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.
Japan is renowned for having thousands of hot springs where people (and sometimes monkeys) bathe. Public hot springs always provide facilities for washing the body, and nowadays are almost always
segregated by gender. Bathing suits (or underwear) are never worn.
From the bath heat lingers, tonight skin to be cold
Naked getting out from the hot pool, steam from every pore, aware of how cold skin will become tonight; exactly the experience anyone of us can have going to a hot spring on a winter evening. This is poetry for the body.
Mixed bathing in a Suwa hot spring twilight dim,
Among them a tall mountain ascetic
Kyokusui begins with a fascinating scene of a hot spring in the mountains of northern Japan where men and women bathe together naked -- however he hides them in the twilight steamy air. Then, within Kyokusui’s image, Basho opens a new vision. In the hot pool sits a “tall mountain ascetic” These yamabushi followed the path of shugendō, a discipline of physical endurance in severe conditions – such as sitting or standing in a cold waterfall – as the path to enlightenment. A mountain ascetic would come to a hot spring for
self-purification in the scalding heat.
Basho seems to have realized that “tall mountain ascetic” illustrates his mastery of poetic technique: he said,
The following stanza fits in with the previous one, and along with that, it stands out to the eyes.
Many mountain ascetics lived in the remote and arduous mountains around Suwa, and for one of these men to bathe in a Suwa hot spring would not be unusual. So Basho’s stanza fits in with Kyokusui’s. Other folks relax and slouch in the steaming hot water, but he sits up straight and tall so his muscular chest and shoulders stand out from the hot spring environment and evening darkness.
Every philosopher and art critic could elaborate on this synthesis of “fitting in” with “standing out” – yet none of them could provide so fine an example of this synthesis as Basho does with his mountain ascetic in the evening twilight at a remote hot spring.
Sinking in to chill the hot pool, awesome moon
Of the three deer one carries an arrow
The light from the moon above the pool penetrates to the bottom, chilling the hot water. Three deer come to drink the water which contains minerals. One carries an arrow which seems to have caused a wound slight enough that the deer can still move about. She needs those minerals to heal herself.
Blossoms naked as seeds they return to their roots
Bath water bottom dragon palace spring
Roadhouse hooker or Sea-God’s daughter, which is she?
Seeds from fallen blossoms lose enter the ground to join their original roots -- as my naked body enters the hot tub. Because water refracts light away from a straight line, and water movement distorts my vision of things, my body and the water around appear magical. In the legends of the Sea God’s Dragon Palace, it is time, rather than space, which magically changes; one day equals a century, and the four seasons occurs simultaneously in the four corners of the palace.
The Sea-God has a daughter steeped in the magic of her father’s realm. What about the servant girls who cook food at roadside rest houses and also provide sex to travelers? Are they immoral whores? Or are
they – these girls carrying the future – daughters of the divine?
Writing a letter to his first beloved, his hand falters
Accustomed to the world the monk makes it risqué
Paper lanterns I intimately entrust to a hot spring girl
Adolescent sexual urges have confused his motor coordination, so he cannot manage to write the elegant phrases and calligraphy that will impress her. Basho has a monk write the letter for the youth, but the
monk, being experienced in these matters, writes in sexual allusions that the boy cannot understand -- though the girl might. The next poet Kyoshi says, “Okay, Basho, if you are going to show us a monk with sex on the brain, I’ll really make it risqué.” The monk speaks of a “hot spring girl” who provides sex to guests at a resort. Paper lanterns are round, white, and have a light inside. Get the point? Intimately?
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.
