On the completion of his trip to the northern interior of Japan which was to become the famous travelogue Oku no Hosomichi, Matsuo Basho took time to visit with friends and take a side journey to visit his birthplace in Ise Province. A poetry performance (renga) was held at a tea house near the castle in Iga-Ueno where Basho was once a servant.
人々を しぐれよ宿は 寒くとも
We at the inn, Even tho’ it’s bitterly cold, — Let it rain!
Hitobito wo/ Shigureyo yado wa/ Samuku tomo
Matsuo Basho, Winter, 1689
Notes on Translation
I have reversed the word order in Basho’s haiku and turned down the thermometer to bitterly cold.
To each of us at the inn, let it rain, even if it’s cold. The poets who have gathered for a renga are sitting and shivering in silence, immersed in the beautiful world of haiku. The rat-a-tat-tat of the sleet on the roof and the freezing weather creating an atmosphere of pure wabi, Buddhist term to express an emotion of subdued austere beauty.
shigureyo しぐれよ, the imperative verb form for rain, literally, let it rain. shigure, a winter rain-shower. It is a kigo for winter, and a metaphor for shedding tears.
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.
Spring rain – running down a wasp’s nest from a roof that leaks
春雨や 蜂の巣つたふ 屋根の漏り
harusame ya hachinosu tsutau yane no mori
Wasp Nest, Kono Bairei, 1844-1895
More rain
Yesterday, it rained. Today, it rains again. Tomorrow, it is suppose to rain again. I should look around the house to see if the roof leaks. Is it not a fundamental principle of life, Basho asks, that a roof shall leak?
For Matsuo Basho the steady drip of the rain from a wasp’s nest became the subject of this haiku. Does this not remind you, Gentle Reader, of the premise of the television show Seinfeld — “a show about nothing” and everything. Observational comedy like haiku poetry are based on everyday phenomenon rarely noticed. Have you ever noticed? — a wasp nest shouldn’t leak.
Cosmic principles
To make the point, Basho ends this simple haiku with the Japanese character り, Ri, which in Confucian philosophy attempts to identify an underlying principle of the cosmos — a roof shouldn’t leak, but it sometimes does, but not in a wasp nest.
Notes on Translation
Harusame, 春雨 is Basho’s oft repeated Spring Rain. Hachinosu, 蜂の巣, a wasp nest or beehive. Also, a colloquialism for something full of holes, like Swiss cheese, a knit scarf, and Basho’s roof. Yane no mori, 屋根の漏り, a roof that leaks.
An early summer rain
Falling on this and that
And the Temple of Light
An early summer rain Does not dim The Temple of Light
Samidare no/ Furinokosite ya/ Hikari-do
五月雨の 降のこしてや 光堂
May, 1689
It is an early summer rain in Kansas, some three hundred thirty one years since Matsuo Basho wrote this haiku. At the time, Basho and his traveling companion Sora were on the famous Journey to the North. Visiting Hiraizumi, Basho would have taken the pathway on Tsukimi-zaka slope to Chuson-ji Temple and its golden hall of Hikare-do (Konjiki-do).
[Note on translation. Furinokosite ya, 降のこしてや. The second line of the haiku is a turn of a phrase. The first character in the line 降 indicates a fall, as in the rain falling, but also to subdue, to lessen or decrease in stature, hence the verb “dim”.]
Basho had come not only to see Hikare-do, the Temple of Light dedicated to the Buddha, but also to reflect on the the rise and fall of the northern Fujiwara clan, and the tragic end of the samurai Yoshitsune, an event that took place some five hundred years previously.
Of Yoshitsune, Basho wrote another well-known haiku; one that seems to express a contrasting emotion.
The summer grass is all that remains of a warlord’s dreams.
Banana tree in a fierce autumn gale I wonder if I can hear Rain in the tub, tonight!
