Home > Topics > Food, Drink, and Fire > F-09
Rice is the staple food of over half the world's population and provides 20% of the world’s diet: in Basho’s era, rice was boiled on a wood-burning stove for over one hour until soft, then eaten in every meal. Without “rice” there is no “meal” – just snacks. Most of the rice grown by Japanese farmers went as taxes to the provincial govehoweverrnment which sold it to people in the cities who had no place to grow rice. Before cooking, rice which has been milled has to be rinsed in water to eliminate the starch that coats the grains. Cooked in extra water for a long time, the grains disintegrated to form rice gruel. In addition, glutinuous rice was pounded over and over again and molded into mochi rice cakes, Some rice was cooked then dried and ground to rice powder;some was fermented to make sake (see F-12 HIGH ON SAKE).
In the night sky a bank of clouds arches over the moon, then suddenly the “bridge” is gone – thus the ephemerality at the core of Buddhist thought. From that ethereal, lifeless vision of impermanence, Basho jumps down to earth with ordinary male life. In the season when the tall stalks of golden rice are harvested, furious early autumn typhoons may destroy the crop in one night. Here is the satisfaction of a man with his harvest safe on his back, knowing he will have food this winter. So down-to-earth, walking on ground, bag of rice weighing on his shoulders – in vivid constant to the arch of cloud straddling the moon for an instant then no more.
A servant girl chops dried vegetable leaves into fine bits to add on top of soft white rice, but her mind is “elsewhere.” Where is that? Basho tells us: with her boyfriend who is a packhorse driver and quite a hunk. She wishes for a day they both can take off work and hang together. Finely slicing the greens with sharp steel knife, she sends her prayer out to the kamisama, wishing for him “inside making love” -- inside the house instead of out on some field where they usually make out – but also inside her; not greens on soft white rice and him on the horse, but him on her soft flesh.
I climb onto a boulder to see the sun (goddess) emerging from the horizon, and sit quietly, watching, absorbing her clear silent power. Rice which has been milled is coated with starch; before cooking, this must be washed away by moving about in a bowl of water, then pouring out the murky water, again and again until water pours clean. Nissun compares the murky rice washing water with the white water in a cascade. The mind purifies itself by remaining still and silently worshipping the divine, Water, on the other hand, purifies itself through movement and turmoil.
The parents do not wipe the snot off their kid’s face, so germs produce skin infection and pus smeared together with dirt and tears. They seem to be transients who do not go to the trouble of maintaining a fire in the sunken hearth for the hour or more it takes to boil rice. Instead of eating “meals” (which in Japan means with rice) they live on snack foods high in salt and saturated fat. The snotty-faced kid does not get much in the way of nutrition. The observations of the two poets resonate across time and culture.
Instead a famine where a family has no food to feed the children, here they are at market with unsold produce they have to carry home. Basho continues with their problems at home. The individual’s meal was served on several dishes on a small tray on four legs, about 18 inches square and 9 inches high. Instead of a child getting sick and dying before three years, this baby, a slave to gravity since birth, here has somehow managed to get high enough to pull rice off the low standing tray, either to put in mouth, or to spread about. We see Basho’s consciousness of infant motor development; the child reaching up onto the 9-inch-high tray is a developmental milestone on the road to standing and walking.
Apparently my wife has left me, so I need someone -- the matchmaker who arranged the marriage, my wife’s father, someone -- to fix things up with my wife so she comes home and does the housework. Since no one has persuaded her to come back, I have to boil rice over a wood fire in the cook stove, which is really tiring and I cry because smoke gets in my eyes, and I miss my wife and the work she did.
Rice cake’ can be rice pounded into a paste then molded into shape (mochi) or ground into flour then made into dough (mochiko). Soybean powder (kinako) or beet sugar (tensai) is added to sweeten. The type known as chimaki wrapped in bamboo leaves was originally made for a festival in summer, so “wrapping rice cake” sets the following haiku in the humid heat before summer rains.
Hair over the forehead, neither cut nor tied up, must be parted to flow down either side of the face, so while a woman works, it can easily fall before her eyes. Her fingers and palms are covered with dough Without thinking or breaking her stride, she reaches up with the clean surface on the side of her hand (above the thumb and forefinger) to tuck the hair behind her ear – with nothing getting on her hair. This is Basho’s Mona Lisa, his most graceful hidden female. Only Basho has the delicacy and precision to draw such a moment out from the flow of everyday female life.
Mochi rice cakes are eaten during the New Year’s season which in Japan lasts up to three weeks. As the days pass, with no refrigerators or plastic wrap, the leftovers get moldy – however if dried in the sunshine, the mold can be wiped off and the mochi eaten – but not if it had bird poop on it. Scholar Kon Eizo says this verse is a “crystallization” of Lightness; it gives a definite form to Basho’s ideal: nothing poetic or philosophic. romantic or tragic, simply life as is, with a touch of humor, to be interesting. Small children will like any verse with pee or poop in it, so this should be a favorite.
This person experienced boiling the rice, but only in a dream, so it cannot be eaten for dinner. In my translation of this, Basho says that without caring for others one is merely boiling rice in a daydream; not really living, but living in a daydream, so just to waiting to die.
In the summer of 1678, the mother of Basho’s follower Fuboku passed away. At the memorial service, Basho wrote:
As we enter the temple grounds, at a rock basin with spring water, we put our hands together and pray to Buddha; this custom is called “offering water.” The middle segment in Japanese means to mourn for the dead while asking where the departed has gone; the phrase is said to have yugen, “mystery and depth.” Rice is cooked then dried and ground to a powder, for travelers to carry on journeys; adding water makes a meal. Basho suggests that Fuboku’s mother add the sacred water of the temple to the dried rice powder for nourishment on her long journey.
Ono no Komachi, said to be the most beautiful women Japan ever produced, ended up a lonely old beggar. Someone has given the beggar woman alms, a bowl of nourishing rice gruel; she sips the soup while tears of gratitude fall on her aged wrinkled face and mix with the gruel drooling .from her mouth.
On his final journey with his grandnephew, the evening of June 18, 1694, as told in a letter to Sora,
On his deathbed, November 28th that year:
So Basho died with the flavor of rice gruel in his mouth.
<< Fire for Life (F-08) | (F-10) Besides Rice >> |
The Three Thirds of Basho