Basho's thoughts on...

• Woman Central
• Introduction to this site
• The Human Story:
• Praise for Women
• Love and Sex in Basho
• Children and Teens
• Humanity and Friendship
• On Translating Basho
• Basho Himself
• Poetry and Music
• The Physical Body
• Food, Drink, and Fire
• Animals in Basho
• Space and Time
• Letters Year by Year
• Bilingual Basho 日本語も
• 芭蕉について日本語の論文
• Basho Tsukeku 芭蕉付句
• BAMHAY (Basho Amazes Me! How About You?)
• New Articles


Matsuo Basho 1644~1694

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.



Basho Spoken Word


Only this, apply your heart
to what children do


"The attachment to Oldness
is the very worst disease
a poet can have."


“The skillful have a disease;
let a three-foot child
get the poem"


"Be sick and tired
of yesterday’s self."


"This is the path of a fresh
lively taste with aliveness
in both heart and words."
.

"In poetry is a realm
which cannot be taught.
You must pass through it
yourself. Some poets have made
no effort to pass through, merely
counting things and trying
to remember them.
There was no passing
through the things."


"In verses of other poets,
there is too much making
and the heart’s
immediacy is lost.
What is made from
the heart is good;
the product of words
shall not be preferred."


"We can live without poetry,
yet without harmonizing
with the world’s feeling
and passing not through
human feeling, a person
cannot be fulfilled. Also,
without good friends,
this would be difficult."


"Poetry benefits
from the realization
of ordinary words."


"Many of my followers
write haiku equal to mine,
however in renku is the
bone marrow of this old man."


"Your following stanza
should suit the previous one as an expression
of the same heart's connection."


"Link verses the way
children play."


"Make renku
ride the Energy.
Get the timing wrong,
you ruin the rhythm."


"The physical form
first of all must be graceful
then a musical quality
makes a superior verse."

"As the years passed
by to half a century.
asleep I hovered
among morning clouds
and evening dusk,
awake I was astonished
at the voices of mountain
streams and wild birds."


“These flies sure enjoy
having an unexpected
sick person.”



Haiku of Humanity


Drunk on sake
woman wearing haori
puts in a sword


Night in spring
one hidden in mystery
temple corner


Wrapping rice cake
with one hands she tucks
hair behind ear


On Life's journey
plowing a small field
going and returning


Child of poverty
hulling rice, pauses to
look at the moon


Tone so clear
the Big Dipper resounds
her mallet


Huddling
under the futon, cold
horrible night


Jar cracks
with the ice at night
awakening



Basho Renku
Masterpieces

With her needle
in autumn she manages
to make ends meet
Daughter playing koto
reaches age seven


After the years
of grieving. . . finally
past eighteen
Day and night dreams of
Father in that battle


Now to this brothel
my body has been sold
Can I trust you
with a letter I wrote,
mirror polisher?


Only my face
by rice-seedling mud
is not soiled
Breastfeeding on my lap
what dreams do you see?



Single renku stanzas


Giving birth to
love in the world, she
adorns herself



Autumn wind
saying not a word
child in tears


Among women
one allowed to lead
them in chorus


Easing in
her slender forearm
for his pillow


Two death poems:


On a journey taken ill
dreams on withered fields
wander about

Clear cascade -
into the ripples fall
green pine needles




basho4humanity
@gmail.com




Plea for Affiliation

 

Plea For Affiliation

 

I pray for your help

in finding someone
individual, university,

or foundation - 
to take over my

3000 pages of material,   
to cooperate with me 

to edit the material,
to receive all royalties 

from sales, to spread

Basho’s wisdom worldwide,
and preserve for

future generations.


basho4humanity

@gmail.com

 



Home  >  Topics  >  Children and Teens  >  C-13


Journey with Grandnephew

Basho on the road with Jirobei

Legend:
Words of Basho in bold
Words of other poets not bold

Basho's haiku, renku,  letters, and  spoken word about Jirobei, his traveling companion on this final journey, about the two girls left home,  and about children in general.                                   

