The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Matsuo Bashō

First published:Oku no hosomichi, 1694 (English translation, 1933)

Type of work: Diary and poetry

The Work:

Matsuo Bashō, known as Bashō, combines his talents as a poet and essayist in the writing of the poetic diary, a form of literature that was prized highly during Bashō’s time. Bashō, whose name is a nickname meaning “banana tree,” had been called Kinsaku as a child and Matsuo Munefusa as an adult. When he first began writing poetry, he called himself Sobo, and later, for about eight years, he used the name Tosei.

Planted in the garden near one of Bashō’s residences was a banana plant that had wide leaves, especially enjoyed by Bashō. When people sought directions to his house, they were told to go to the house with the banana tree; gradually Bashō came to be referred to as the “banana tree person.” Around 1681, he took Bashō as his pen name. Changing names and taking pen names was not unusual in Japan at the time, especially for a person such as Bashō, who was of samurai, or feudal warrior, stock.

After Bashō moved to Edo, now Tokyo, he became a teacher of haikai, a special kind of poem that was at first something of a light-hearted diversion from the more serious renga, or linked verse. This type of poetry has an opening stanza composed by one person and is completed by another person, hence the name “linked verse.” Largely because of Bashō’s artistry, the haikai developed into a serious kind of poem. The word haiku developed from the hokku, or “starting verse” of a linked verse. A haiku, then, is an independent poem derived from the haikai; thus, the haiku is literally the hokku of a haikai. This miniature poem has seventeen syllables, which usually follow a pattern of three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively, as in “a ya me ku sa (blue flag herbage, or iris)/ a shi ni mu su ba n (feet on bind)/ wa ra ji no o (straw sandals of cord),” which can be translated, without following the syllabic pattern, as “I will bind irises/ Around my feet/ Thongs for my sandals.”

Bashō wanted to go beyond traditional haikai forms and find fresh ways of writing poetry. He thought that traveling would provide a means of broadening the scope of his life and his poetry, so he made four journeys between 1684 and 1689. These journeys can be considered spiritual pilgrimages as well as physical journeys to seek the ultimate of beauty.

The first journey, westward, began in the fall of 1684 and was completed in the summer of 1685. On returning, Bashō wrote the first of several travel diaries, Norarashi kikō (1687; The Record of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton, 1966). A second journey westward in 1687 resulted in two more diaries, Oi no kobumi (1709; The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel, 1966) and Sarashina kikō (1704; A Visit to Sarashina Village, 1966). It was Bashō’s third journey, his longest, that provided the material for The Narrow Road to the Deep North. This time, Bashō went northward into the least developed areas of Japan, the northern part of Japan’s largest island, Honshu. The diary in its published form took about four years to complete, although it is only about thirty pages long in English translation.

The book’s original title, Oku no hosomichi, has been translated several ways; it is difficult to express in English all that the word oku includes. On one hand, the name is that of an actual road that Bashō traveled; oku is also a short form for Michi-no-Oku (or Michinoku), generally translated as “the road’s far recesses.” Michi-no-Oku was a popular name for a region called Ōshu, or the “far provinces.” Over and above the literal explanations of the word, it carries a sense of an “inner recess” or something “within oneself.” Bashō was known for choosing titles that could be interpreted on more than one level, in this case, an actual journey as well as an inward search.

The Narrow Road to the Deep North traces Bashō’s fifteen-hundred-mile route from Edo to Ogaki, describing activities and places he visits or stays during the 156-day trip. The diary is by no means just an ordinary travel journal with a few poems. Bashō sometimes changes actual facts about the trip—dates, itinerary, and the like—to improve the effect of the work as literature. The haiku interspersed with prose passages are some of his finest poems. The diary opens with a prologue that announces Bashō’s yearning to travel and reminds the reader that life is a journey. The introduction ends, as many sections do, with a haiku that expresses his feeling about his departure.

As Bashō and his companion, Kawai Sora, make their way northward to the well-known temple and mountain at Nikko, and on to Kurobane, Bashō records in his prose commentary the noteworthy sights they visit. Much of the richness of both the prose and the poetry is realized because so many of the places the travelers visit are historical sites of which most Japanese have heard. It is characteristic of Japanese literature, especially of earlier works, to allude to places, sites, and people from ancient classical writing that Japanese people will recognize. The association with the earlier works makes the passage all the more meaningful and evocative of the glory of days long past.

Sometimes Bashō stops only briefly in a village after seeing some famous landmark; at other times he stays several days and visits friends or acquaintances in the area. His haiku are evoked by his reaction to or reflection on something associated with what he experiences. At Ashino, for example, going to see a famous willow tree provides his topic; a famous stone at Shinobu inspires another, as does the Tsubo Stone, so called because the dimensions of the stone are approximately three by six feet, or one tsubo in Japanese measurement of the day. It was near Ichikawa, where the Tsubo Stone was located, that Bashō found the road called Oku-no-hosomichi, which provided the diary’s title.

