Summer, Genroku, 4th year.
May 5, 1691, age 47,
Maybe, Otsu, Japan
Recalling his mother, on Children’s Day?
Seeing a woman wrap sticky rice dumplings in a bamboo leaf and tie it with a string, tucking her hair behind her ear. Did Basho recall his mother?
Holding a dumpling
in one hand, she tucks
her hair behind her ear粽ゆう 片手にはさむ 額髪
Matsuo Basho, May 5, 1691
Chimaki yuu katate ni hasamu hitaigami
[In Japan, Children’s Day is celebrated on May the 5th. That is close to the celebration of Mother’s Day in America on the second Sunday in May. ]
Summer of 1691
By the summer of 1691, Basho had left the Hut of the Phantom Dwelling, on the shores of Lake Biwa, but he was not yet back in Edo. One imagines he was saying farewells to friends in Otsu or nearby Kyoto before going home to Edo. Home, that is what Edo had become. And the little cottage in Fukagawa, a familiar place to return to.
Three years later, Basho would be dead. He chose to be buried at the Buddhist temple of Gichū-ji (義仲寺) in Otsu.
Notes on Translation
The Japanese traditionally serve and eat Chimaki during the Tango no Sekku (端午の節句, Children’s Day) on the fifth day of May. Another reason to suppose Basho was thinking of his own mother and childhood.
Chimaki (a sticky rice dumpling wrapped in a leaf) yuu (expresses volition, the desire to do something) katate (one hand) ni (particle for indirect objects) hasamu (insert, place) hitaigami (bangs, forehead hair)
A father’s take on making chimaki:
Making Chimaki
Bashō no yōna, May, 2024
Drinking sake and beer,
But, where are the kids?
matsuo-basho-haiku 