The only substantial
collection in English
of Basho's renku, tanka,
letters and spoken word
along with his haiku, travel
journals, and essays.
The only poet in old-time
literature who paid attention with praise
to ordinary women, children, and teenagers
in hundreds of poems
Hundreds upon hundreds of Basho works
(mostly renku)about women, children,
teenagers, friendship, compassion, love.
These are resources we can use to better
understand ourselves and humanity.
Interesting and heartfelt
(not scholarly and boring)
for anyone concerned with
humanity.
“An astonishing range of
social subject matter and
compassionate intuition”
"The primordial power
of the feminine emanating
from Basho's poetry"
Hopeful, life-affirming
messages from one of
the greatest minds ever.
Through his letters,
we travel through his mind
and discover Basho's
gentleness and humanity.
I plead for your help in
finding a person or group
to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material,
to edit and improve the material, to receive 100%
of royalties, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide
and preserve for future generations.
Quotations from Basho Prose
The days and months are
guests passing through eternity.
The years that go by
also are travelers.
The mountains in silence
nurture the spirit;
the water with movement
calms the emotions.
All the more joyful,
all the more caring
Seek not the traces
of the ancients;
seek rather the
places they sought.
A mirror was associated with the Sun-Goddess; being round and shiny, a “child of the sun”; the soul originally clear as a mirror; sins like dust easily wiped off to restore purity.
Basho explores three types of mirror: one, used by woman to see her face and hair when putting on make-up and styling, 2) shrine mirror on display to represent the Goddess, and 3) shrine mirror hidden away inside the shrine to represent the hidden and inner spirit.
Of whose nation a momento? moon shines like a mirror
Fascinated by a song composed for the koto
The moon has watched through the ages every country rise, continue, and fall. When we look into a mirror facing us, we see our own face – but when the mirror is turned away from us, we see elsewhere: thus the rear-view mirror in my car enables me to see what is going on behind me while I drive forward. Likewise the moon – says Basho – when we look it, it turns our vision back to the past, it becomes a momento of the past.
The next poet explores another means for turning vision back and connecting with the past: music. Modern composers try to make music new and different, but music on a traditional instrument such as the 13 string koto continuously holds on to the past. Every song contains remnants of many older songs and every performance reflects all past performances. As the moon brings to mind the past, composing a song brings to mind the decades and centuries of musical experience which go into the song. The nature shared by moon, memory, mirror, and music makes each one of these fascinating.
Spring unseen on back of the mirror plum blossoms
The back of a mirror is bronze with inlaid design of blossoms or birds. Basho looks through the mirror to “see” the Spring which cannot be seen, the spring which never changes or passes away . The front of the mirror is “the interface between physical and spiritual,” while the back also is a separate reality Basho seeks to “see.”
Ritual wands aflame spirit of white dove
Prayers for the dead moon shines on the mirror stained with blood
Nusa are wooden wands with white paper streamers used in Shinto purification rituals; a priest or miko (female shaman) waves the wand left and right to absorb unclean energy. The most defiling event, according to Shinto, is death, so at a funeral, many ritual wands are used and defiled, so must be thrown away or burned. The dove is the messenger of Hachiman, the god of war, and patron saint of the Genji clan, and white is the color of that clan of warriors, so the spirit of a white dove rising from the red flames of burning wands suggests the funeral of a warrior who has died.
The opposition of white with red continues in Basho’s stanza. The mirror represents the pure soul of the warrior who has died, but his blood shed in war stains the mirror to occlude the moonlight. The death of a warrior in this pair, the death of a nation in the last pair, both seen in the mirror realm.
Oh so many disappointments assail me
The mirror reflects my laughing face
In her misery she grimaces into the mirror, laughing with ugliness in mockery of happiness, which the mirror reflects. The mirror cannot lie: it can tell what it sees..
My beloved sends me this letter I rip to shreds!
The face of a demon I cry at the sight
Unable to endure the message in the letter, I tear it to shreds, then when I go to do my hair, I am shocked to see in the mirror the demon of my jealousy still within my face.
Notice how in these verses, Basho fulfills the previous stanza with a mirror image.
Wretched in the dew my wife’s fallen hair
Speaking of love, in the mirror her face still I can see
Fallen hair” means the wife has died – for a woman’s hair contains her life force. “Dew” is the forces of wetness that rust, corrode, and wear out all things. Through physical images—morning dew and long straight hair – Basho touches the heart of the man who has lost his wife. The following poet, introduces the mirror the wife looked in to style her hair; she looked in the mirror so often it holds a copy of her face – or maybe the husband and wife were so in tune with each other that their faces came to resemble each other. A mirror watches the beauty of a woman rise, continue, and fall – so it contains a record of her face
The major shrine of Atsuta, near Nagoya, fell into disrepair in the centuries of civil that racked Japan until early in the 17th Century Tokugawa Ieyasu forced the country into peace. The shogunate he created financed the repair of this shrine
Repolished shrine mirror clear shining snow
The mirror that has been repoloished now can truly represent the spirit of the kami enshrined here. Fresh snow also shines like the Sun Goddess.