Bashō nowaki shite Tarai ni ame o Kiku yo kana
芭蕉 野分 して盥に雨を聞く夜哉
Autumn 1681
In the winter of 1680 Bashō moved from central Edo across the Sumida River to the rural Fukagawa district. His patrons and disciples had prepared a cottage with a thatched roof for him in the midst of a grove of banana trees. In the spring of 1681, one disciple gave him a house warming gift, a new banana plant (Bashō, hence the name Bashō-an).
Away from the distractions of Edo, Bashō had more time to collect his thoughts and compose haiku.
Summer came, and then fall, and with fall the fierce storms and typhoons that strike Japan every year.
Bashō’s Explanation
A sleepless Basho composed the above haiku. Alone, he was wondering if he could withstand the night. Bashō’s explanatory notes provide some insight:
Sleeping alone in a thatched hut
The elder Du (Fu) wrote a poem about a thatched hut blowing (tearing) in the wind. Then the old man Su Shi wrote verse about a leaking cottage. Now I listen to their rain pounding my banana leaves, lying alone in my thatched cottage.
Du Fu is a poet of the Tang dynasty, much admired by Basho. The poem he refers to is Song of My Cottage Unroofed By an Autumn Gale. Du Fu’s poem is much longer, and more involved, but it begins much like Basho’s haiku:
“In the eighth month, autumn’s fierce winds angrily howl, And sweep three layers of thatch from off my home. The straw flies over the river, and scatters, Some hangs high up in the tree, Some floats down and sinks in the ditch…”
Some three centuries later, Su Shi of the Song dynasty composed a poem with a similar thought, “My thatched roof torn by the autumn wind…”
[Utagawa Hiroshige, White Rain on the Nihon Bridge, 1838, credit, Yale Art Museum]
A Rainy Day in Autumn, 1678
“…seken no aki o sakaichō”
It sounds good to the ear even when you don’t know Japanese.
It is 1678, Matsuo Bashō, age 35, is living in Edo (Tokyo) in Nihonbashi, Edo’s city center . He is part of the Japanese literary society composing haikai no renga, comical linked verse (now shortened to haiku).
Two years from now, Bashō will move across the Sumida River to the then rural and unconnected by a bridge Fukagawa District. The bridge would come soon and Bashō would write a haiku about its construction. It would be nine more years until Matsuo Bashō and his traveling companion, Kawai Sora, would make their celebrated journey Oku no Hosomichi (奥の細道), Journey to the Narrow North.
For now, Bashō is taking in all that Edo has to offer.
By the 17th century, the population in Edo (Tokyo) numbers in the neighborhood of 150,000 people. Along the western edge of the Sumida River, Edo’s theaters and playhouses are being built, mingling with houses of prostitution, with a mixture of tea-houses and Geisha-houses, where conversations with poets and actors are the main attraction.
Of course, they serve sushi and sake in Sakaichō.
It must have been a sensational sight, walking shoulder to shoulder, even in the soaking rain.
Ame no hi ya, seken no aki o sakaichō.
[Kabuki Theaters at Sakai-cho, Opening Day of the New Season (Sakai-cho Shibai no Zu), artist Utagawa Hiroshige, 1838, credit, Metropolitan Museum of Art.]
Notes on Japanese translation
雨の日, ame no hi, rainy days
世間 seken, world, society
秋 aki, autumn
Fleas and lice, A horse pissing Close to my pillow.
蚤虱 馬の尿する 枕もと
nomi shirami/ uma no shito suru/ makura moto
It is now 330 years since Matuso Basho and his companion Saro left on their journey north. They departed on May 16, 1689 and the two now find themselves close to the northernmost end of their journey, having just left Hiraizumi.
From Iwate to Shitomae
Leaving Hiraizumi and the Fujiwara clan behind, Basho and Saro proceeded some 50 miles north to Iwate, then west to Shitomae (尿前) where they stayed for three days.
The nights proved fitful, much like the stay at Iizuka where the fleas and mosquitoes were relentless and sleep impossible. To this torture, add the stench of a urinating horse. Originally, Basho had intended to go further north to Nanbu (南部町) in Yamanashi Prefecture where the Nanbu clan (南部氏 Nanbu-shi) ruled most of northeastern Honshū for over 700 years. Rain and difficulties would change his mind.
