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.

Fukagawa

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 .