 

In 1694: Basho has various reasons for going on another journey west to Kansai: to visit his brother Hanzaemon and sister Oyoshi, and to hang out with old friends in his hometown, and in Kyoto and Zeze;    to mediate the disputes occurring among his followers in Nagoya  and Osaka. Also, Jutei is sick with the tuberculosis she picked up from her husband, Basho's nephew Toin,  who died of it. She has no income yet three children dependent on her: They need a place where they can live for free. Basho lives alone in his three room “hut” although the boy Jirobei stays with him part-time and does light cooking.  Basho would have let all five of them move in, but the place was not really big enough for an old man,  sick widow, Masa believed to be about 13,  Ofu 11, and an about 15 year-old boy who just lost his father. We imagine that the boy and his hormones were a bit difficult to live with at this time in a young girl’s life. The perfect solution was to take Jirobei with him and let the females have the place to themselves.


Every item in this chapter is chronological – as in real time – so as we read we travel with Basho and Jirobei through the final five months of Basho’s life.   The article ends with Jirobei waving a bamboo pole at flies while Basho dies. 

   

Sora accompanied Basho and Jirobei to Odawara where they spent the night of June 3rd.  He climbed with them to the barrier gate at Hakone Pass (elevation 725 meters) then returned to Edo while Basho and Jirobei continued their journey west. Meanwhile Jutei and her daughters moved into Basho’s place.  Here from a letter Basho sent to Sora on June 8th. 

     

 Thank you for your weary trek as far as Hakone.
 Jirobei has learned a bit and is doing well,
 but by and by his body gets exhausted, again and again.
 

Basho nowhere tells us his grandnephew’s age. Evidence suggests that Jirobei was about 15, and in Basho’s description he sounds like a 15 year old boy, able to move about nimbly and quick, but without much endurance – until pushed by day-after-day of exertion to develop endurance (as in Japanese middle-school athletic clubs).   Basho did something  - observing  teenagers  and recording their behavior - that Homer did in the Odyssey with Telemachas (see c-19 KIDS IN WESTERN LITERATURE TILL SHAKESPEARE) and I am searching for any other author in olden times who did this.  

 

Because the Oi River was flooding from heavy summer rains, they had to stay in Shimada for three days before they could cross. A month later on the journey, Basho sent another letter to Sora:

  

     For three days Jirobei rested his legs
     and my energy too was nourished,
     so in happiness we encountered the water.
     I wrote you before that Jirobei got exhausted.
     Well, after his three-day rest,
     he became robust and really makes an effort.
 

In 1688 at Suma  Basho pushed an eleven-year-old to overcome his reluctance to climb a mountain. That boy, by grabbing onto azalea bushes and bamboo grass roots got to the top, and Basho called him a “priest of the road” (See C-12 PROSE AND LETTERS ABOUT CHILDREN) 

 

but  he only had to deal with Basho for one afternoon. Jirobei has to go on day after day, league after league, in the rain and wind.


However when returning horses are discounted                                          
  for four maybe five miles, I let him ride  

                                                                

“Thanks, Uncle!”  People on one-way journeys rent the horse at one post-station, and leave  it at another, so it has to be returned anyway. After another 60 miles down the road:                                                                                                     

  both his shoulders and legs became strong together,


            あし も     つよく  成り  申し   候。                 
     Kata mo ashi mo tomo ni tsuyoku nari mōshi sōrō


Basho has noticed something very important about children and even teenagers: that given the right input they develop as a whole being, transcending yesterday’s self. Given a few days of concentrated input, they change.  In a few weeks of natural communication with local children, a “foreign” child will pick up their language and their accent. After just ten days of Basho’s Boot Camp (even with a three-day furlough) Jirobei discovered an energy no one knew he had. He changed from being a wimpy 15 year old to a robust young man, who can just walk and walk, carrying a backpack, without tiring. Basho’s ends this passage in his letter with a very beautiful antropological phrase:    

            

His first journey continues to be praiseworthy.
         旅     奇特  つづき 申し    候。
 Hatsu tabi kidoku ni tsuzuki mōshi sōrō
 
   We followed the travel information
   you gave us the day you returned to Edo,
   and Jirobei and I talked non-stop about it.                   

