Sora

Always Good

“Sora is his pen name. (曾良, literally meaning “always good”). His formal name is Kawai Sōgorō (河合, 惣五郎). The eaves of his cottage line up with the lower leaves of my bashō tree, and he helped me with the chores of chopping firewood and drawing water.”

曾良は河合氏にして、惣五郎と云へり芭蕉の下葉に軒をならべて予が薪水の労をたすく。
このたび松しま象潟の眺共にせん事を悦び。

From Oku no Hosomichi, at Mt. Nikko, Basho introduces Sora, his traveling companion on the journey. He is obviously younger, and a disciple of Basho’s, which is evident from the fact the travelogue includes several of Sora’s haiku. Close to the end of the journey, at Komatsu, Sora was seized and had to leave, but returned to greet Basho at Ogaki, the end of the trip. Sora kept his own diary which details the trip the two made together.

He died in 1710.

More please …

“A masterless samurai“

Sora’s Japanese Wikipedia page is more revealing.

Sora was some five years younger than Basho. His parents died when he was young, and he was adopted by his aunt, who died when he was 12. He was then taken in by a priest in Ise province. Then, like Basho, he was made a servant to a Samurai overlord, lord of the Nagashima domain in Ise. (Presumably, his connection to the Kawai clan). In 1681, he moved to Edo. This was shortly after Basho settled in at his new cottage in the Fukagawa District. There they made each other’s acquaintance. The two made a short trip together to the Kashima Shrine in today’s Ibaraki Prefecture.

The introduction begins:

“Cherishing the memory of this follower of the poetic spirit, I resolved to see the moon over the mountains of Kashima Shrine this autumn. I was accompanied by two men, a masterless samurai and an itinerant monk.”

Sora was apparently the “masterless samurai.”

In 1689, as Basho and Sora took the journey that would become Oku no Hosomichi, Sora kept his own Diary that would be published as Sora’s Diary in 1943.

How Interesting

Ten Years

Almost ten years had passed by.

Five years since Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton (1684), a journey west to Kyoto and Nara. One year since A Visit to Sarashina Village, a journey to Nagano and moon viewing at the rice fields, 1688.

Ten years since Matsuo Basho left Edo, crossing the Sumida River, taking up residence in a simple cottage, away from the crowds. If this hut was like Minomushian, the Iga retreat Basho occasionally used, it was a simple house with a couple of tatami mat and a sliding divider between the bedroom and living/dining area. A garden space surrounded the house and perhaps an indoor garden that could be viewed from inside. Outside, there was a banana tree, a gift of a disciple, and the origin of the name Basho (banana plant).

Almost ten years had past, and Basho was again feeling restless.

Like his idol, Saiygo, the 12th c. Japanese monk and poet, Basho wished to travel again. This time with his neighbor and friend, Kawai Sora (河合曾良), who would accompany him on his most famous journey, Oku no Hosomichi, in the spring of 1689.

おもしろやことしの春も旅のそら
omoshiro ya kotoshi no haru mo tabi no sora

how interesting!
this spring, I shall go
traveling on the Road (with Sora)
Matsuo Basho, Edo, 1689

After this, Matsuo Basho had one more trip. His last.

Omoshiro ya

Omoshiro ya, おもしろや, how interesting, or fun.

There is not much interesting about this haiku except for its connection with Sora, Basho’s traveling companion on the Oku no Hosomichi. The two took their famous journey to the northern interior of Japan in the spring of 1689. Tabi no Sora, 旅のそら (旅の空), literally, a Journey under the Sky, meaning on the open road.

Of course, the homophone “sora” may just be a coincidence. Life is full of them

More omoshiro:

How, pray tell, does rain become snow?

面白し雪にやならん冬の雨
omoshiroshi / yuki ni ya nara n / fuyu no ame
how interesting / snow is / winter’s rain (winter, 1687)

In summer the ancient art of catching sweet fish is done using lanterns to attract the fish and cormorant birds to dive in the water and swallow the fish. A noose around the bird’s neck prevents it from swallowing the fish.

