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
Basho’s birthplace, Iga (Mie-ken, east of Nara) was also home to Japan’s leading school of ninjitsu, the techniques of hiding, infiltration and attack by those mysterious undercover agents. The Chinese characters for ninja、忍者、mean “hidden person.” Ninja from Iga fought in the civil wars that wracked Japan in the 15th and 16th centuries, but by Basho’s birth in 1644 Japan had been at peace for two generations and ninjitsu had become a martial art (and underground spy ring?). Basho grew up with ninja heritage everywhere around him; for instance his friend-in-youth Doho belonged by adoption to the Hattori clan, “the leaders of the ninja community in Iga.” On the surface they did no spying, but who knows what was going on in ninja secrecy?
Male Ninja Prologue
The most famous Hattori was Hanzo. In 1582 Oda Nobunaga, had ended the civil wars and brought the country under his rule. The future shogun Ieyasu, then merely a retainer of Nobunaga, was sightseeing near Osaka when he learned that one of Nobunaga’s generals, Akechi Mitsuhide, had assassinated Nobunaga and had agents looking for Ieyasu to kill him too. Ieyasu had no army with him and was in quite a predicament – but he did have Hattori Hanzo. The ninja brought Ieyasu in secret through the mountains to Iga and
gathered 300 ninja to guard him on the road to his home base near Nagoya. Ieyasu later said crossing Iga was the most dangerous thing he ever did.
In Edo, Hanzo formed the ‘band of Iga’ to guard the Hanzo Gate to Ieyasu’s castle, which gave its name to Tokyo’s Hanzomon subway line. Hattori Hanzo is also the hero of countless ninja movies, video games and manga as well as the ancestor of the guy in Hawaii who forged the sword for Uma Thurman in Kill Bill.
17th Century Painting of Hattori Hanzo
Female Ninja Prologue
A female ninja is called a kunoichi, written くノ一. This is the hiragana for ku, the katakana for the possessive no, and the Chinese character for ichi, ‘one.. These three elements fit together, as in a tiny woodblock puzzle, to form the character onna for ‘woman’.
く + ノ + 一 → 女 Ku no ichi onna
According to a book published in 1676 in Iga, kunoichi was the ninja code word for ‘woman’— as for ‘man’, the code word was tachikara from the character for man 男, which is ‘power,’ chikara, 力 under the ‘rice-fields,’ ta 田. Kunoichi is also said to be the three characters for ‘nine-talents-one.’ Nine is the number of orifices on a male body: two ears, two eyes, two nostrils, a mouth, anal and urogenital opening. In women, the uro- and the -genital are – as you probably have noticed -- separate, so the woman has nine plus one, and if she is a kunoichi, she knows how to use that talent too.
A kunoichi She looks more scary than the guy in the background
Little Ninja Prologue
In Iga nowadays, the ninja connection is a far greater tourist attraction – especially for young boys -- than the Basho connection. Ninja patrol the castle grounds (now Ueno Park) in robes that cover every square inch of skin, so as not to show up in the starlight while climbing a castle wall. Of course in the old days the robes were navy-blue which is indistinguishable in the night (that was the point) but the modern ninja are red, purple, yellow, pink, etc. and come in daddy, mommy and child sizes. A stand near the park rents ninja
costumes (complete with plastic sword strapped to back – seen in photo) for the day (10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; 700 yen per person) so families can dress up and wander freely about the famous ninja castle.
This is where Basho came from.
Little Ninja at Iga Castle
The smaller boy holds up one finger; his big brother makesthe same gesture, but hides it.
This is a kuji goshinho,the ninja symbol for a nine-word chant which will make them invincible.
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.
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