Let the moon shine in

Unless you have been to a music concert or sporting event, or at a Black Friday event at your favorite store, and waiting patiently for the doors to be unlocked and the gates open, you may not get Basho’s anticipation of getting into the Floating Hall on Lake Biwa during the lantern festival that begins in August of each year.

鎖 (じやう)あけて月さし入れよ浮み堂
joo akete/ tsuki sashireyo/ Ukimi Doo

open the gates
let the moon shine in –
Ukimodo (Floating Hall)
Matsuo Basho, August 1691 or 1690

Katata, Lake Biwa, Floating Temple (Ukimodo), geese returning, Hiroshige, Met Museum

August 1690, 1691, Ukimodo Temple

Ten years have passed since Matsuo Basho moved from Edo to Fukagawa. Beside his hut grew a banana plant, a gift, form which he took the name Basho, meaning banana, a frail useless plant blown by the winds. His hut has burned down twice. He has taken many trips, including the Oku no Hosomichi, Journey to the Northern Interior, which is not yet published. His needs are few and financially he seems not to worry.

He continues to journey including this trip to Lake Biwa, north of Kyoto, where he had spent his student days.

Ukimido Temple, beside Lake Biwa in Ōtsu, Buddhist, founded in 995. The official name is Mangetsu-ji (満月寺) Full Moon Temple. It is entered through the “Dragon Gate”. It is called Ukimido, Floating Hall because it appears to float on Lake Biwa as one approaches Otsu.

Joo, じやう chain baring the gate.

Snowy Mt. Hira and Mikami

比良三山　雪さしわたせ　鷲の橋　

Hira Mikami yuki sashi watase sagi no hashi

Snowy Hira and Mikami
For the moment, encircled
A bridge of white herons
Matsuo Basho, Otsu on Lake Biwa, looking west to the Hira Mountains

Snowy Mount Hira, artist, Utagawa Hiroshige, 19th century, image source The Met

A bridge of birds

A bridge of birds is one of those images one comes across while walking along a lake or in a wooded field. It is a magical image, one that is fleeting. When the birds are geese, the flock noisy chatters overhead, making a familiar V-shaped formation that look like an arched bridge. Herons are stragglers, silently flapping their wings,to the accompaniment of a swooshing sound.

Soon gone and silent again.

Herons often fly alone but can on rare occasion be seen in flocks. It is a rare sight, one that Matsuo Basho enjoyed while making a day trip to Otsu on the southern shore of Lake Biwa. Basho chose Otsu as his burial place, giving this haiku added meaning.

Lost in Translation

Hira and Mikami, 比良三山, snow covered Hira mountains and Mt. Mikami. They lie on opposite sides of Lake Biwa.

Yuki, 雪, snow.

Sashi watase, さしわたせ, for the moment, plus, joined or encircled.

Sagi no hashi, 鷲の橋, literally a bridge of white herons. The No, の particle links two nouns together to show a connection, and form a single image, a bridge of birds. One does not have to assume the herons are white (Shirasagi, 白鷺), but it makes for a prettier image.

[All images in the public domain, source The Met.]

Our two lives – inochi ni

Lake Biwa, Shiga Province, Spring 1685

For millions of Japanese, the annual cherry blossom viewing is a time of surprise and delight. After an absence of 20 years, Matsuo Basho came across his friend and disciple, Hattori Dohō (服部土芳), and composed this haiku.

Our two lives coming together at Cherry Blossom time!

Inochi Futatsu no Naka ni Ikitaru Sakura kana

命二つの中に生きたる桜かな

Hattori Dohō

Hattori Dohō (服部土芳) was younger than Basho by a dozen years. After Basho’s death, Dohō composed Sanzōshi, Three Books, ca. 1702, a poetic treatise on Bashō’s haikai. Haikai meaning the linked verse, commentary, and poetry that Basho popularized.

Haiku came to mean standalone poems. Haibun came to mean multiple verses.

