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's haiku about a dragonfly contains no children, no people at all – except for the child observer – however has links to two well-known portraits of children by Japanese of later centuries.
Dragonfly unable to hang on tip of grass
Tonbou ya / tori-tsuki-kaneshi / kusa no ue
Vivid beneath the clear blue autumn sky, a dragonfly—most skillful acrobat in the insect world—whizzes about the tall grass, grabs for a tip swaying in the wind, but MISSES ITS TIMING. Instantly it recovers and flies away. There is only the moment, so brief and fleeting we cannot hold onto it in imagination. Try to think about it—and it’s gone.
This profound masterpiece defies us to simplify our minds, to stop thinking and simply SEE, as a child would, the dragonfly’s momentary loss of coordination. To enter into the insect’s reality, we must be free of all self-generated thoughts about anything other than what is actually occurring.
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Possibly the saddest haiku ever written was signed with the name of the well-known woman poet Chiyojo, who was born nine years after Basho died, and studied with Basho's disciple Shiko.
It has the headnote:
“When I lost my child”
Dragonfly chaser, on this day, how far have you wandered?
A mother sees her son chasing dragonflies in heaven.
The feeling here is universal and belongs to mothers everywhere.
There is no evidence that Chiyo-jo actually wrote this haiku. Scholars tell us Chiyo-jo had a son who died in infancy, long before he could have chased dragonflies, so they believe someone else wrote the poem. They fail to consider the possibility that Chiyo-jo wrote the verse imagining her son if he had lived, or she wrote it for all women who have lost a child. Even if someone else wrote this haiku, she wanted it to reach many women, and accomplished this by signing it with Chiyo-jo's name. She suggests that the haiku is good enough to have been written by Chiyo-jo.
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A baby born in 1889 riding on his babysitter’s back saw a dragonfly dart over the field, and a few years later himself chased these marvelous flying acrobats. He wrote haiku and tanka in grade and middle school, and by his teens was recognized as a genius. As an adult he participated in the Red Bird Movement which fostered children’s spiritual development through song. In 1921, Miki Rofu wrote the lyrics to the ultimate Japanese children’s song, the song with the haunting melody (by Yamada Kosaku) that flows through the consciousness of every Japanese child and adult. Wikipedia says,
In a 1989 nationwide survey by the National Broadcasting System,Akatombo was ranked as by far the most-loved song in Japan...Yamada was influenced by the works of Robert Schumann and other German composers, but his music is closer to Japanese melodic ideas, and eschews the formal structural relationships of Western harmony. Matsue describes Yamada's "Akatombo" as follows: "The vocal melody is quite simple but emotive .... The harmonization on the piano ... is simple and unobtrusive, supporting the elegant lyrical line."
Aka Tombo, “Red Dragonfly”
Evening glow, faint glow, red dragonfly -- carried on her back, I saw it, when was that day?
In the hills a field of mulberries she gathered in a small basket, was it a dream?
Only fourteen, she went as a bride. From her village, one letter came, then no more
Evening glow, faint glow, red dragonfly It stops! On the tip of bamboo pole
Wikipedia says
The poem is written in the voice of someone recalling his infancy and being carried on the back of his sister (or nursemaid; the Japanese lyrics are ambiguous). The speaker now longs for this mother figure, who married at the age of 14, moved far away, and no longer sends news back to the speaker's village.
Miki Rofu's mother married when she was 14, but left him when he was five, and he was raised by his grandfather. He must have thought of his personal tragedy when he wrote these lyrics, but also of
Basho's dragonfly haiku. In her 2016 book Music in Contemporary Japan, Japanese music and culture commentator Jennifer Milioto Matsue wrote:
The song uses the imagery of red dragonflies to evoke nostalgic feelings of the past and of course for the old country home of the furusato [hometown]. ... [It] prompts longing feelings for all "mothers" in all our childhoods. These lines similarly capture the loss felt when loved ones move away, an increasingly common occurrence in the rapid urbanization of modern Japan in the early twentieth century.
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.
