Month: December 2020

Three in One

three in one cup,
but I drink to one name,
who am I, this night?

盃に 三つの名を飲む 今宵かな

sakazuki ni mitsu no na o nomu koyoi kana

Oct. 23, 1685, Edo

Everyone likes a good riddle. So who was Matsuo Basho toasting?

On this date in Japanese history, Yamaga Sokō, original name Yamaga Takasuke died. He was a military strategist, Confucian philosopher, and originator of what would become the Bushido Code by which all Samurai would operate.

Three in One conjures up an image of the Holy Trinity, the Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit. Three for One, makes one also think Alexandre Dumas‘ 19th century novel Three Musketeers, who proclaimed, “Un pour tous, tous pour un. (One for all, and all for one.)”

Sakazuki Takasuke!

No, Basho likely had in mind Takasuke in offering up Sakazuki, a ceremonial cup of wine. This is speculation, but it fits nicely. Basho being descended from a Samurai family would want to honor another. Takasuke Sakazuki! Takasuke Sakazuki! Takasuke Sakazuki! The honorific was said three times.

Li Bai

Matsuo Basho also had in mind 8th century Chinese poet Li Bai (太白,744–762). He of many titles including the Transcendent Poet, Banished Immortal, and Green Lotus House Warrior. The first for his skill as a poet, the second for his prodigious drinking, and the third as an artist.

Basho’s haiku is a response to Li Bai’s well-known poem Under the Moon, Drinking Alone.

In the midst of flowers, with one jug of wine
Drinking alone, and no one else,
I offer up my cup, to the bright moon
My shadows and I, a party of three.

Li Bai

Three

Why three? Things that come in threes are funnier, interesting, and more memorable. Comedians, magicians, and poets know to set up a sequence with three short lines, then the punch line. Three is mystical. The Holy Trinity, as I’ve said. It also creates a unique pattern and a relationship that the brain can understand. The Three Blind Mice, The Three Little Pigs, The Three Stooges. Three is also an odd number, the first Prime number, if one excludes the number “one.” Two fit together nicely, but three rarely do.

Basho explains

By way of explanation, Basho’s haiku came at gathering for moon-viewing (観月) at his home in the fall of 1685. He he had returned to Edo and his Banana Hut after the first of his wanderings. Present were three friends all named Shichiroubei. No doubt Basho founds some humor in the homonyms, zuki, as in cup, and tsuki, moon; as well as the visual similarity of the flat circular cup and the circular full moon.

Basho ends his haiku alliteratively with koyoi kana, 今宵, literally, this night, but also a question, as in, who am I?

Sakazuki

Gentle Reader, nomu, 飲む, let’s drink: Akemashite omedeto gozaimasu

Saki, Sake cup from Wikipedia

shirobusuma 白襖

closing
sliding white doors,
dreaming in color

白襖閉めて極彩色の夢

shirobusuma shimete gokusaishiki no yume

Iro no yume 色の夢 Dreams of color

William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) was quite the dreamer, explaining in The Tempest that towers, palaces, temples, even the globe itself shall dissolve for:

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Isaac Newton (1642-1726) was more serious, explaining in a series of scientific papers that white light refracts in a prism, devolving it into a richly colored rainbow of light. Meanwhile, in Japan, Matsuo Bashō (1644 – 1694) simply said that by closing the sliding white doors in his home he was colorfully dreaming. Gokusaishiki, which Basho uses can be translated as “richly colored,” “extremely colorful” or “colorfully” dreaming. This was a back door way (pun intended) of introducing the seasonal word, as Shiki (四季) means Four Seasons.

Dreams (yume, 夢) were a major theme of Basho’s haikus. There were butterfly dreams, soldiers’ dreams that lay within the grass, good luck dreams of snow on Mt. Fuji, and of course, dreams of life and death, and somewhere in between.

Bashō no yōna

In her well-written blog, Gabi Greve explains that the sliding doors of a Japanese house are newly papered in winter to keep the room warm. Sigmund Freud would have looked at the closing of the door as a transition from reality to wish fulfillment. A Buddhist, a change in state, one of purity to a colorful existence in the after life.

Finally, Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote (1605) said, “When one door closes, another opens.” A fitting way to end this post. Now, to sleep, perchance to dream in color.

In the middle of the night

Sometimes it comes in the middle of the night
My head on the pillow, half asleep
A thought

来る 真夜中
枕に頭、 眠そう
思い

Kuru mayonaka makura ni atama, nemu-sō omoi

Matsuo Bashō, a short bio

Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉, 1644 – 1694) arrived, the son of a samurai, several siblings; a student, a teacher, who wandered and wondered, who listened and spoke, then scribbled and wrote, never married, never hurried, now he is gone.

芭蕉のような, Bashō no yōna

Master to the student, “What are your thoughts?”

“I wish to be Basho-like,” said the student.

“Nothing else?” the master asked.

A Pillow of Grass

Come
Let us dine on barley grain
On a journey nowhere
(kusa makura)

come, together
let us eat barley grain
on a grass pillow

iza tomo ni/ homugi kurawan/ kusa makura

いざともに穂麦喰はん草枕

barley field, 麦畑

Summer 1685

On “a journey of a thousand leagues,” one that began in the autumn of 1684, a trip in which Basho would enter “into nothingness under the midnight moon,” and now, in the summer of 1685, was near its end, a chance meeting took place. It was a meeting that meant everything and nothing, remarkable enough to inspire a haiku, to remember, but nothing else.

The poet from Edo and the priest from Hirugakojima met somewhere near Nagoya in Owari province. Let us imagine the introduction:

“Come let us go together. As you see, you and I have no place to be. Asking for very little, eating a simple fare of barley grain, ‘neath the stars at night, sleeping on a pillow of grass until we say our goodbyes.”

We learn little of the priest other than the fact that he hails from the island of Hirugakojima (蛭が小嶋) in Izu. The significance becoming apparent only when we realize that the shrine and the temple on the island was built by Yoritomo Minamoto (1147-1199), who established the Kamakura shogunate, a play on words with kusamakura (草枕), the grass pillow.

In 1689, pursuant to his last wishes, Basho would be buried next to Minamoto no Yoshinaka, a member of the Minamoto samurai clan.

Journal of Bleached Bones in a Field

It was the first of Matsuo Basho’s major wanderings, a trip that took him from Edo to Mount Fuji, then on to Ueno, Nara, Kyoto, and Nagoya, a trip begun in uncertainty for Basho made trip alone without provisions. Basho was 41, old enough to have achieved fame as poet and teacher, still uncertain about where life was leading him.

We need not tarry too long on this journey. David Landis Barnhill has given us a translation online of the Journal of Bleached Bones in a Field, (Nozarashi kiko).

Dewa Province Mogami River

Sources:

David Landis Barnhill gives us a chronological translation online of the Journal of Bleached Bones in a Field, (Nozarashi kiko) .

WKD – Matsuo Basho Archives, Gabi Greve, Iza, let’s go

The Route, Nozarashi Kiko (野ざらし紀行), Several sources indicate that Basho was accompanied on the journey by his disciple Chiri. Chiri (塵) is an interesting moniker for it means dust. Dust was on occasion a subject of Basho’s haiku.

blossoms falling, birds startled by the harp’s dust
chiru hana ya / tori mo odoroku / koto no chiri
散る花や鳥も驚く琴の塵