In one of his haibun, Bashō states, “Only when one identifies with the feelings of the things in nature and can express them in words, only then is he a master of poetry.”

Our two lives, inochi ni, is a wistful recollection of a friend.

In this haiku, Basho combines the two lives, his and Dohō’s, from inochi 命 life, to be alive, plus futatsu 二 two. These lives separated by time and place come together at Lake Biwa during sakura 桜 cherry blossom festival . Basho adds the kireji, the cutting word in the double kana, かな, expressing the joy of meeting such a friend.

On the subject of separate lives

Our two separate lives, as Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin put it bluntly in a song from 1985, is a sadder version about the separation of former lovers. Cher gave us a similar sentiment in 1988, “… sooner or later we all sleep alone.”

Until then, enjoy the cherry blossoms. Sakura kana!

Read about the entire journey in Donald Keene’s translation of Journey of 1684.

The Karasaki pine tree – Karasaki no matsu

The Karasaki pine tree is mistier than the cherry blossoms

Karasaki no matsu/ wa hana yori/ oboro nite

辛崎の松は花より朧にて

Karasaki Pine Tree

“The Karasaki Pine Tree (Karasaki no matsu) stands on a walled esplanade in Karasaki village, 5 MN of Otsu near the steamer landing. Its 300 or more immense horizontal boughs, upheld by wood crutches or stone pillars, curve awkwardly, and at the top – 25 ft or more from the ground – tin and wood copings have been placed as a protection against the weather. These arms, some of which measure 200 odd ft. from point to point, reach out like those of a gigantic and repulsive spider, and are almost bare of foliage.”
– Terry’s Japanese Empire, T. Philip Terry, 1914

In the eighth moon of 1684, Matsuo Basho left Edo to visit his birthplace in Ueno. The occasion was the death of his mother in 1683. As journeys go, this one involved many stops and visits along the way. Previously, we left Basho on the path from Kyoto to Otsu, on Lake Biwa. On the mountain path, Basho discovered a violet growing in the grass, and took the occasion to write a haiku.

Now he was nearing Lake Biwa.

Descending from his mountain path to the lake, he views Otsu and its well-known pine tree in the distant mist. The ancient horizontal limbs are supported by pillars. Otsu also offers many sublime cherry blossom trees for viewing. For practical reasons, Basho found the pine tree more to his liking. Or maybe he just found it a bit hazier or mistier, oboro 朧, if he arrived in the early foggy April morning.

Meaning of the poem

The meaning of the haiku is itself obscure on its face.

Likely, Basho is making a reference to the poem by Prince Konoe Masaie (1444-1505).

In the night rain its green fades
Serene in the evening breeze
Stands the pine tree
Of Karasaki.
— Prince Konoe Masaie (1444-1505)

That however does not explain the mention of the cherry blossoms.

There is a well-known idiom, hana yori dango, which translates as preferring dumplings over flowers. This also means to prefer the practical over the beautiful. A secondary meaning is that viewers of the cherry blossoms prefer the wine and food over the blossoms themselves. A pine tree, it seems to me is more practical than a cherry blossom. It provides protection from the elements and material for building.

Like California’s Sequoia’s the Karasaki pine tree is ancient. Even in Basho’s day, it was believed to be one thousand years old. A new pine tree has since been planted from a cutting of the old Karasaki pine tree.

For reference, see: Basho’s Journal of 1684, translated by Donald Keene (page 143)

old pine of karasaki — **old pine of Karasaki**

The 325th Anniversary of Matsuo Bashō’s Death

November 28, 2019

He was not old by Japanese standards of the 17th century. The Tokugawa shogunate had established peace and tranquility throughout the land. One could expect live to a Biblically allotted time span of 70 years.

But Matsuo Bashō died young, at the age of 50, perhaps worn out by his many travels, the journeys that made him famous.

In this early death, he resembled other famous writers including the Chinese Tang dynasty poet Du Fu, who died at 58; English playwright, William Shakespeare, who died at the age of 52; or the American poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, who also died at the age of 58. She, explaining in a poem the nearness of death, wrote that:

My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night; but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends – it gives a lovely light!

