The final stop of Oku no Hosomichi, the Journey to the Northern Interior. Ogaki is in Gifu Prefecture (then Mino Province), west of Nagoya. If there is a historical reason for chosing this spot, it is this. On the 15th day of the 9th month, the Battle of Sekigahara (関ヶ原の戦い) took place in western Mino Province. The victory of Tokugawa Ieyasu eventually led to the Tokugawa Shogunate and the beginning of the Edo Period.
Basho’s only hint as to why the journey ended here is in closing haiku — yuki aki zo, autumn is passing by. If one plays word games then consider this. Yuki may mean happiness, 幸 (yuki) or snow, 雪. Combined, 由 (yu) meaning “reason” with 貴 (ki), it can mean it a “good reason” to stop.
Oku no Hosomichi
From Basho’s notes:Ogaki
The 21st day of the 8th lunar month, arrived Ogaki. My followers gather to work.
On the 6th day of the 9th lunar month, Basho sets off by boat, “I am going to Ise to visit the Grand Shrine.”
When clams split in two, autumn is passing hamaguri no / futami ni wakare / yuku aki zo
Oku no Hosomichi, last entry, Matsuo Basho, 1689
Note on Translation. Monjin,門人, borrowed from the Chinese, meaning a disciple, follower, pupil, or student. Figuratively, one who waits at the gate.
Japanese
大垣
8月21日頃、大垣に到着。 門人たちが集い労わる。
9月6日 芭蕉は「伊勢の遷宮をおがまんと、また船に乗り」出発する。
蛤（はまぐり）の ふたみにわかれ行く 秋ぞ
Note on dates. The Japanese lunar month was about a month earlier than our modern calendar.
To the non-foodies: shichimi togarashi is a spicy blend of seven spices that goes well with everything.
青くても/ 有べきものを /唐辛子 aoku te mo / arubeki mono o / tōgarashi
It should have stayed in Its green attire – A chili pepper
Matsuo Basho, September, 5th year of Genroku. 1692
Not So Spicy
Autumn 1692, Matsuo Basho is back in Edo (Tokyo), living in his third Basho-an, the cottage by a banana tree, from which he took his name. Tired of traveling, tired of guests, he lives for the most part in seclusion with a nephew and a woman named Jutei, possible his nephew’s wife. She perhaps tended the garden. She maybe cooked the dinner using the popular tōgarashi (唐辛子), red chili peppers. Basho, who lived with a stomach ailment for most of his life, would have preferred something not so spicy.
The red chili pepper did the trick.
I liked this haiku because I planted some chili peppers in my garden this spring and watched the green pepper turn red in late fall. Basho, I suspect thought the chili pepper none too spicy, and therefore, it should have kept its green attire.
Notes on Translation
The subtleties of the Japanese language often befuddle me. What should be so simple gets complex the more I try to delve into the meaning of things. For instance, ても, te mo should mean “even though”, but that doesn’t work. And tōgarashi, 唐辛子, the red chili is red because we know it ripens to that color. It is a popular ingredient in Shichimi, where a little bit goes a long way.
I have of course clothed the chili pepper in green “attire” like the Jolly Green Giant. Others have too.
He has not yet become Bashō, 芭蕉, the poet who compares himself to the fragile and useless Banana plant. That is yet to come when, two autumns later, Matsuo Basho would take the somewhat surprising step of leaving Edo and crossing the Sumida River to Fukagawa to live in a cottage beside a Banana plant, 芭蕉.
For now, Basho enjoys Kabuki Theater. Rain doesn’t matter. Perhaps it heightens the surreal quality of the plays.
Kechi, Kansas, Autumn, 2021
More than three centuries have gone by since Matsuo Basho wrote his haiku.
Today, in 2021, pubs and micro-breweries have become the gathering place for friends and couples who want to talk about the day’s events, about the World.
It is another rainy day in Middle America. It is early September; the summer’s heat has given way to cooler days and nights. The author of this blog takes a trip to Kechi, a small Kansas town outside Wichita. He is accompanied by his wife and dog, Lucy, a small dog, a mix, mostly Blue Heeler. The three of us sit on the patio under trees strung with lights, sample the beers, listen to music, and forget our worrries.
Suddenly, it starts to storm. Lucy runs inside and shakes off the rain. Bashō no yōna, the author of this blog, and modern day Basho disciple, says this:
A dog knows To Stay out of the Rain And Sakai-cho
Beer stops Pouring When it starts Raining At the Old School House in Kechi
Notes on Translation
Before becoming Basho, Matsuo Basho took the pen name Tosei, 桃青, meaning “green peach” inferring that he was not quite ripe.
世間, Seken, literally the World, Society, as opposed to the individual. According to the Buddha, there are two worlds, the internal world and external world. Through meditation, one understands one’s thoughts and feelings, and finds one’s ‘inner world’.
