Sora Speaks

This child Kasane, if she were a flower, would be a pink carnation

かさねとは八重撫子の名なるべし
Kasane towa yae-nadeshiko no nanarubeshi

Sora Tabi Nikki (曾良旅日記, “Travel Diary of Sora”) was Kawai Sora’s (曾良) memories of the journey 1689 and 1691 that he and Matsuo Bashō took to the north. The diary was lost and rediscovered in 1943.

pink carnation

Basho explains the setting:

“I have an acquaintance in a place called Kurobane in Nasu, and I decided to take a short cut from Nikko straight across the broad plain. The rain began to fall, the sun was setting and in the distance we happened to notice a village. Lodging for a night at a farmer’s house, at daybreak we headed off again over the plain. We came across a horse grazing in a field. We sought assistance from a man cutting grass and though he was a peasant, he was not without compassion.

‘Hmm, let’s see. The plain is criss-crossed with trails and someone unfamiliar with the way is bound to get lost — that’s a real problem — say, why don’t you take this horse as far as he’ll go and just send him back,” and he lent us the horse.’

Two children came running along behind the horse. One was a little girl named Kasane, a truly elegant name I’d never heard before.”

Notes

Nade-shi-ko meaning a frilly pink flower in Japanese is homophonous for “the child who is lovingly caressed / patted” and it is considered a charming name. The similar term Yamato nadeshiko (やまとなでしこ or 大和撫子) means the “personification of an idealized Japanese woman”, or “the epitome of pure, feminine beauty”.

Kasane means layered or double.

Station 24 – Dewagoe

Fleas and lice,
A horse pissing
Close to my pillow.

蚤虱馬の尿する枕もと

nomi shirami/ uma no shito suru/ makura moto

It is now 330 years since Matuso Basho and his companion Saro left on their journey north. They departed on May 16, 1689 and the two now find themselves close to the northernmost end of their journey, having just left Hiraizumi.

From Iwate to Shitomae

Leaving Hiraizumi and the Fujiwara clan behind, Basho and Saro proceeded some 50 miles north to Iwate, then west to Shitomae (尿前) where they stayed for three days.

The nights proved fitful, much like the stay at Iizuka where the fleas and mosquitoes were relentless and sleep impossible. To this torture, add the stench of a urinating horse. Originally, Basho had intended to go further north to Nanbu (南部町) in Yamanashi Prefecture where the Nanbu clan (南部氏 Nanbu-shi) ruled most of northeastern Honshū for over 700 years. Rain and difficulties would change his mind.

The journey towards the west and Shitomae took them towards Dewa Province and the western coast of Japan. The route would be treacherous. On the road to Dewa, Basho and Sora had to cross Kofukazawa River by climbing down a steep gorge through hairpin turns. In summer, when Matsuo Basho and Sora crossed the river they had to negotiate six treacherous bends to climb down and up the rocky gorge.

Basho explains:

Station 24 – Dewagoe

“Turning away from the high road leading to Nambu (Nanbu) Province, I came to the village of Iwate, where I stopped overnight. The next day I looked at the Cape of Oguro and the tiny island of Mizu, both in a river, and arrived by way of Naruko hot springs at the barrier-gate of Shitomae (Shitomae no seki 尿前の関) which blocked the entrance to the province of Dewa. The gate-keepers were extremely suspicious, for very few travelers dared to pass this difficult road under normal circumstances. I was admitted after a long wait, and darkness overtook me while I was climbing a huge hill. I put up at a gate-keeper’s house which I was very lucky to find in such a lonely place. A storm came upon us and I was held up for three days.

Bitten by fleas and lice,
I slept in a bed,
A horse constantly pissing
Close to my pillow.