おもしろうてやがて悲しき鵜舟哉
omoshirō te / yagate kanashiki / u-bune kana
how exciting / then sad / fishing with cormorant (summer, 1688)

Shortly before he died.

おもしろき秋の朝寝や亭主ぶり
omoshiroki / aki no asane ya / teishu buri
how pleasant / asleep on a summer’s afternoon / like the lord of the house (autumn, 1694)

On the Road Again

On the road again
Just can’t wait to get on the road again
On the Road Again, Willie Nelson

Traveling seems to be in our DNA. We take vacations, we change jobs, we move. And children move away from their parents. The human population covers the world. Traveling is in our genes.

Basho, like Jack Kerouac and other literary figures, was on the road a lot. Inbspired by the poet Saiygo, Basho made as many as five travels within Japan that became the subject of books or travelogues.

“Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.”
生きて、旅して、冒険して、祝福して、後悔しないでください。
On the Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957

New Beginnings

Sunday, May 16, 2021

Quoting Matsuo Basho in his Narrow Road to the Deep North (Oku no hosomichi, 奥の細道).

Station 2 – Departure

Early on the morning of March the twenty-seventh I took to the road. Darkness lingered in the sky. The moon was still visible, though gradually thinning away. Mount Fuji’s faint shadow and the cherry blossoms of Ueno and Yanaka bid me a last farewell. My friends had gathered the night before, coming with me on the boat to keep me company for the first few miles. When we got off the boat at Senju, however, the thought of a journey of three thousand miles suddenly seized my heart, and neither the houses of the town nor the faces of my friends could be seen except as a tearful vision in my eyes.

Spring is passing!
Birds are singing, fish weeping
With tearful eyes.

With this verse to commemorate my departure, I began my journey, but lingering thoughts made my steps heavy. Watching friends standing side by side, waving good-bye as long as they could see my back.

Yuku haruya

Spring is passing! Yuku haruya!

The wonderful thing about poetry in verse is that one can read and reread the same poem or the same verse. It is, in a sense a new beginning. It is a chance to start over, although it is on a familiar path, and even so, change directions. Maybe it is a journey into a better lifestyle, with daily exercise and healthier eating.

That new beginning always starts today.

Spring, in verse, in poem,

Perpetually Passing

And yet, it begins anew

Bashō no yōna

Senju

Basho began his journey in the late spring of 1689. His wanderlust lasting over five months — 156 days and nights, to be precise.

The first leg of the journey was by boat from the Fukagawa District where Basho was then living, along the Sumida River, to Senju, today’s Adachi fish market, in the northern part of Edo (Tokyo). From there it was a short walk to the Arakawa River and the bridge that lead north.

Surrounded by the fish mongers and the birds dancing around looking for scraps to eat, Basho began his journey with tearful eyes. He was not quite alone, for Kawai Sora, his neighbor in Fukagawa, would be his companion.

Original Japanese

行く春や

鳥啼き魚の

目は泪

Yuku haruya

tori naki uo no me

wa namida

Acknowledgements

I do not claim to be original in my translations. Others have come before me. Their translations are equally good or better. Matsuo Basho’s Narrow Road to the Deep North translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa is a good source containing the entire journey and notes. The original Japanese is online. Read Yuasa’s translation in an ongoing single account. See also, Matsuo Basho – WKD Archives, @MatsuoBashoWkdArchives, a Facebook account that contains background information.

Sora Speaks

This child Kasane, if she were a flower, would be a pink carnation

かさねとは八重撫子の名なるべし
Kasane towa yae-nadeshiko no nanarubeshi

Sora Tabi Nikki (曾良旅日記, “Travel Diary of Sora”) was Kawai Sora’s (曾良) memories of the journey 1689 and 1691 that he and Matsuo Bashō took to the north. The diary was lost and rediscovered in 1943.

pink carnation

Basho explains the setting:

“I have an acquaintance in a place called Kurobane in Nasu, and I decided to take a short cut from Nikko straight across the broad plain. The rain began to fall, the sun was setting and in the distance we happened to notice a village. Lodging for a night at a farmer’s house, at daybreak we headed off again over the plain. We came across a horse grazing in a field. We sought assistance from a man cutting grass and though he was a peasant, he was not without compassion.