Bashō’s Final Journey

Today, November 28, 1694, marks the 325th anniversary of the death of Japan’s greatest haiku poet, Matsuo Bashō. He must of anticipated his death for he made a final journey home in the fall of 1694. Having spent time in Ueno, his birthplace, and Kyoto, where he spent time as a student, he arrived in Osaka, where he took ill.

One final haiku:

Stricken on my journey
My dreams will wander about
On withered fields of grass

Tabi ni yande/ Yume wa kareno wo/ Kakemeguru
旅に病んで　夢は枯野を　かけ廻る

Bashō’s Final Illness

The news of his illness had spread to friends and students. And they gathered around his bed as his spirit left to wander this world. The image was one that was familiar to Basho, for he had often attended the Noh (能) theaters in Edo and, no doubt, in Kyoto where he learned the art of haiku as a student. Noh theater is a peculiar Japanese art form, popularized by Zeami Motokiyo, that includes only male actors who wear masks to represent emotions and typecast figures. Noh drama includes music, physical expression, and dance. The stories often relate to dreams, supernatural worlds, ghosts and spirits.

Life is a lying dream, he only wakes who casts the world aside.
Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1443).

Bashō’s Dream

In an earlier haiku (June 29, 1689), Bashō alluded to a well-known Samurai figure, Minamoto no Yoshitsune who was treacherously killed in battle by the last Fujiwara lord, and the subject of a Noh play,

summer grass
and a warrior’s dreams
are what remains
natsukusa ya/ tsuwamono domo ga/ yume no ato
夏草や兵どもが夢の跡

Bashō’s Burial

Matsuo Bashō wanted companionship on his wanderings in the spirit world; and in accordance with his last wishes, his body was taken to Gichuji Temple, near the banks of Lake Biwa, where he was buried next to the famed Samurai Minamoto no Yoshinaka.

Yasuraka ni nemuru
安らかに眠る

Rest in peace!

Who’s that knocking at my door?

this lodging has a door
unknown
to the call of the kuina (water rail)

this lodging
is not even known
to the kuina’s knock

this hut
can the water rail find
its door

kono yado wa kuina mo shiranu toboso kana

この宿は水鶏も知らぬ扉かな

Late Spring and early Summer, 1694

“Tyick, tyick, tyick,” who is that knocking at my door? Death would come knocking for Matsuo Bashō, but not until until November.

In the spring of 1694 Matsuo Bashō set out on his last journey to visit friends, making a trip home to his birthplace at Ueno, to Kyoto where he spent time as a student, and around beautiful Lake Biwa visiting shrines.

This haiku was supposedly written to Kosen (Fujimura Izu?), a Shinto priest who lived on the outskirts of Otsu, and, we may presume from the haiku, in a marshy area near Lake Biwa. The house was so remote it was unknown even to the marsh bird, known as kuina in Japanese, translated into English as a water rail.

The courtship cry of the kuina is a tyick-tyick-tyick, like the sound of one tapping (tataku) on a wooden door. The breeding season dates from late March into June.

Source, Matsuo Basho Archives

Notes on Japanese and Pinyin

Language can be an in-artful thing.

Arriving late and greeting his host, Kosen, Matsuo Bashō might have apologized by composing this haiku, explaining that he heard the familiar tyick-tyick-tyick of the kuina bird, but couldn’t discover its secretive nest, i.e. his host’s lodgings somewhere along the shore of Lake Biwa.

The sound of “kono… kuina… kana” imitates the kuina’s call to its mate.

Shiranu 知らぬ , not knowing, as in the proverb, Shiranu ga hotoke (知らぬが仏), meaning ignorance is bliss, literally, not knowing is Buddha.

October 1, 1691

Such things as cherished tears
color
the scattered red leaves

尊がる涙や染めて散る紅葉
tootogaru namida ya somete chiru momiji

The Autumn Years

It is near the beginning of the end.