According to the gate-keeper there was a huge body of mountains obstructing my way to the province of Dewa, and the road was terribly uncertain. So I decided to hire a guide. The gate-keeper was kind enough to find me a young man of tremendous physique, who walked in front of me with a curved sword strapped to his waist and a stick of oak gripped firmly in his hand. I myself followed him, afraid of what might happen on the way. What the gate-keeper had told me turned out to be true. The mountains were so thickly covered with foliage and the air underneath was so hushed that I felt as if I were groping my way in the dead of night. There was not even the cry of a single bird to be heard, and the wind seemed to breathe out black soot through every rift in the hanging clouds. I pushed my way through thick undergrowth of bamboo, crossing many streams and stumbling over many rocks, till at last I arrived at the village of Mogami after much shedding of cold sweat. My guide congratulated me by saying that I was indeed fortunate to have crossed the mountains in safety, for accidents of some sort had always happened on his past trips. I thanked him sincerely and parted from him. However, fear lingered in my mind some time after that.”

Written on the 17th day of the 5th lunar month at Shitomae, which literally means “before the urine” or vulgarly, “in front of pissing”. Matsuo Basho Archives, Gabi Greve, 15/11/2012.

The Road North

The Narrow Road to the North Prologue

Station 1 – Prologue

Days and months are eternity’s travelers. As are the years that pass by. Those who steer a boat across the sea, or drive a horse over the land, finally succumbing to the weight of years, spend each minute of their lives traveling. There are also a great number of the ancients who died on the road (including Chinese Tang poets Li Bai and Du Fu and Japanese poets Saigyo and Sogi). For a long time, tempted by cloud-moving winds, I myself have felt a strong desire to wander.

It was only toward the end of last autumn that I returned from rambling trip along the coast. I barely had time to sweep the cobwebs from my humble house on the River Sumida before the New Year, but no sooner than the spring mist had begun to rise over fields that I wanted to be on the road again, in due time to cross the barrier-gate of Shirakawa . The gods seemingly possessed my soul turning it inside out and from every corner the roadside images seemed to entice me, so that it was impossible for me to stay idle at home.

Even as I was getting ready, mending my torn trousers, tying a new strap to my hat and applying moxa to my legs to strengthen them, I was dreaming of the full moon rising over the islands of Matsushima. Finally, I sold my house and temporarily moved to Sampu’s cottage. Upon the threshold of my old home, I wrote a linked verse of eight lines and hung it on a wooden pillar.

The starting piece:
Behind this door
Now buried in deep grass
A different generation will celebrate
The Festival of Dolls.

The Narrow Road to the North

Joined by his traveling companion Kawai Sora (河合曾良), Matsuo Bashō left his home in Edo (Tokyo) in the spring of 1689 for a journey to the north and west coast of Japan. The journey took approximately five months, with Bashō and Sora traveling on foot about ten miles a day.

There were some 40 stations and stops on his journey including: the Tokugawa shrine at Nikkō, Kurobane in the province of Nasu, a Zen temple called Unganji, the Shirakawa barrier, on towards Sukagawa crossing the River Abukuma, through the famous hills of Asaka, through the castle towns of Abumizuri and Shiroishi, arriving at the province of Kasajima, crossing the River Natori and entering the city of Sendai, stopping at the River Noda no Tamagawa and the so-called Rock in the Offing, at the pine woods called Sue no Matsuyama, then to the islands of Matsushima, to Hiraizumi where the glory of three generations of the Fujiwara family passed away like a snatch of empty dream, then down the west coast of Japan to Sakata, Kisakata, and Etchū.

He and Sora parted ways at Yamanaka, but at Ōgaki he met a few of his other disciples before departing alone to the Grand Shrine of Ise near Kyoto, where the account ends.

After his journey end, Bashō spent five years editing the work before publishing it.

The Work in Full

View the Matsuo Basho Archives

The Chrysanthemum – 菊の花

Drinking his morning tea calms the monk – Chrysanthemum

朝茶飲む　僧静かなり　菊の花

Asa cha nomu / sō shizukanari / kiku no hana

The Chrysanthemum

Matsuo Bashō (松尾金作), Japan’s most famous poet of the Edo period, made the chrysanthemum the subject of several haiku. In Japanese the flower is called Kiku-no-hana, literally blossom of the chrysanthemum, or Kiku for short.