‘Hmm, let’s see. The plain is criss-crossed with trails and someone unfamiliar with the way is bound to get lost — that’s a real problem — say, why don’t you take this horse as far as he’ll go and just send him back,” and he lent us the horse.’

Two children came running along behind the horse. One was a little girl named Kasane, a truly elegant name I’d never heard before.”

Notes

Nade-shi-ko meaning a frilly pink flower in Japanese is homophonous for “the child who is lovingly caressed / patted” and it is considered a charming name. The similar term Yamato nadeshiko (やまとなでしこ or 大和撫子) means the “personification of an idealized Japanese woman”, or “the epitome of pure, feminine beauty”.

Kasane means layered or double.

The Narrow Road to the North Prologue

Station 1 – Prologue

Days and months are eternity’s travelers. As are the years that pass by. Those who steer a boat across the sea, or drive a horse over the land, finally succumbing to the weight of years, spend each minute of their lives traveling. There are also a great number of the ancients who died on the road (including Chinese Tang poets Li Bai and Du Fu and Japanese poets Saigyo and Sogi). For a long time, tempted by cloud-moving winds, I myself have felt a strong desire to wander.

It was only toward the end of last autumn that I returned from rambling trip along the coast. I barely had time to sweep the cobwebs from my humble house on the River Sumida before the New Year, but no sooner than the spring mist had begun to rise over fields that I wanted to be on the road again, in due time to cross the barrier-gate of Shirakawa . The gods seemingly possessed my soul turning it inside out and from every corner the roadside images seemed to entice me, so that it was impossible for me to stay idle at home.

Even as I was getting ready, mending my torn trousers, tying a new strap to my hat and applying moxa to my legs to strengthen them, I was dreaming of the full moon rising over the islands of Matsushima. Finally, I sold my house and temporarily moved to Sampu’s cottage. Upon the threshold of my old home, I wrote a linked verse of eight lines and hung it on a wooden pillar.

The starting piece:
Behind this door
Now buried in deep grass
A different generation will celebrate
The Festival of Dolls.

The Narrow Road to the North

Joined by his traveling companion Kawai Sora (河合曾良), Matsuo Bashō left his home in Edo (Tokyo) in the spring of 1689 for a journey to the north and west coast of Japan. The journey took approximately five months, with Bashō and Sora traveling on foot about ten miles a day.

There were some 40 stations and stops on his journey including: the Tokugawa shrine at Nikkō, Kurobane in the province of Nasu, a Zen temple called Unganji, the Shirakawa barrier, on towards Sukagawa crossing the River Abukuma, through the famous hills of Asaka, through the castle towns of Abumizuri and Shiroishi, arriving at the province of Kasajima, crossing the River Natori and entering the city of Sendai, stopping at the River Noda no Tamagawa and the so-called Rock in the Offing, at the pine woods called Sue no Matsuyama, then to the islands of Matsushima, to Hiraizumi where the glory of three generations of the Fujiwara family passed away like a snatch of empty dream, then down the west coast of Japan to Sakata, Kisakata, and Etchū.

He and Sora parted ways at Yamanaka, but at Ōgaki he met a few of his other disciples before departing alone to the Grand Shrine of Ise near Kyoto, where the account ends.

After his journey end, Bashō spent five years editing the work before publishing it.

The Work in Full

View the Matsuo Basho Archives

Oh dear, green leaves, bright sun

Oh dear! green leaves, young leaves, sparkling sun

あらたふと青葉若葉の日の光
ara touto aoba wakaba no hi no hikari

Nikko

Basho and his traveling companion Sora arrived at Mount Nikko (日光 nikki, the sun’s brilliance) on March the 30th and lodged at an inn at the foot of the mountain.