 

Jirobei is getting his education on the road, talking non-stop with Japan’s greatest poet.

 

Kyorai tells how in Nagoya Basho defended his new style of Lightness against followers accustomed to more traditional poetry

   

 To followers who had doubts about the style, he said
         Only this, apply your heart to what children do.
 
          子供       する              つく   べし
    Tada, kodomo no suru koto ni kokoro o tsuku beshi
 

Not what children say, or how children appear, but what children do (kodomo no suru koto). Children’s actions are whole – not split up by the conflicting parts of the adult self. Children see things invisible to an adult; lose a needle in the grass; ask a child to find it. Children can learn in minutes or days what adults cannot learn in months or years of practice. With their low ratio of body weight to surface area (their Lightness), flexible joints, and superlative sense of balance, they achieve what adults will not even attempt (skateboarding or ballet, for instance). Their small size allows them to take advantage of physical features and spaces adults do not notice. Basho would have agreed with George Nissen, who as a college student in 1934 invented the trampoline. Nissen said, to be creative:

 

You’ve got to watch kids. You learn from kids.

And sometimes you have to act like a kid.

 

 In my hometown I go to visit the home of Ensui

                          

 Return of the horse
 that carried off brushwood –

 sake for the planters
 

A while ago we saw a farmer lead the horse away with a load of brushwood; now, sometime later, they return, the brushwood replaced by a barrel of sake for those who have worked together planting rice throughout the village. In a hidden space and time, that brushwood became a sake barrel.

 

At about eight months of age, a baby realizes that things happen outside his or her own perception. Before this powerful realization, babies do not notice anything special when someone or something goes into hiding then reappears. After the change (at Ensui’s grand-daughter’s age) they find it most amusing. For years the young child is fascinated by ‘peak-a-boo’ (Japanese inai inai baa). Basho, at age 50, still has that child-like appreciation for what disappears then reappears with a difference.

 

“Tired of children”
  for the one who says this,
  no blossoms
 

 

To not-get-tired of children, we need to be one with them, giving up the heavy complications of adulthood, having the playful spirit of a child. Adults who cannot do this, or refuse to try, get no blossoms.

 

 Sampu owns a business so, like a modern shachō (company director), has a highly respected position in Japanese society.  He financed the building of Basho’s three room “hut” in Fukagawa where Jutei stays with her two daughters.  The mother is sick,   so Masa and Ofu are in charge of the house. As we see below, two neighbors, Ihei and Basho’s cousin Torin, are keeping an eye on things.  On July 13th from Zeze, Basho writes to Sampu:

 

     I know sometimes you visit them in Fukagawa though,      
     with Jutei being sick, your tea is not properly served.       
     Since you are so busy you need not trouble yourself     
     about them, however make sure the girls follow  
     Ihei and Torin’s instructions to protect the house
     in my absence and are especially careful with fire.
 

We can learn so, so much about Japanese society here:

1)  The importance of serving tea “properly” to a guest, especially a

       VIP guest. 

2)   the involvement of neighbors in caring for a family in need;   

3)  the ability of young teenage girls to rise up and get the job done

3)    the concern about fire in a land of wooden houses;

4)   Basho tells Sampu not to go to any trouble,

              then tells him to go to the trouble.

 

On July 24, Basho wrote a letter to Ihei, his neighbor in Fukagawa:

 

        and Ofu, with summer coming on, is she okay?    
       Please write and tell me all about her condition.  