As early as the 5th century, it was imported from China into Japan by Buddhist monks, originally as medicine then becoming an object of beauty and admiration. Japanese royalty came to love the flower because they believed it had the power to prolong life. In 1183, the sixteen petal chrysanthemum became the imperial symbol. In November Chrysanthemum Festivals across Japan celebrate the many varieties of the late blooming flower.

As medicine, chrysanthemums are used to treat chest pains and high blood pressure, as well as fevers, colds, headaches, and dizziness.

The delicate petals are brewed into tea, which in our case calms the nervous monk in the morning.

Rainy Day 雨の日

Rainy day, falling into the world, Sakai town
雨の日や世間の秋を堺町
ame no hi / ya seken no aki o / sakai-chō

Matsuo Bashō, age 35, autumn 1678

By the autumn of 1678, Matsuo Basho had been living in central Edo (Tokyo) for six years and had published several haiku anthologies. He was, one imagines, having to deal with what fame brings.

Sakai-chô

It was a rainy day. Basho decided to go to the Kabuki Theater District in Sakai-chô. What strange sights greeted him, stranger sights still awaited him when he entered the theater.

Ya seken no aki o / sakai-chō

Seken (世間) refers to the ancient Sanskrit loka (secular world), first borrowed by the Chinese then Japanese. Falling in and falling out, one might say, between reality and fantasy, theater or life itself, who is to say which is more real?

Kabuki Theater

Kabuki 歌舞伎 comes from the verb kabuku, meaning “to slant or to sway.” The colorful costumes suggest a world out of the ordinary.

Okumura-Masanobu-1686–1764 — Okumura-Masanobu, c. 1745, Kabuki Theater District in Sakai-chô and Fukiya-chô,
Boston Museum Fine Arts

Fukagawa

Bright lights and theater are not compatible with the life of a poet.

In 1780, Basho moved across the Sumida River to the Fukagawa District. There, a benefactor provided him with a simple house. The next year a disciple gives him a banana plant (basho-an).

He plants it and thereafter called himself Bashō, 芭蕉 .

East West 東西 higashi nishi

East or west
Just one melancholy thing –
Autumn wind.

東西あはれさひとつ秋の風
higashi nishi / aware sa hitotsu / aki no kaze

japanese-couple

Explanation of Basho’s haiku

East and west, it is all the same sorrow when one so young dies so soon.

Basho lived in Fukagawa, Edo (the East Capital), and his disciple Mukai Kyorai 向井去来 in Kyoto (the West Capital). In the summer of 1686, Kyorai and his younger sister Chine went on a journey to the Ise shrine.

They kept a journal, the Ise Journal* that begins:

“The sun hot yet wind cool on our heads,
I take my younger sister on a pilgrimage to Ise.”

Chine replied:

“Until Ise
such good companions,
morning geese.”

Chine died two years later at the young age of 25 on the 15th day of the 5th lunar month.

She wrote a final haiku:

Easily glows and easily goes a firefly
もえやすく又消やすき蛍哉
moe yasuku mata kie yasuki hotaru kana

In tribute, Basho wrote his haiku in the eighth lunar month.

Notes on translation

あはれさひとつ aware sa hitotsu could also be translated as “our sorrow is the same”

East or west / our sorrow’s the same / an autumn wind

An autumn wind (秋の風 aki no kaze) is understandably melancholy, summer is over and winter near. In another haiku, Basho references the Autumn Wind – Shake even the grave, My wailing is the autumn wind, 塚も動け我が泣聲は 秋の風, tsuka mo ugoke waga naku koe wa aki no kaze.

