  A pair of haiku poems celebrate the awesomeness of Nikko mountain, and then the author mentions his priest-friend Sora, who is up accompanying him on this journey.  It is this friend who has written the two haiku poems just mentioned.  The author and Sora climb a mountain and come to a waterfall, where they pray in a fine temple.

620.  Crossing the Shirakawa Barrier in Fukushima, as mentioned previously, the author considers it a duty to commemorate it with a verse, which he does.  The haiku in the middle of this page connects the act of writing poetry with the planting of rice in the Deep North.  Then comes a visit to a village where there is a famous rock, the Mottling Rock, which has a long history.  Once again, humanity and nature seem to be closely linked in this narrative and tradition.

621.  Next there is an inscribed stone memorial which is also something of a marker orienting one towards the four borders of the province.  The author's reflection on the history behind this memorial is, "Famous places in poetry have been collected and preserved; but mountains crumble, rivers shift, roads change, rocks are buried in dirt; trees age, saplings replace them; times change, generations come and go."  The memorial, says the author, has lasted for a thousand years, and so he finds himself "peering into the heart of the ancients."  Nothing lasts forever, but some things last a very long time indeed, at least in human terms.  Then comes a description of the beautiful region of Ojima, with many islands all around.  Notice the descriptions provided of these islands and the forests – they are somewhat anthropomorphized, but that doesn't seem to detract from their effectiveness: "A soft, tranquil landscape, like a beautiful lady powdering her face," goes one description.  The scene is described as idyllic, and the people belonging to it as those who have perhaps "turned their backs on the world."  But that is a good thing, not a reproach.

622.  Unable to sleep, Basho takes to reading traditional Chinese and Japanese poetry.  And then he is off on the pilgrimage again.  He can see Golden Flower Mountain, a famous place connected with a poem written by a key poet long ago.  It is a prosperous place where gold was discovered, and the authors view many well-known places at this point in his journey.  He recounts the story of Minamoto from The Tale of the Heike, which describes events occurring in the 12^th century.  This history is a very poignant one and the author says of it, "The glory of three generations of Fujiwara vanished in the space of a dream."  Nature has retaken what humanity wrested from it.  I'm reminded of Carl Sandburg's poem about how the grass grows over the great battlefields of World War I – "I am the grass, let me work," goes one of the lines.  The author's mention of course memorializes what has happened, but all the same, part of what he chronicles is humanity's forgetting of the past.

623.  The haiku poems by Sora are the very ones that remind me of the Sandburg poem I just mentioned – "summer grasses – / the traces of dreams / of ancient warriors…".  Next the author and his friend Sora visit the Hall of Light and the Sutra Hall, and about the former he says, "For a while, it became a memorial to a thousand years."  The author rests with a certain wealthy man who lives like a recluse.  Soon it will be time to move on.

624.  At Yamagata, they come to a mountain temple founded eight centuries ago by a renowned Buddhist priest.  Being in the great Hall purifies and exalts the author: "Stillness – / sinking deep into the rocks / cries of the cicada."  As the author comes down a mountain, he is confronted with a swollen river, the Mogami.  It has been raining heavily, so the swift coursing river heralds the season.  Visiting the Three Mountains of Dewa, the author implies that his trip has become even more of a spiritual pilgrimage.  The terrain is rugged, as if it would take you beyond the reach of humanity itself, to Cloud Barrier.

625.  Having descended to Bathhouse Mountain, the author reaches the Blacksmith Huts.  He says that the sight of a cherry tree about three feet in height with half-opened buds moves him – the tree is tough, blooming late and half buried in the snow.  He connects this feeling with his remembrance of a poem in the Buddhist tradition, with its phrase "plum blossoms in summer heat" indicating one's capacity for rare enlightenment.  See the note at the bottom of the page about this – it's interesting.  But there are many things not to be uttered about this sacred mountain, so the author will desist for the moment.  What follows is three linked haiku poems describing this part of the voyage, and then it's on to Kisagata.

626.  Basho wants to see the Kisagata landscape after a heavy rain, for the sake of variety.  I like the author's description of this place: "If Matsushima was like someone laughing, Kisagata resembled a resentful person filled with sorrow and loneliness.  The land was as if in a state of anguish."  The author soon becomes ill and has to take some time off.

627.  Basho has now crossed "the most dangerous places in the North country."  He sleeps and overhears some courtesans who are themselves on a pilgrimage to a Buddhist shrine.  The author reflects on the difficulty of the lives these poor women must lead, and on what they must have done to have ended up this way in this life.  He connects them with a poignant poem about "the daughters of the fishermen, passing their lives on the shore where the white waves roll in."  He is moved by their predicament and by their request to accompany him and his friend – though it's a request he does not accede to.  What the women have said is, "Please bless us with your robes of compassion, link us to the Buddha."  We may recall that Basho has said his friend Sora is a Buddhist priest.

628.  There is another reference to The Tale of the Heike, at the point where a great warrior has died in battle and his helmet is offered to a shrine.  The author feels as if "the past were appearing before my very eyes," and again the underlying theme is that all things human pass and fade away, memorialize them though we will.  What do we pay tribute to – remembrance or forgetting?  Our selection ends on a note of both loneliness and communion at Color Beach: "We drank tea, warmed up saké, and were overwhelmed by the loneliness of the evening."  They make their way Minamoto Province and on horseback go to Ogaki.  So it seems that our author has ended his long pilgrimage, at least temporarily as "intimate acquaintances visited" him all day and night.  And then he sets off again even though he has not yet fully recovered from "the weariness of the journey,"  to pay his respects to the shrine at Ise.  To his friends, it seems as if he has "returned from the dead."  This is not the end of Basho's travels or his poetry, though he will die about five years after this 1689 adventure, in 1694 while on a pilgrimage to the southwest of Japan.