Month: April 2025

A women with a sword

women cherry blossoms Edo period

A woman with a sword is drawn to the cherry blossoms. That is something worth noting. Oh yeah, she is wearing a haori too. What is this world coming to?

Drawn to the cherry blossoms
A woman in a haori
Armed with a sword

花に酔へり羽織着て刀さす女
Hana ni yoeri . haori kite katana . sasu onna
— Matsuo Basho, (1681-1684)

Sasaki Rui

Drawn by the beauty of the cherry blossoms, is a woman in a haori coat with a sword stuck inside. It seems strange. Strange because the wars were over and samurai men became administrators and women were expected to be docile companions and child bearers. One exception was Sasaki Rui. Her father was a martial arts master. She had no brothers and her marriage ended in divorce. Around 1660, she went to Edo and opened her own studio. She went about the city wearing a man’s haori and the traditional samurai sword. Most likely to the garb and sword was meant to ward off the remnants of old samurai who had not found a place in a peaceful society.

I imagine it sounds better in Japanese. It begins hana ni, then, yoeri haori. Followed by kite katana. Ending with sasu onna.

Let’s re-imagine the haiku from the woman’s point of view.

Alarmed at first,
But beguiled by beautiful blossoms
She tucked in her sword
— Bashō no yōna, 2025

This was written somewhere in the Tenwa era (1681-1684). In 1680, Basho had moved to the Fukagawa District. Now when he went back to Edo he was observing people as if they were fish in a fishbowl. A woman with a sword gazing at cherry blossoms was certainly a memorable site.

women cherry blossoms Edo period
花に酔へり羽織着て刀さす女

Wildflowers

yellow flower and yellow beetle

Random flowers along the way:

The Dao …

the more I look
the more I see
the face of God in a flower
猶みたし 花に明行 神の顔
nao mitashi hana ni ake yuku kami no kao
— Matsuo Basho

Do flowers speak, I wonder …

where wildflowers grow
man’s soul is fed
and poets grow
— Henry David Thoreau

Love like wildflowers
is found
in unlikely places
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love need not be a a daisy or a rose …

Love
is a flower
you’ve got to let grow
— John Lennon

Walking in the woods, spotting a tiny blue violet, under a log amid brown leaves …

the tiniest blue violet
Nature’s answer
to just a single mystery

A deeper, darker thought …

I wonder …
As we gaze at flowers
are we walking
on the roof of hell
世の中は地獄の上の花見哉
yo no naka wa jigoku no ue no hanami kana
— Kobayashi Issa 小林 一茶 (1763-1828)

A sad thought, I wonder …

after they have fallen
will I remember a peony’s petals
as a flower
ちりて後 おもかげにたつ ぼたんかな
chirite nochi omokage ni tatsu botan kana
— Yosa no Buson 与謝 蕪村 (1716-1784)

the mundane and the last word …

Along the roadside
my horse has eaten
a hibiscus
道のべの木槿は馬にくはれけり
michi no be no mukuge wa uma ni kuware keri
— Matsuo Basho

Skylarks and Pheasants

colorful pheasant in a field

A skylark singing,
in the midst of its song,
a pheasant squawking!
.
A skylark singing,
to the sound of
a pheasant drumming along

雲雀鳴く中の拍子や雉子の声
Hibari naku / Naka no hyōshi ya / Kiji no koe
— Matsuo Basho, Spring, 1690 or 1691

Hibari naku (the skylark sings) Naka no hyōshi ya (in the middle of the song!) Kiji no koe (a pheasant calls)

Two interpretations are possible (or more). In both of them the skylark is whistling its sweet tune. In version one, the pheasant interrupts with its harsh squawk. In version two, the pheasant is beating its wings in rhythm to the skylark’s tune. Version two is harmonious. Version one is more lifelike, considering friends get along, but friends like to argue. In the middle of a quiet conversation, someone shouts out.

By 1690, Basho was getting tired of friends.

It is unclear as to whether this haiku was written in 1690 or 1691.

Basho’s My Name

Fukagawa, south of the Sumida River
Spring, 1681

My name is Matsuo Basho. I am thirty-six years old, and I live in a cottage by the river, south of the Edo, with a clear view of Mt. Fuji. I wasn’t always called Basho. Indeed, most of my life, I have been called Tosei, a peach, its flower having fallen, is now, waiting to ripen. Last winter, a friend came by. Humbly presenting me a housewarming gift, a banana plant. Like me, it survived the winter.

In growing a banana
the first thing to hate
the two leaves of the plant

ばしょう植ゑてまづ憎む荻の二葉哉
Bashō uete mazu nikumu ogi no futaba kana
— Matsuo Basho, Spring 1681

Basho’s haiku indicates that it took a while for our thirty-six year old poet to get used to the idea of becoming a banana plant. This was, as he later explains, it is useless, producing no fruit. Later, he appreciated it for the shade it provided from the sun, and its resilience in a storm.

Moving On

Daybreak,
While the purple haze lingers on,
Comes the call of the cuckoo

曙はまだ紫にほととぎす
akebono wa / mada murasaki ni / hototogisu

Matsuo Basho, Otsu, Spring, 1680

April 1, Genroku, year 3, (1680)
Otsu, on the southern shore of Lake Biwa,
Age 36, Moving on

“For all of us, in Spring, to be thirty-something is a time to move on.”
— Bashō no yōna, Spring, 2025

Basho explains. “I visited the “Genji no Ma” room at Ishiyama-dera Temple, (in Otsu), where Murasaki Shikibu is said to have written “The Tale of Genji.”

Akebono, meaning daybreak, or the dawn of a new era. The Tale of the Genji was just that, Japan’s and the world’s first novel. Written in the 11th century by the Imperial lady-in-waiting, Murasaki Shikibu. It is a tale of the emperor’s outcast son, Genji, and his romances.

The call of the cuckoo.

Hotogisu, cuckoo, appears as the subject in several of Basho’s haiku. In Japan, the cuckoo symbolizes the coming of summer. Life is moving on, Basho thought, and so must he.

1680, The Awakening.

The year 1680 for Matsuo Basho was monumental. He was still living in Edo and going by the pen name, Tosei, meaning “unripe peach.” But Basho had decided to leave the hectic city for the rural life, moving out of Edo, and going south of the Sumida River to a simple cottage where he might work in relative peace and quiet. It was here that he would find his name — Basho, the fortuitous result of a gift, a banana tree (basho), given by a disciple, and planted next to the cottage. The banana, symbolizing for the poet, something that produced no fruit, but weathered the storms, and gave some shade to the weary.

daybreak

On the First of April, 1680, Basho visited the Ishiyama-dera Temple, in Otsu, at the southern end of Lake Biwa. This is where Murasaki Shikibu is said to have written the tragic Tale of Genji.

Who has not risen at dawn to watch the sunrise. In the lingering lavender just before the sun rises, to hear the winsome cry of a lone bird telling a tragic tale.

it is not yet dawn,
in the lingering lavender sky,
— a cuckoo calls

曙はまだ紫にほととぎす
akebono wa mada murasaki ni hototogisu
— Matsuo Basho, April 1, 1860

はまだ (wa mada), it is not yet

紫 (murasaki), purple, and its many shades, including lavender.

Matsuo Basho would hurry back to Edo where he prepared to move across the Sumida River to the rural Fukagawa District. This move would foretell the poet’s renaming as Basho when a disciple gave him a banana plant as a housewarming gift.