Americans and Japanese of the World War II generation are, no doubt familiar with the term Kamikaze, 神風, “divine wind” or “spirit wind”. The historically ancient term Kamikase refers to the 13th century wind that saved Japan from a Mongol invasion.

*Kyorai’s Ise Journal, Ise Kiko. See also the well-written post The Life and Death of Chine, by Writers in Kyoto .

Ame oriori, 雨折々

At Taisui’s house

Basho attends an all night party at Taisui’s house, nearby in Fukagawa. It rained 折々 oriori, off and on (intermittently, or occasionally). Awaiting dawn.

Taisui’s courtesy name 苔水 / 岱水 translates as spring rain.

Taisui writes:

“Rain, but not enough to come through the jacket.”
Uwabari wo / tusanu hodo no / ame huri te

Bashō ponders this.

Perhaps, like the farmer, Basho wishes it would rain. The farmer gets a day off, the rice sprouts, and Basho delays his departure.

Occasional rain / no worry / rice seedlings sprout
雨折々思ふ事なき早苗哉
ame ori ori / omou koto naki / sanae kana

Notes on translation

May 皐月 satsuki is the month to plant rice seedlings 苗 nae.

Rain inspires us in all its forms. Like English, Japanese has many expressions for rain, the most general being 雨 ame. Compare 五月雨 samidare, a heavy rain that occurs in May. Also 降雨 jiàngyǔ, rainfall; 雨量 yǔliàng, rainfall.

As used by Basho, 雨折々 ame ori ori, is an occasional rain.

Two Frogs -大坂のかわず京のかわず

Old pond – frogs jumps in – sound of water

Having heard Basho’s famous frog haiku, I became curious about other ancient Japanese frog stories. Here is an old folk story, which I have embellished, as all frogs do in telling stories.

Two Frogs

大坂のかわず京のかわず
Ōsaka no kawazu Kyō no kawazu
Osaka frog, Kyoto frog

Once upon a time there lived two frogs, one of whom made his home in a pond on the grounds of the Katsuo-ji Temple in Osaka, while the other dwelt in the Kyoko-chi pond of Kyoto. At such a great distance, they had never even heard of each other; but, funny enough, the idea simultaneously came into their heads that they should see a little of the world. Thus, the frog who lived at Kyoto wanted to visit Osaka, to visit Katsuo-ji’s many ponds and beautiful garden, and the frog who lived at Osaka wished to go to Kyoto, to visit the temple of Kinkaku-ji and its ponds, which likewise were deemed just as glorious.

On the first day of spring, as the sun rose over the tree tops, they both set out along the Nakasendo Way that led from Kyoto to Osaka, each from the opposite end. Since they were frogs, the journey was long, made up of quick hops and sudden stops. Their arms being much shorter and weaker than their long powerful legs, they found that it was the stomach and head that brought them to a stop. At Nakatsugawa, halfway on their journey, there was a tall a mountain which had to be climbed and crossed. It took a long time and a great many hops to reach the summit, but there they were at last, surprised to see another frog so far from water!

Surprise begets silence, but surprise soon becomes delight, and they fell into a merry conversation about the wonders or their cities – and, after a time, as they were tired and in no hurry to resume the journey, they retired to a cool, damp place, underneath a tall cedar tree, and agreed that they would have a good rest before they parted to go about their ways.

When morning came, each frog rose stretching their sore legs and scratching their bruised stomachs in preparation of continuing their journey. “What a pity we are not bigger,” said the Osaka frog; “for then we could see both towns from here and know if it is worth our while to go on.”

“Oh, that is easily managed,” replied the Kyoto frog. “We have only to stand up on our hind legs and hold onto each other, then we can each look at the town he is traveling to.”

This idea pleased the Osaka frog so much that he at once jumped up and put his front paws on the shoulder of his friend, who had also risen. There they both stood, stretching themselves as high as they could on their tiny toes and holding each other tightly so that they would not topple over. The Kyoto frog towards Osaka, and the Osaka frog to Kyoto; but the foolish creatures forgot that when they stood up on their toes with their heads held high, their large bulbous eyes stared behind. So it was that though their noses might point to the places they wanted to go, their eyes beheld the place from which they had come.