                                                                                                                    

Basho only mentions Ofu, not Masa, so it appears the younger girl suffers from some health problem her sister is free of.   The Japanese summer is mushi atsui, day after day of sultry, muggy heat which makes all health problems worse.   (Just imagine there is no air conditioning anywhere on Earth.) Also in her house work -- as in villages worldwide today –  the young teenage girls breathe in wood smoke full of particles  that lodge in their lungs (p  136) and cause “consumption” (tuberbulosis of the lungs) . Basho is worried  about his grandniece’s delicate health.


On July 29th Basho receives a letter from Ihei telling of Jutei’s death. He responds the same day:   

        

 Jutei had no happiness and Masa and Ofu                                                  the same unhappiness; to express this is difficult.

 

 

We have seen hints of why Jutei and her daughters were unhappy.  I believe both Jutei and her husband Toin were fugitives from the law, or from her parents, constantly having to hide their identity, which must have severely limited their family’s opportunities for happiness. On page 116 we saw that Toin tended to “fall over” and “be negligent” and there was “discord between parent and child, brother and sister.”

 

When Basho received word that Jutei had died, he wanted Jirobei to return immediately to handle his mother’s affairs and see his sisters, but for two weeks none of Basho’s followers were available to escort the teenager the 300 miles to Edo. In a letter to Sampu, August 14, 1694, Basho writes:

 

Jirobei is now on his way to your city, two fellows,  Shiko and Izen, accompanying him, so there should be no trouble and you need not    worry about him.
 

 Jirobei and his attendants traveled  to Edo and back to rejoin Basho in Iga in September.  So this summer and autumn Jirobei traveled more than 1200 miles, or 2000 kilometers, much of the way on foot. Teenagers can do anything.  Basho, Jirobei, Shiko, and Izen left Iga to go to Nara and then Osaka.  Here Basho wrote this haiku:

                   

  The moon clear –
   attendant to a child
   scared by a fox       

                                                                                                          

Basho in just six words creates an epic confrontation; the child poised in the center of the verse between two eternal forces:  fear of the Unknown on one side and Clear Light on the other.  The verse is a profound work of deep relevance to all children and all those who care for children   In order for the verse to empower children, we focus on its expression of the clarity of the trustworthy and supportive attendant. As Basho approaches his own death and merging with the infinite, he offers children an attendant to walk along with on the road to knowledge, an attendant as clear and radiant as the Moon

 

 

On his death bed at a boarding house in Osaka, four days before the end, Basho chose two teenagers, his grandnephew Jirobei and an Osaka youth named Donshu, to attend him.

                                                                     

As night grows late Basho calls to Donshu who has been nursing him      and we hear the sound of rubbing on an inkstone, so we wonder what is going on in there.
 

Shiko is not in the room and records what he hears through the wall: The stick of India ink being rubbed in the well of an ink stone,  so Basho’s haiku is written down by a teenage boy.    

 

                                                                                                                                                                    

 In sickness:

On a journey taken ill
dreams on withered fields

 wander about
 

“Fields” are land not used for rice or vegetables, but rather covered with grasses and wildflowers, the home of insects and birds.     “Fields” may also be the body while dreams are the spirit which animates the flesh for a while and then passes on. In the spring and summer and autumn of life, dreams wander about fields bright in the sunshine and alive with birdsong. But then comes winter, time for dreams to wander off into eternity.

 

This famous haiku is the essence of sabi, that “medieval aesthetic of old age, loneliness, resignation, and tranquility” that scholars relish in Basho – although Basho himself preferred Lightness.  Although Basho did in fact write one more verse (see next page) scholars have taken ON A JOURNEY TAKEN ILL to be Basho’s final wisdom. Higuchi Isao says the verse is: “a most fitting conclusion to the life of Basho, who pursued sabi all his life.”  No! Basho did not pursue sabi all his life – and this was not his final poem.