境町, Sakai-chō, literally border town. It is somewhat unclear whether 境町, Sakai-chō is a place within Tokyo’s Nihonbashi District, or it merely borders it, a special district where Kabuki Theaters were allowed. Often these theaters began in Tokyo where prostitutes plied their trade. Other worldly in this sense takes on a sexual connotation. Though frowned upon by the ruling authorities, such districts were allowed. William Shakespeare and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men similarly had to obtain a royal license to perform.
Gabi Greve has given us a thorough discussion of Nihonbashi in her thoroughly wonderfully blog.
England 1678, John Bunyan published The Pilgrim’s Progress, an other worldly allegory of man’s journey through life. Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and culturally isolated from Western societies.
Gentler readers, unencumbered, we shall fly about, but not like crows, coming and going, from tree to tree, but as travelers from time and place, from poet to poet. Such is the mystery and beauty of poetry.
Natsume Sōseki
Today’s guest poet is Natsume Sōseki (夏目 漱石, 1867 – 1916). His literary career did not begin until 1903 when he began to publish haiku and renku. He quickly went on to novels for which he is better known. That he was exploring the joy of haiku before 1906 comes from this haiku, written in 1896, probably while in Kumamoto, on the southern island of Kyushu .
a crow flies off leaving the winter tree shaking
からすとんでゆうひにうごくふゆきかな
Coming and Going
Surely, in composing his verse Soseki recalled to mind Matsuo Basho’s haiku, where a crow comes to perch. Soseki has the crow leaving, completing the renku.
on a bare branch a crow has perched in the autumn evening
kare eda ni karasu no tomarikeri aki no kure
枯朶に烏のとまりけり秋の暮
Having listened to both haiku, Bashō no yōna, tries to keep the renku going, adding:
fromcountless karasu upon a withered tree – a caw-caw-phony
Notes on Translation
Renku, 連句, “linked verses,” a Japanese form of collaborative linked verse poetry. Basho would often attend such party gatherings. Renku can also be informal and spontaneous.
Basho uses 烏 for crow. Soseki uses からす, karasu, から (kara, “caw”, imitating the crow’s caw, plus す su. “bird”). Both mean crow.
Upon a withered branch A crow has stopped this Autumn evening
Kareeda ni/ Karasu no tomarikeri/ Aki no kure
枯枝に烏のとまりけり秋の暮
detail of image by Kawanabe Kyōsa (1831 – 1889)
Autumn 1680
Matsuo Bashō has by the autumn of 1680 now achieved fame. Moreover, he has just moved from Edo across the Sumida River to the Fukagawa neighborhood where he lives in a simple hut with a new banana tree, a gift from a student. A bridge had yet to be built across the river.
At the age of 36 Bashō was experiencing what we would call a Mid-Life crisis, he was cut off, dissatisfied, and lonely. In a couple of years he would begin his epic journey to the North. But for now, he took up the practice of Zen meditation, but it seems not to have calmed his mind.
This haiku has more than 30 published and hundreds of online translations. Why so many variations? Why so many attempts?
Zen
The answer, I suppose, lies in Zen’s ineffability. For Zen’s essence is to understand directly Life’s Meaning, without being misled by language. Life is what we view directly, no more, no less.
Bashō sees a crow perched upon a withered branch. It is autumn, more precisely, an autumn evening as the dusk settles in and darkness descends. The air is still or perhaps there is a gentle breeze. Then a crow stops upon a withered branch. Its crow and tree become one color against the ever deepening blue of the evening sky.
Bashō, like the crow, stops for a moment. And in that suspended moment this haiku is formed.
The Crow, 烏, Karasu
Do I need to say that the crow is a bad omen? In Japan, there is a belief that if a crow settles on the roof of a house and begins cawing, a funeral will soon follow. Did the gloomy Bashō foresee his own death? Did Basho in his own unique way presage Yates who wrote, “An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick.” Is there not a little of Edgar Allen Poe’s Raven to be heard tapping at one’s door?
A melancholy thought, for which I have little to add other than that I love the repetition of the “k” throughout the haiku which must bring to mind the cawing that Bashō must have heard.
Notes
I see that I watched this crow stopping on his withered branch before, September 19, 2019.
For the semantically punctilious, much depends on the translation of とまりけり, tomarikeri. Perched, alighted, arrested are all possibilities. “Stopped” seems best to me.
It is now November. The sky is gray, the trees are bare, there is a cold wind that chills, leaves once red and gold, now yellow and brown, flutter in the air then gather for they know Winter is near.
Meoto Iwa Married Couple Rocks, Futami
September 1689, Ogaki
In September 1689, Matsuo Basho has completed his Journey to the North, ending in Ogaki on horseback. His friend Rotsu accompanied him, Sora, his companion on much of the journey, rejoined him. Basho continues, “we all went to the house of Joko, where I enjoyed a reunion with Zensen, Keiko and his sons, and many other old friends who came to see me by day or night.“
On the 6th of September, it was time to part and take to the road again. Life moves on, and so, he left for the Ise Shrine, for he wanted to see the dedication of a new shrine (Futamiokitama Shrine). As he stepped into the boat that would take him across Ise Bay he wrote:
As clams Divide into Two (Separate in Futami) In Autumn
蛤の ふたみにわかれ 行秋ぞ
hamaguri no / futami ni wakare / yuku aki zo
So too, I take to the road again. Not a farewell my friends, a repose.