Basho writes:

“The inn’s host introduced himself as ‘Honest’ Gozaemon (五左衛門) and told me to sleep in perfect peace on his grass pillow, that his sole ambition was to be worthy of his name (衛 to protect). I watched him carefully, and found him stubbornly honest, utterly devoid of worldly cleverness. It was as if the good Buddha himself had taken the shape of a man to help me in my wanderings. Indeed, such holy honesty and purity like his must not be scorned, for it verges on the perfection Confucius preaches.”

Basho continues:

“On the first day of the fourth month, I climbed Mount Nikko, which means the bright beams of the sun… A thousand years ago, the sainted Kobo Diashi (Kukai) built a temple upon it. He must have had the power to see into the future, for the mountain is now the seat of the most sacred of shrines and its benevolent power protects the land, embracing the people like the bright beams of the sun. To say more about the shrine would violate its holiness.”

How awe inspiring, to stand in solitude amidst the newly budded maple trees and towering cedars (杉 Sugi), with the blue morning sky a background, and the brilliant yellow sun sparkling through the pale green leaves. Surely, sainted Kobo Diashi had experienced this moment too.

Gentle reader, who has not seen the sun sparkling through the new pale green leaves of spring and summer and not been inspired?

Notes

あら ara, Oh!
若葉 wakaba, young pale green leaves
青葉若葉 aoba wakaba, the young leaves of early summer
日の光 no hi no hikari, sunlight
光 hikari, gleaming, sparkling light
日光 nikki, bright sunlight

Oku no Hosomichi – The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Put aside the haiku.

Let us pause on our journey with the Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō. Let us try to understand why one leaves home to make a perilous journey on a route one knows to be infested robbers and cut-throats. It is a journey to the north of Japan, taken in the late spring of 1689 with his traveling companion Kawai Sora and a donkey for provisions. The journey on foot would take approximately 5 months, 156 days to be exact, covering some 1,500 miles.

Basho’s home was not much. A small cottage underneath a banana tree in the Fukagawa neighborhood across the Sumida River from Japan’s capital city, Edo. That alone might be the cause of his curiosity. For the world is large, and it has many lessons to teach.

But let our peripatetic poet speak for himself.

The days and months are travelers of a hundred generations, like the years that come and go. Some pass their lives afloat on boats, or face old age closely leading horses by the bridle. Their journey is life, journeying is home. And many are the old men who meet their end upon the road.

How long ago, I wonder, did I see a drifting cloud borne away upon the wind, that ceaseless dreams of wanderlust aroused? Only last year, I had been wandering along the coasts and bays; and in the autumn, I swept away the cobwebs from my tumbledown hut on the banks of the Sumida and soon afterwards saw the old year out.

But when the spring mists rose up into the sky, the gods of desire possessed me, and burned my mind with longing to go beyond the barrier at Shirakawa. The spirits of the road beckoned. I could not concentrate.

So, I patched up my trousers, put new cords in my straw hat, and strengthened my knees with moxa. A vision of the moon at Matsushima was already in my mind. I sold my hut and wrote this just before moving to a cottage owned by Sampū:

“Even this grass hut could for the new owner be a festive house of dolls!”

This was the first of an eight verse sequence, which I left hanging on a post inside the hut.

