The World Haiku Festival 2002 Basho Journey: PRELUDE (9)

 

The Daily Yomiuri Embarks on a Long Journey
of Discussing Oku-no-Hosomichi
Susumu Takiguchi

The Daily Yomiuri, the largest national daily in Japan, has started a series of special feature on one of the most famous journeys ever undertaken by a human soul, entitled “OKUNO HOSOMICHI SPECIAL”. The first instalment was published on Tuesday 30 July 2002 under the subtitle of “Basho’s great journey follows inner turmoil”. The series is written by Yomiuri Shimbun staff writer and planned to run nine instalments.

I am privileged and honoured to be asked to help this series in a small way. From the point of view of WHC, what a happy coincidence this really is, as we also have embarked on our little journey of “Prelude to the WHF2002/Basho Journey”, prior to our own Oku-no-Hosomichi for real!

The Yomiuri’s first instalment talked about the Fukagawa where Basho lived and the circumstances under which he decided to set off to his long journey to the North, just as we did in the first instalment of our “Prelude”.

Why did Basho give up his job as a “sohshoh”, or “haikai-shi” (haikai master) and move from Nihon-bashi, a fashionable district in Edo (today’s Tokyo) and the centre of Edo haikai, to the remote Fukagawa along the Sumida River? The Yomiuri feature says:

"The accepted reason… is that he was sick and tired of earning a living grading student haiku…"

This is how Basho began his life in 1680 at what was later to be called “Basho-an” (Banana hut), which is said to have been slightly renovated from a watchman’s hut (against poachers), owned by Sugiyama Sampu (1647-1732), a wealthy “o-naya” (fish merchant for the Tokugawa government). Basho-an was burnt down, and Basho moved to the so-called second Basho-an which was built near the first one, living there until he set off to his last journey in 1694. It was of course in 1689 that Basho undertook his "Oku-no-Hosomichi" Journey.

The Yomiuri quotes a remark by Fumitake Yokohama, vice curator of the Basho Museum in Tokiwa, Koto-ku:

 "… he [Basho] decided to settle down there, perhaps because he was so fascinated with the scenery – you could see Mt. Fuji across from a river that carried boats floating up and down…"

Then, the inevitable frog. In 1917, after a typhoon and a tidal wave, “a heavy stone frog about the size of two fists appeared from the mud”. This crude sculpture is believed to be the one which Basho was very fond of, and is the only tangible evidence of the existence of Basho-an. No one knows the exact spot where the Basho-an stood. The stone frog survived the fierce American air raid during the last war and that alone might justify its deity status of people’s worship. It is now a treasured display of the Basho Museum.

The Yomiuri article refers to the fire which destroyed the first Basho-an and to the death of his mother which happened soon after that, and observes:

"These painful incidents could well have made Basho realize the impermanence of life."

They did help Basho to form his world view, which had been tinged with the philosophy of “Roh-Soh” (Lao-tze and Chung-tze) and Zen, both of which preoccupied Basho around this period, which in turn led him to the view that one could not settle in one place in this life (“mu-shojuh”), i.e. a longing for wandering. It was the stirring within Basho of following in the footsteps of Japanese and Chinese great poets of the past, especially Saigyo (1118-1190).

When he was forty years old, he started a series of journeys, beginning with the “Nozarashi Kiko”, followed by “Kashima Mohde”, “Oi no Kobumi” onto the “Sarashina Kikoh”. The last one was followed by "Oku-no-Hosomichi".

Thus it was, that on 27 March (16 May in Western calendar) of 1689, Basho was accompanied by his disciple, Sora, to set off on the journey of the narrow road into the North. He, of course, had given his Basho-an to someone else and moved to Saita-an, another house belonging to Sampu, situated in nearby Fukagawa Rokken-bori. However, according to the Sora Diary, in reality, they had embarked on the journey when they got on board a small boat at Fukagawa on 20 March (9 May), which took them to Senju where they alighted. They, therefore, had stayed the whole week before they spent the “fictitious first night” (but the seventh night in reality) at Kasukabe on 27 March. This is partly because Basho wanted to have the philosophical prelude to the text, and partly because he wanted a dramatic contrast between it and the description of actual journey. Fiction and imagination play an important part in Oku-no-Hosomichi literature. The Yomiuri feature ends with the following observation:

"He [Basho] was 46 years old [45 according to Western reckoning] at a time when the average life expectancy was only 50 years. He literally risked his life for the journey."

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