 Immediately after reciting ON A JOURNEY TAKEN ILL, Basho spoke to Shiko of what actually he pursued:

                                                                              

    …as the years passed by to half a century

  asleep I hovered among morning clouds and evening dusk,       

   awake I was astonished by the voices

    of mountain streams and wild birds. 

 

Here we have the essence of Basho:  his “astonishment”  at the physical world, at “mountain streams and wild birds,”  an active lively and youthful astonishment with none of that “old age, loneliness, resignation, and tranquility.” Basho then went to sleep. When he awoke in the morning Basho  recited to Shiko  “a revision” of a verse he wrote this summer beside the river in Saga – however the original verse was about moonlight falling on the ripples while  the “revision” is  altogether different – as different as night and day.              

Clear cascade —

 into the ripples fall
 green pine needles
 

 Kiyotaki ya /nami ni chiri-komu / ao-matsuba
 

 Instead  of an old man sadly dying on a withered field, we gaze in wonder at young green life flowing away in the fast-moving mountain stream.  CLEAR CASCADE  is a  rejuvenation in Basho’s spirit, a casting off of ON A JOURNEY TAKEN ILL,  reaffirming  Lightness as the Way of Basho -- even on his deathbed.   

  
    On a journey taken ill                 Clear cascade —
    dreams on withered fields       into the ripples fall
    wander about                            green pine needles
 

Basho wrote both poems on his deathbed. ON A JOURNEY TAKEN ILL is world-famous and everywhere represents Basho, “the poet of sabi.” Yamamoto Kennichi tells us Basho made the image of a traveler on a withered moor “symbolize his entire life” – however I believe the scholars have made that image symbolize their version of Basho’s entire life.  CLEAR CASCADE is known to scholars, but ignored.  All agree that it is a revision of the summer poem, and goes into the chronology at that time, where nobody notices it or realizes that it actually was Basho’s final poem. 

 

If Basho is to be a poet for old men to study, then ON A JOURNEY TAKEN ILL has all the desolate loneliness they could wish for – however Basho again and again rejected that misery of long ago.    In Iga this autumn, the old man wrote a poem of Spring to his followers all aged like himself:

        

   Unlike our faces
   may your haiku emerge
   as first blossoms
 

Although your faces and my face are wrinkled and pockmarked by the ravages of time, the poems that emerge from our minds can be as lovely, fresh, and vibrant as the first cherry blossoms to appear on their branches. If Basho is to be the poet of youth and aliveness,  then we need CLEAR CASCADE and UNLIKE OUR FACES as counterweights to the gloom and doom of ON A JOURNEY TAKEN ILL. 

 

On November 26th   Shiko helped Basho sit up and he was able to write a short letter in his own hand to his older brother; the final words before his signature stand out:

        
          Grandma and Oyoshi, their power shall decline

 

“Grandma” is Hanzaemon’s wife who has no children or grandchildren. Basho watched his little sister Oyoshi grow from birth through the years of play and innocence, the development of purpose and ability, teenage hopes and turmoil,   getting married and having children -- and now she and her husband have been adopted by Hanzaemon to inherit the household  In his final written words, Basho acknowledges the two women in the house who have grown the family’s food, made their clothing and maintained it, and cleaned up after them, for decades until that “power declines.”

 

 (From Basho’s Will)

                 

This I say to Ihei: The two persons remaining
have lost their direction  and must be upset.
Please consult with Old Kosai and others
so a proper decision can be made for them.

                                                                                                        

   The “two persons remaining” are Basho’s grandnieces Masa and Ofu, now orphans. Parents provide the “direction” in which a child goes. Ihei and Kosai, two men in Fukagawa,  take care of neighbors in hardship.  On his deathbed, in severe intestinal cramps and pain, Basho cares about these two young girls; he requests the neighborhood’s assistance for them                                            

                                   

To quiet down
the unsettled heart

 of the daughter
 

 

                   basho4humanity@gmail.com 

 






<< Prose, Letters, and Spoken Word about Children (C-12) (C-14) Blessing unto Kasane >>


The Three Thirds of Basho

 

 

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.