1694, Genroku 7, on the 21st day of the ninth lunar month
An Autumn evening (sigh) Breaking down How will it end – (an angry) talk?
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Translators, like Nick Carraway’s character in The Great Gatsby, never totally agreeing, trying to make sense of Matsuo Basho’s haiku. This however provides hours of fun and never-ending chatter, for when it comes to the sense of a poem, in Zen, there is no right or wrong.
How will it end – In pleasant chat or angry talk?
Three alternative translations
In the autumn night, Breaking into A pleasant chat
1694 – Basho is traveling again for the last time, going from the house of one friend to another. In the year 1694 (Genroku 7, on the 21st day of the ninth lunar month), shortly before his death, he arrives at the home of Shioe Shayo in Osaka. Old friends gathering, reciting haiku, and talking of the olden days.
One month later, on the 12th day of the tenth lunar month, he peacefully passed away.
Notes on Translation
秋の夜を 打ち崩したる 咄かな Aki no yo wo/ Uchikuzushitaru/ Hanashi kana
Line one. 秋の夜 をAkinoyo wo, An Autumn night. The final character を imparts the idea of a sigh or emphasis.
Line two. 打ち崩したるUchikuzushitaru, most translation agree that this conveys the meaning “breaking down into”. I imagine an evening that began as a Renga party where a group of poets each contributed a verse under the direction of a renga master, Matuso Basho. Each verse a haiku that contained three lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Eventually all games come to an end, breaking down into congenial chatter and sometimes anger.
Line three. 咄かな Hanashi kana. Basho leaves us with a bit of a mystery. After three centuries, Hanashi comes down to us as a talk, a story and a chat. But the character 咄 when repeated becomes a loud voice (onomatopoeia), especially in an angry way; like tut-tut or tsk-tsk. The final two characters かなkana express wonder.
If the evening ended in anger and disagreement, I imagine Basho sitting there, a bit groggy from the wine, shaking his head, sadly thinking, this is how it ends. Thankfully, I am in the minority on this point of view. A month later, on his death bed, Basho is pictured, at peace, surrounded by friends.
“Ignore the faults of others and be ignorant of your own virtues.”
Should I to say a word My lips turn cold In the autumn wind.
mono ieba / kuchibirusa samushi / aki no kaze
物いへば唇寒し龝の風
Autumn 1691
On his return to Edo in the autumn of 1691, Bashō took up the task of editing his journal that was to become The Narrow Road to the Interior (奥の細道, Oku no Hosomichi), which was published in 1694. He had a great many visitors and wrote to a friend, “I have no peace of mind.”
From East to West Oh, the Feeling is One Autumn Wind
(Autumn wind – a cold, biting wind often indicating change)
Ejiri in Suruga Province, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, by Katsushika Hokusai, 1830-1832, Travelers are shown walkimg along a path on the Tōkaidō highway, the route between Edo and Kyoto, a route Basho often used going to Kyoto or traveling to his hometown in Ueno. original image Metropolitan Art
Autumn 1688. On hearing of the death of Mukai Chine, 向井千子, the younger sister of his disciple Mukai Kyorai, 向井去来, Matsuo Basho wrote this melancholy thought. Mukai Chine, who wrote under the name Chiyo, 千代 (meaning a long time, not to be confused with Fukuda Chiyo-ni), was also a poet. She died in her mid-twenties.
Lost in Translation
Bashō’s introductory greeting, “higashi nishi,” alludes to the traditional greeting made to the audience in Kabuki theater, “Tozai, tozai,” meaning “Welcome everyone!“. The word tozai is a combination of “to” meaning east, and “zai” meaning west.
Higashi is Edo, the eastern capital where Basho likely heard the news. Nishi is Kyoto, the western capital, where Mukai Kyorai lived. Kyoto is home to two Buddhist temples, Nishi Hongan-ji and Nishi Hongan-ji. It is also a possible reference to Nagasaki, where Kyorai and Mukai Chine were born and where Mukai Chine lived with her husband.
What is lost in translation is the unspeakable grief one feels at the death of a dear one.
Aware sa hitosu, meaning one feeling, that feeling being compassion, grief, solace, etc. Aware is a term that is untranslatable in any language. The sorrow we feel at the death of a close friend. Personally, for me, it recalls James Taylor’s song Fire and Rain, of cold winds that blow and turn your head around.
Aki no kaze, an autumn wind characterized by coldness and loneliness. In Western literature, this is similar to a reference to a North Wind, which also signifies change. Literary references abound including the the movie Chocolat (2000), about a woman and her daughter whom, accompanied by a cold North Wind, come to an uptight French town to open a sweet shop. Japanese readers are familiar with the term Kamikaze, a Divine Wind, which foiled a Mongol invasion of Japan in the late summer of 1281.
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