Matsuo Bashō, the 17th-century Japanese haiku poet, didn’t directly write about Daoism. But he did dabble in Buddhism. And he traveled, one imagines, searching for the Way. He died, on November 28, 1694, on the way to the Grand Shrine in Ise, but got no further than Osaka. He was only 50.
Way beyond words, go —
All things arise from one source,
Travel and behold.
— The Dao, as One
Let’s be honest
Let’s be real
We are lucky just to be
— Bashō no yōna, 2025
One who traveled as much as Matsuo Basho must have thought about the Tao de Ching, the Dao, the Way. The ways included the Nakasendo Way connecting Edo and Kyoto, the coastal route, called the Tokaido Way that would have taken Basho near his home. Then too there was the shorter Koshu Kaido, that was an alternative of the Nakasendo Way. Then too, Basho and a friend Sora made their own way through Japan’s northern interior and along both coasts. This was the famous Oku no Hosomichi, the book that made Basho famous.
Basho wrote the book, part travelogue, part haiku about his five month journey in the spring and summer of 1689. He spent the next five years editing it until his death in 1694. It was not published until 1702.
It is easier to write
Than edit,
Harder still to publish.
In the blink of an eye,
from here to there
and back again
matsuo-basho-haiku 