 

basho4humanity@gmail.com
Basho's thoughts on...

• Woman Central
• Introduction to this site
• The Human Story:
• Praise for Women
• Love and Sex in Basho
• Children and Teens
• Humanity and Friendship
• On Translating Basho
• Basho Himself
• Poetry and Music
• The Physical Body
• Food, Drink, and Fire
• Animals in Basho
• Space and Time
• Letters Year by Year
• Bilingual Basho 日本語も
• 芭蕉について日本語の論文
• Basho Tsukeku 芭蕉付句
• BAMHAY (Basho Amazes Me! How About You?)
• New Articles


Matsuo Basho 1644~1694

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.



Basho Spoken Word


Only this, apply your heart
to what children do


"The attachment to Oldness
is the very worst disease
a poet can have."


“The skillful have a disease;
let a three-foot child
get the poem"


"Be sick and tired
of yesterday’s self."


"This is the path of a fresh
lively taste with aliveness
in both heart and words."
.

"In poetry is a realm
which cannot be taught.
You must pass through it
yourself. Some poets have made
no effort to pass through, merely
counting things and trying
to remember them.
There was no passing
through the things."


"In verses of other poets,
there is too much making
and the heart’s
immediacy is lost.
What is made from
the heart is good;
the product of words
shall not be preferred."


"We can live without poetry,
yet without harmonizing
with the world’s feeling
and passing not through
human feeling, a person
cannot be fulfilled. Also,
without good friends,
this would be difficult."


"Poetry benefits
from the realization
of ordinary words."


"Many of my followers
write haiku equal to mine,
however in renku is the
bone marrow of this old man."


"Your following stanza
should suit the previous one as an expression
of the same heart's connection."


"Link verses the way
children play."


"Make renku
ride the Energy.
Get the timing wrong,
you ruin the rhythm."


"The physical form
first of all must be graceful
then a musical quality
makes a superior verse."

"As the years passed
by to half a century.
asleep I hovered
among morning clouds
and evening dusk,
awake I was astonished
at the voices of mountain
streams and wild birds."


“These flies sure enjoy
having an unexpected
sick person.”



Haiku of Humanity


Drunk on sake
woman wearing haori
puts in a sword


Night in spring
one hidden in mystery
temple corner


Wrapping rice cake
with one hands she tucks
hair behind ear


On Life's journey
plowing a small field
going and returning


Child of poverty
hulling rice, pauses to
look at the moon


Tone so clear
the Big Dipper resounds
her mallet


Huddling
under the futon, cold
horrible night


Jar cracks
with the ice at night
awakening



Basho Renku
Masterpieces

With her needle
in autumn she manages
to make ends meet
Daughter playing koto
reaches age seven


After the years
of grieving. . . finally
past eighteen
Day and night dreams of
Father in that battle


Now to this brothel
my body has been sold
Can I trust you
with a letter I wrote,
mirror polisher?


Only my face
by rice-seedling mud
is not soiled
Breastfeeding on my lap
what dreams do you see?



Single renku stanzas


Giving birth to
love in the world, she
adorns herself



Autumn wind
saying not a word
child in tears


Among women
one allowed to lead
them in chorus


Easing in
her slender forearm
for his pillow


Two death poems:


On a journey taken ill
dreams on withered fields
wander about

Clear cascade -
into the ripples fall
green pine needles




basho4humanity
@gmail.com




Plea for Affiliation

 

Plea For Affiliation

 

I pray for your help

in finding someone
individual, university,

or foundation - 
to take over my

3000 pages of material,   
to cooperate with me 

to edit the material,
to receive all royalties 

from sales, to spread

Basho’s wisdom worldwide,
and preserve for

future generations.


basho4humanity

@gmail.com