Original Japanese

月日は百代の過客にして行かふ年も又旅人也。舟の上に生涯をうかべ、馬の口とらえて老をむかふる物は日々旅にして旅を栖とす。古人も多く旅に死せるあり。予もいづれの年よりか片雲の風にさそはれて、漂白の思ひやまず、海濱にさすらへ、去年の秋江上の破屋に蜘の古巣をはらひてやゝ年も暮、春立る霞の空に白川の関こえんと、そゞろ神の物につきて心をくるはせ、道祖神のまねきにあひて、取もの手につかず。もゝ引の破をつゞり、笠の緒付かえて、三里に灸すゆるより、松嶋の月先心にかゝりて、住る方は人に譲り、杉風が別墅に移るに、草の戸も住替る代ぞひなの家面八句を庵の柱に懸置。

Summer Grass 夏草 natsuka

summer grass
all that remains
of a Samurai’s dream

夏草や　兵どもが　夢の跡

Natsukusa ya/ Tsuwamonodomo ga/ Yume no ato

June 29, 1689

Having left Edo in late spring of 1689, Matsuo Basho and Sora travel north, arriving at Hiraizumi on June 29th. Once the seat of the Northern branch of the Fujiwara family, it was destroyed in 1189. As the poet gazes down at the old battlefield, he hears in his head the words of the ancient Chinese poet Du Fu and explains:

“In the space of a dream, three glorious generations of Fujiwara vanished; two miles in the distance are the remains of the Great Gate. Hidehira’s headquarters have turned into rice paddies and wild fields. Only Kinkeizan, the Golden Fowl Hill, remains as it once was.

First, we climbed Takadachi, Castle-on-the-Heights, from where we could see the Kitakami, a broad river that flows from the south. Nearby, Koromo River rounds Izumi Castle and at a point beneath Castle-on-the-Heights, it drops into Kitakami. The ancient ruins of Yasuhira and others, lying behind Koromo Barrier, appear to close off the southern entrance and guard against the Ainu barbarians.

With his most loyal retainers, Yoshitsune fortified himself in the castle, but his dreams of glory quickly turned to grass.

“The state is destroyed, / rivers and hills remain. / The city walls return to spring, / grasses and trees are green. “

With Du Fu’s lines in my head, I lay down my bamboo hat and let time and tears flow.”

Notes on translation

夏草 natsuka, summer grass

兵 tsuwamono, warrior, soldier, more specifically a brave and strong soldier, a Samurai 侍 which Basho once was. Basho’s use of the older term 兵 tsuwamono, is suggestive of a lowly soldier or pawn, someone utilized by others

夢の跡 yume no ato, the trace, mark of a dream. Compare Basho’s idea with William Shakespeare’s “We are such stuff / As dreams are made on.” (The Tempest, 1610/1611)

More thoughts on Basho’s Summer Grass

The grass of summer
And warriors’ dreams
Are all that’s left.

The grass of summer, the only trace of a Samurai’s dreams

Summer grass! All that left of a Samurai’s dream.

Rough Seas, Sado Island, and the Heavenly River

the rough sea / stretching towards Sado Island/ and the Heavenly River

荒海や佐渡によこたふ天河

araumi ya / Sado ni yokotau / amanogawa

the rough sea / stretching towards Sado Island/ and the Heavenly River

Sora’s Diary, July 6, 1689

According to the notes of Sora, Matsuo Basho’s younger companion on his journey to the north, the two arrive in Niigata after a grueling 9 days from Sakata, during which the humid weather afflicts the nerves and there is no writing. On the night of July 6, Master Basho stares out at the rough Japan Sea towards Sado Island and observes the sea, the island, and the Milky Way as one.

Basho’s Road, by Scott Watson, No. 39

Basho and Sora arrival on July 7th coincides with the celebration of Tanabata or Star Festival. It celebrates the meeting of the deities Orihime and Hikoboshi (“star crossed lovers” Vega and Altair), who it is said are separated by the Heavenly River and allowed to meet only once a year on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month.

Basho did not make the trip to Sado Island, which is about 40 miles off the western coast of Japan. The isolated island was well known as place where noblemen, warriors, artists and high priests were exiled for political crimes. It is home to several temples and shrines.

Notes on translation

荒海 rough seas
に into
佐渡 Sado Island
天河 Milky Way, literally Heavenly River

evening-milky-way

Gabi Greve provides a good narrative explaining Basho’s haiku and several alternate translatins.