Brrr, it’s Cold

Winter, Genroku 5, 1693
Matsuo Basho, age 49 years.

At the fishmonger’s shop, is Matsuo Basho having a premonition of death?

塩鯛の歯 . ぐきも寒し . 魚の店
Shio tai no . haguki mo samushi . uo no tana

Salted Sea-bream,
Baring their teeth, lie chilly,
At the fish shop
— Matsuo Bashō, 松尾芭蕉

At the Fish Shop

At open air markets around the world, it is customary for fishmongers to display their fish outdoors on ice. In winter, when it is cold, ice is not needed.

Dante in his masterpiece, the Inferno, reserved the the Ninth and last Ring of Hell for cold hearted traitors. This ring contained a frozen lake called Cocytus. And at the very center of which lay Satan, up to his waist in ice, blue and menacing, baring his teeth, no doubt.

If Basho was having a premonition of death, it was fairly accurate. He met his end in Osaka, dying in 1694, at the relatively young age of 50.

If one is looking for a literary allusion, then one should read death’s tale as told in “An Appointment in Samarra.” (a poem and a book). Meeting death in the marketplace one grabs his horse and rushes to a distant city, only to meet death.

Haguki – literally “gums”; samushi, “cold”. Anyone who has seen Sea Bream at a fishmonger’s shop will readily see what Basho meant.