The warriors’ sword exhibition gets violent
Woman soon cry out so they are banished
Appearance warped by a mirror, her resentment
At a Shinto festival, warriors exhibit their skills while dedicating them to the gods. Men in the audience get a thrill from long sharp swords waved about, but while the women know it’s a show, they respond with real emotion. Men cannot stand it when women make a fuss, distracting from the solemnity and also disturbing the entertainment, so they forbid them from attending. This contrast between appearance and reality, Basho portrays in a woman shocked to see her beauty marred by a warp in the mirror. Adults know that warped images in a mirror are not reality, that they disappear without a trace -- but still the partial loss of the beauty she has carefully cultivated brings her anguish.
With no home only wrapped in silk soul's mirror
What the miko thinks is what she speaks
A hidden shrine mirror would be wrapped in a fine silk cloth, then encased in a wooden box. When a mirror represents the human soul, the wooden box is the physical body – so here the poet describes the soul of a man who has died. The miko, or female shaman, acts as a medium to speak for the deceased soul. She says what the soul who has taken over her mind tells her to say. Her mind is a mirror which reflects the messages coming from the land of the dead.
Carmen Blacker, in The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan, explains that the miko twanged her bow of catalpa wood with one hemp string to “emit a resonance which reaches into the world of spirits, enabling the shaman who manipulates it to communicate with that world.”
Final day of mourning, sadness speaks through catalpa bow
On the 49th and final day of mourning, a widow listens to a miko channel her husband’s spirit. Never again to make herself beautiful, no longer will she need a mirror.
Young village girls were sold to a brothel to save the family from financial ruin. Brokers went to areas struck by famine, searching for “bargains.” Historian Mikiso Hane describes how a girl was told she was going to the City to be a maid or waitress, but then was forced, from age 12 or 13, to have sex, sometimes with brutal or insulting men, every night of the week, and was beaten if they refused or tried to escape. She remained in slavery till death – which, with no defense against venereal diseases, by typical by age 22 – however for as long as she could stay alive and healthy, she could live in luxury other village girls could only dream of. The brothel provided a two-room suite, decent food – far better than what she got at home -- expensive kimono, makeup, and the mirror she needed to make herself beautiful – for she was merchandise and male customers paid high prices for a night with her.
Now to this brothel my body has been sold
Can I trust you with a letter I write? mirror polisher
Basho gives her thoughts she wishes to send in a letter She has no way to get her letter out without the brothel seeing it, so she asks the man polishing her mirror if he will post it outside (without telling his employer). In Basho’s day, mirrors were bronze-plated with an amalgam of mercury. In time the plating got cloudy. Mirror polishers were craftsmen who grinded the surface on a whetstone, and polished with mildly acidic fruit juice, to restore the original clarity – so the mirror polisher is, in effect, a servant of the Sun Goddess, one who can be trusted with a woman’s private message. Every time she looks into her wonderfully clear mirror to do her hair or make-up, she will see him, the carrier of her message; she will see her beloved reading the letter, and she will see the holy Sun shining with Hope. Here is Basho’s genius in all fullness, his deepest penetration into the human heart: “Can I trust you?”
I plead for your help in finding a person or group to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material, to edit and improve the presentation, to receive all royalties from sales, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide and preserve for future generations.
The only substantial
collection in English
of Basho's renku, tanka,
letters and spoken word
along with his haiku, travel
journals, and essays.
The only poet in old-time
literature who paid attention with praise
to ordinary women, children, and teenagers
in hundreds of poems
Hundreds upon hundreds of Basho works
(mostly renku)about women, children,
teenagers, friendship, compassion, love.
These are resources we can use to better
understand ourselves and humanity.
Interesting and heartfelt
(not scholarly and boring)
for anyone concerned with
humanity.
“An astonishing range of
social subject matter and
compassionate intuition”
"The primordial power
of the feminine emanating
from Basho's poetry"
Hopeful, life-affirming
messages from one of
the greatest minds ever.
Through his letters,
we travel through his mind
and discover Basho's
gentleness and humanity.
I plead for your help in
finding a person or group
to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material,
to edit and improve the material, to receive 100%
of royalties, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide
and preserve for future generations.
Quotations from Basho Prose
The days and months are
guests passing through eternity.
The years that go by
also are travelers.
The mountains in silence
nurture the spirit;
the water with movement
calms the emotions.
All the more joyful,
all the more caring
Seek not the traces
of the ancients;
seek rather the
places they sought.