“Dear me!” cried the Osaka frog, “Kyoto is exactly like Osaka and certainly not worth a long journey. I shall go home!”

“If I had had any idea that Osaka was only a copy of Kyoto I should never have left home at all,” exclaimed the frog from Kyoto, and as he spoke he took his hands from his friend’s shoulders, and they both plopped down on the grass. With a polite farewell the two silly frogs set off for home again, none the wiser.

And to the end of their lives they believed that Osaka and Kyoto, which are as different to look at as two towns can be, were as alike as two peas in a pod.

Notes on translation

かわ kawa, river
ず zu, not knowing (anything)
かわず kawazu, ancient term for frog, because the frog, who prefers the pond, does not know the river

a charming wild violet

coming along a mountain path, somehow so charming – a wild violet

山路来て何やらゆかしすみれ草

yamaji kite naniyara yukashi sumiregusa

wild-violet

Matsuo Basho wrote this haiku in his Journal of 1684, a travelogue of his journey from Edo (Tokyo) to visit his birthplace in Iga Province after hearing of his mother’s death. The journey was on horseback and on foot, often over mountainous roads.

This haiku was written crossing the mountains near Lake Biwa on the way to Otsu. Basho observing a tiny wild violet in the grass was inspired.

Basho’s Journal of 1684, translated by Donald Keene (page 142)

Notes on translation

山路 yamaji, mountain path
来て kite, to come
何やら naniyari, somehow, for some reason
ゆかし yukashi, charming, admirable, enchanting
すみれ草 sumi regusa, wild violet; literally a violet in the grass

Further note

Enya wrote a song Sumiregusa about the wild violet, and performed it in Japanese – Sumiregusa: wild violet monono aware: attune to the pathos of things haruno hana to fuyu mo yuki: spring flowers and winter snow hara hara: the sound of falling snow.

Oh dear, green leaves, bright sun

Oh dear! green leaves, young leaves, sparkling sun

あらたふと青葉若葉の日の光
ara touto aoba wakaba no hi no hikari

Nikko

Basho and his traveling companion Sora arrived at Mount Nikko (日光 nikki, the sun’s brilliance) on March the 30th and lodged at an inn at the foot of the mountain.

Basho writes:

“The inn’s host introduced himself as ‘Honest’ Gozaemon (五左衛門) and told me to sleep in perfect peace on his grass pillow, that his sole ambition was to be worthy of his name (衛 to protect). I watched him carefully, and found him stubbornly honest, utterly devoid of worldly cleverness. It was as if the good Buddha himself had taken the shape of a man to help me in my wanderings. Indeed, such holy honesty and purity like his must not be scorned, for it verges on the perfection Confucius preaches.”

Basho continues:

“On the first day of the fourth month, I climbed Mount Nikko, which means the bright beams of the sun… A thousand years ago, the sainted Kobo Diashi (Kukai) built a temple upon it. He must have had the power to see into the future, for the mountain is now the seat of the most sacred of shrines and its benevolent power protects the land, embracing the people like the bright beams of the sun. To say more about the shrine would violate its holiness.”

How awe inspiring, to stand in solitude amidst the newly budded maple trees and towering cedars (杉 Sugi), with the blue morning sky a background, and the brilliant yellow sun sparkling through the pale green leaves. Surely, sainted Kobo Diashi had experienced this moment too.

Gentle reader, who has not seen the sun sparkling through the new pale green leaves of spring and summer and not been inspired?

Notes

あら ara, Oh!
若葉 wakaba, young pale green leaves
青葉若葉 aoba wakaba, the young leaves of early summer
日の光 no hi no hikari, sunlight
光 hikari, gleaming, sparkling light
日光 nikki, bright sunlight