As Bashō advances from one village to another, visiting castles, mountains, and other famous sites or simply noting the natural beauty of a place, he is often overcome with something of awe-inspiring beauty and writes a haiku on the spot. Some things had been more meaningful than others. At Hiraizumi, on approaching the ruins of the Castle-on-the-Heights, he finds the site now reduced to nothing more than an untended field of grass. Bashō thought of the days long past when the renowned Yoshitsune had fortified himself at this place, glory now reduced to wilderness of grass. He is reminded of a line in a classical Chinese poem by Tu Fu, an eighth century poet, which says, “Countries may fall, but their rivers and mountains remain.” These reflections cause Bashō to sit at the site weeping, oblivious to the passing of time. These strong feelings brought forth one of his often-quoted haiku: “Natsugusa ya/ Tsuwamono domo ga/ Yume no ato” (The summer grasses/ Of brave soldiers’ dreams/ The aftermath). Because the proper English punctuation is not clearly indicated in the Japanese version, some translations render the last two lines as a question: Are warrior’s heroic deeds/ Only dreams that pass?

Moving on, Bashō continues to record his impressions, sometimes comparing or contrasting one with another. When he visits Matsushima, a group of many small islands, he is overcome with its beauty and declares that Matsushima is “the most beautiful place in all Japan!” Later, when he comes to the northernmost point of his journey, Kisakata, he records his visit to a famous lagoon, which he describes as having a “sense of desolate loneliness and sorrow of a tormented soul” that is, nevertheless, beautiful, like Matsushima.

Beginning the southwesterly descent from the northern country, Bashō passes through the Etchigo Province. At one point, near present-day Niigata, Sado Island is visible from the mainland, and Bashō writes several haiku that are among his best largely because they manifest sabi, a kind of loneliness in which the immensity and strength, or even indifference, of the universe is set in contrast to human finiteness and insignificance. A reader may experience the feeling of being overpowered or dissolved in the face of the infinite. One poem, in which there is no trace of humanity, but only an expression of the primitive universe, illustrates this concept: “Araumi ya/ Sado ni yokotau/ Amanogawa” (The rough sea/ Extending toward Sado Isle,/ The Milky Way). Sometimes amanogawa is translated more literally as “Heaven’s River”; the effect, however, is that of the configuration of the stars in such an arrangement that they look something like a river flowing across the sky, forming what is called the Milky Way in English.

Sometimes Bashō makes associations with older poems in the Japanese tradition. On August 30, 1689, he reaches the castle town of Kanazawa and then makes his way to Daishoji and on to Maruoka. By this time, fall has arrived. His companion Sora becomes ill and returns to relatives in the Ise Province, but Bashō travels on after a student of haiku comes to accompany him the rest of the way, arriving in Ogaki around October 18. Bashō comments that, though he has not recovered from the fatigue of the journey, he does not want to miss going to the renowned Ise Shrine to see the ceremony of the Shinto deity being transferred to a newly built shrine, a special occasion that takes place only once every twenty-one years.

Soryū, a scholar-priest who helped prepare the final draft of Bashō’s journal, writes a brief epilogue in which he tells readers, “At times you will find yourself rising up to applaud. At other times you will quietly hang your head with emotion.” Bashō is said to have had more than two thousand students at the time of his death. There is no doubt about his reputation among his contemporaries and later Japanese poets. His work elevated the haiku into a mature art form. Because of the variety of his poems, he appealed to readers of various tastes. Some readers like his early witty verse; rural poets have preferred the later poems in a plainer style. The poet Issa is said to have emulated him as a diarist. In the twentieth century, Bashō was compared by some to England’s William Wordsworth because of his seeking a mystic union with nature. Largely because of Bashō, there is an interest around the world in the haiku as a literary form.

Bibliography

Bashō, Matsuo. A Haiku Journey: Bashō’s “Narrow Road to a Far Province.” Translated by Dorothy Britton. New York: Kodansha International, 2002. Especially valuable for the translator’s introduction, which provides valuable insights into the haiku and into Bashō’s poetic artistry.

Katō, Shūichi. A History of Japanese Literature: From the Man’yoshu to Modern Times. Translated and edited by Don Sanderson. New ed. 1979. Richmond, England: Curzon Press, 1997. In addition to placing Bashō in the context of Japanese literature, this treatment discusses Bashō’s association with both the haiku and the poetic diary as a literary genre.

Kerkham, Eleanor, ed. Matsuo Bashō’s Poetic Spaces: Exploring Haikai Intersections. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Collection of essays examining Bashō’s contributions to literature and philosophy. Some of the essays analyze his geographical imagination, his views of art and nature, and his influence on Japanese poets.

Qiu, Peipei. Bashō and the Dao: The Zhuangzi and the Transformation of Haikai. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005. Describes how Bashō and other haikai poets in the seventeenth century adapted the Zhuangzi and other works of Daoist literature, eventually transforming haikai from comic verse to a form of high poetry.

Ueda, Makoto. Literary and Art Theories in Japan. 1967. New ed. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1991. Examines the literary theories of a number of writers. Bashō receives thorough discussion in the light of his contribution to the principles that govern the writing of haiku. Part of the Michigan Classics in Japanese Studies series.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Matsuo Bashō. New ed. New York: Kodansha International, 1989. One of the most valuable books on Bashō, this work provides substantive discussion of his life and his literary development, as well as critical commentary and an evaluation of his place in literature.