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, TheAwakening.
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.
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.
Written in the 8th year of Enpo (延宝8年), 1680, Basho age 37.
The following two haiku were likely written in Edo at a tea ceremony where charcoal is use to heat the tea and charcoal is also use to write down the poems by the participants in a renga party. Multiple puns are employed.
消炭に薪割る音かをのの奥
keshi-zumi | making charcoal ni maki waru oto ka | by splitting wood, the sound of Ono no oku | the back alleys of Ono? (the back of an axe)
Matsuo Basho, Winter 1680
keshi-zumi (making coal) ni (by) maki (firewood, compare makiware, an axe for wood cutting) waru (splitting) oto (sound) ka (?) Ono no oku (may refer to Ono 小野, a suburb of Kyoto, Japan, known for its charcoal used in tea ceremonies. Ono is also a homophone for ono 斧, an ax). Oku 奥, back, or deep, as in Oku no hosomichi 奥の細道, the title of Basho’s best known book.
Makiwari, an axe for the wood-chopping.
Maki薪 has two other meanings, other than firewood. In sushi preparation, it can refer to a small segment cut off from a long roll. The charcoal is made from slender oak trees cut into small segments to be used in heating the tea. Maki 槇 may also mean the tip of tree.
Note. Charcoal is made by heating wood in an oxygen starved environment.
Matsuo Basho would follow up this haiku with another haiku about Ono.
小野炭や手習ふ人の灰ぜせり
Ono-zumi ya | with charcoal from Ono! tenarau hito | one learns by to write no hai zeseri | and correct in ashes (gray)
Matsuo Basho, Winter 1680
hai (ashes, but also the color gray) zeseri (correct, one can not only practice writing but correct one’s mistakes). The point of the haiku — one learns by practice. And secondly, that nothing is “black and white.”
Sound of…
Six years later, Matsuo would again use the idea of the “sound of” creating a haiku. This one being about a frog jumping into an old pond, making the sound of water.
古池や蛙飛こむ水のをと
Furu ike ya | an old pond kawazu tobikomu | a frog jumps in mizu no oto | the sound of water
Matsuo Basho, Summer 1686
keshi-zumi | making charcoal, making tea, practice writing and writing poems
You Had to Be There
I confess to reading other translations of Basho’s haiku. This practice provides insight and joy, as variations occur in interpreting the meaning of the phrases Basho uses. In this pair of haiku, I particularly liked Basho’s use of hai, a word that means both ashes and gray. A double meaning reminding us to practice, it can be messy, and remember that not everything is clear.
The Darum Museum Gallery provides a detailed explanation of Matsuo Basho’s haiku. It also reference other uses of the word Ono. For example, Ono no Takamura 小野篁 (802 – 852), a scholar and poet, who practiced his calligraphy in the ashes of his stove.
Another site, Yamanishi-ken gives a concise explanation in Japanese.
There is a saying, “you had to be there,” which is used when telling a story and the one hearing the story doesn’t quite get it. I imagine that is true for many of Basho’s haiku. So here I imagined Basho and his disciples gathering at a tea house in Edo, the capital, watching the tea being prepared in a pot heated with charcoal, the pellets of which might have looked like sushi, or reminded Basho of his younger days in Kyoto (something he like to reminisce about). And being instructive, Confucius-like, he reminded his disciples to practice, practice, practice, as the old joke about Carnegie Hall goes.
Me, I wasn’t there at the tea ceremony, but reading Basho’s haiku gives me a glimmer of what it must have been like.
matsuo-basho-haiku 