Beginning in 1690, Bashō was gone from Edo, living in quiet retirement at the Genju-an (the Phantom Dwelling), what had been an abandoned hut with a rush door, near Lake Biwa. He spent his days working on the book that would make him famous, Narrow Road to the Deep North and making short trips to visit friends and former students. On the first day of October he called on the Priest Ryu, at the Myosho-ji Temple in Hikone, Shiga Prefecture.

This visit inspired the above haiku.

After calling on his friend, Bashō returned to Edo to a new house near the old one in Fukagawa, complete with five banana plants. For the next three years, he would work on another anthology of poetry before setting out once more in the spring of 1694 for his birthplace.

On the way, at Osaka, he took ill and died, age 50.

Notes on translation

Momijigari, 紅葉狩り – Maple viewing, a Japanese autumn tradition of visiting where the maple leaves have turned red. From momiji (紅葉) meaning the “maple tree” as well as “red leaves” and “color changing”; and kari (狩り) “hunting”.

a charming wild violet

coming along a mountain path, somehow so charming – a wild violet
山路来て何やらゆかしすみれ草
yamaji kite/ naniyara yukashi/ sumire kusa

Basho’s Journey of 1684

In 1683, Matsuo Basho’s mother died.

The following year he made a journey from Edo (Tokyo) to Ueno in Iga Province to visit her grave. The trip lasted well into the following year, and as trips go, he made many stops, visited many friends. And his thoughts were kept in a journal he called Kasshi Ginko.

The above haiku was recorded in the spring of 1685.

After visiting Kyoto where he had studied as a youth, Bahso proceeded east, on the way to Otsu, on Lake Biwa. Coming along a mountain path, yamaji kite 山路来て, he was surprised by a tiny wild violet, sumire すみれ , in the grass, kusa 草.

Basho’s Journal of 1684, translated by Donald Keene (page 142)

Kansas Wildflowers

These violets grow all over the world and here in Kansas where in April and early May, one sees the tiny purple and blue flowers peaking out from a log or a clump of wet leaves, and sometimes hidden in the grass.

It is now 2020. A year has passed since I originally made this post. The violets are back again. Much has happened in a year. A pandemic rages over the world. The delicate violet is a sign of hope.

Notes on translation

山路 yamaji, mountain path
来て kite, to come
何やら naniyari, somehow, for some reason
ゆかし yukashi, charming, admirable, enchanting
すみれ草 sumi regusa, wild violet; literally a violet in the grass

Further note

Enya wrote a song Sumiregusa about the wild violet, and performed it in Japanese – Sumiregusa: wild violet monono aware: attune to the pathos of things haruno hana to fuyu mo yuki: spring flowers and winter snow hara hara: the sound of falling snow.

Like a cloud in the wind

like clouds in the wind
a wild goose and his friend
depart

or,

like a cloud in the wind
like a wildgoose and his friend
life departs

雲とへだつ友かや雁の生き別れ

kumo to hedatsu tomo ka ya kari no ikiwakare

Descending Geese at Katata, Eight Views of Ömi Province, 1957, Utagawa Hiroshige — Geese descending at Katata on Lake Biwa by Utagawa Hiroshige, 18th c.

Master Basho explains

A summer’s day near Lake Biwa, the clouds drift by and at sunset the wildgeese descend to the lake. Master Basho and his friend watch the setting sun. “Look at the cloud in the wind, like a wild-goose from the flock, my friend we all too soon depart.”

Lake Biwa

Matsuo Bashō had several connections with Lake Biwa and the surrounding area. He was born in nearby, in Iga Province, and may have studied in nearby Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital. Basho is know to have visited Lake Biwa in 1684 and again during the summer of 1690, enjoying the scenic views, the wild life, and nearby temples.

Basho departed this world in November of 1690.

Notes on translation

雲 kumo, cloud
雁 kari, wildgoose
や ya, kana word used to connect wildgoose and friend
友 tomo, friend, companion
生 yǒu, life
別れ wakare, farewell, depart