The journey towards the west and Shitomae took them towards Dewa Province and the western coast of Japan. The route would be treacherous. On the road to Dewa, Basho and Sora had to cross Kofukazawa River by climbing down a steep gorge through hairpin turns. In summer, when Matsuo Basho and Sora crossed the river they had to negotiate six treacherous bends to climb down and up the rocky gorge.
Basho explains:
Station 24 – Dewagoe
“Turning away from the high road leading to Nambu (Nanbu) Province, I came to the village of Iwate, where I stopped overnight. The next day I looked at the Cape of Oguro and the tiny island of Mizu, both in a river, and arrived by way of Naruko hot springs at the barrier-gate of Shitomae (Shitomae no seki 尿前の関) which blocked the entrance to the province of Dewa. The gate-keepers were extremely suspicious, for very few travelers dared to pass this difficult road under normal circumstances. I was admitted after a long wait, and darkness overtook me while I was climbing a huge hill. I put up at a gate-keeper’s house which I was very lucky to find in such a lonely place. A storm came upon us and I was held up for three days.
Bitten by fleas and lice, I slept in a bed, A horse constantly pissing Close to my pillow.
According to the gate-keeper there was a huge body of mountains obstructing my way to the province of Dewa, and the road was terribly uncertain. So I decided to hire a guide. The gate-keeper was kind enough to find me a young man of tremendous physique, who walked in front of me with a curved sword strapped to his waist and a stick of oak gripped firmly in his hand. I myself followed him, afraid of what might happen on the way. What the gate-keeper had told me turned out to be true. The mountains were so thickly covered with foliage and the air underneath was so hushed that I felt as if I were groping my way in the dead of night. There was not even the cry of a single bird to be heard, and the wind seemed to breathe out black soot through every rift in the hanging clouds. I pushed my way through thick undergrowth of bamboo, crossing many streams and stumbling over many rocks, till at last I arrived at the village of Mogami after much shedding of cold sweat. My guide congratulated me by saying that I was indeed fortunate to have crossed the mountains in safety, for accidents of some sort had always happened on his past trips. I thanked him sincerely and parted from him. However, fear lingered in my mind some time after that.”
Written on the 17th day of the 5th lunar month at Shitomae, which literally means “before the urine” or vulgarly, “in front of pissing”. Matsuo Basho Archives, Gabi Greve, 15/11/2012.
Rainy day, falling into the world, Sakai town Rainy Day, Autumn in Sakai Town 雨の日 や世間の秋を 堺町 ame no hi / ya seken no aki o / Sakai-chō
Matsuo Bashō, Edo, Sakai-cho, age 35, Autumn 1678
Sakai-chô
By the autumn of 1678, Matsuo Basho had been living in central Edo (Tokyo) for six years. Sakai-chô, Edo’s Kabuki Theater District, is a good place to spend a rainy day. What strange sights greeted him, stranger sights still awaited him when he entered the theater. In 1971, singer Karen Carpenter popularized the phrase, “Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.” Rain seems to have that effect on all of us, including Basho.
Kakekotoba
Ya seken no aki o / sakai-chō.
Seken(世間) refers to the ancient Sanskrit loka (the secular, human, or mortal world). Falling in and falling out, one might say, between reality and fantasy, theater or life itself, who is to say which is more real? Seken is the kakekotoba (掛詞) or pivot word to Sakai.
Kabuki Theater
Kabuki歌舞伎 comes from the verb kabuku, meaning “to slant or to sway.” The colorful costumes suggest a world out of the ordinary.
Bright lights and theater are not compatible with the life of a poet.
In 1780, Basho moved across the Sumida River to the Fukagawa District. There, a benefactor provided him with a simple house. The next year a disciple gives him a banana plant (basho-an).
He plants it and thereafter called himself Bashō, 芭蕉 .
matsuo-basho-haiku 