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
"I feel that any woman who is in control, who is in touch with her femininity
and sensuality is a woman that is empowered." Shakira
The notion that Basho is a poet of impersonal nature and/or lonely desolation comes from a very limited selection of Basho’s haiku and prose – and many of his haiku are deeply personal and feminine. In the Basho renku unknown to almost everybody, he probes the human and female heart; here are haiku and renku experessng that personal magnetism of women.
Attraction
With her wide open eyes she can get a thousand koku
Before he vanishes she grabs his stirrup
目の張に / まず千石は /してやりて
きゆる計に / 鐙をさゆる
Me no hari ni / mazu senkoku wa / shite yarite
Kiyuru bakari ni / abumi o sayuru
She uses her lovely eyes to charm a man. A koku is about 150 kilograms of rice, used as a standard for measuring wealth;“a thousand koku” means that this samurai’s yearly stipend from the government is
so-so, not great, but livable.
She is the center of the scene, the man a mere object of her desire and action; her chance for a thousand koku is about to ride off into the distance,so he grabs the ring hanging from the saddle where his foot rests. Do not go, thousand koku. please do not vanish. I love this woman; she is so vital and active. She knows what she wants and she acts to get it.
In a haze he worships
beauty of female form
From the far north the groom a frustrated wordless butterfly
美人の かたち / 拝む 陽炎
蝦夷の 婿 / 声 なき 蝶 と /身を 詫びて
Bijin no katachi / ogamu kagerō
Ezo no muko / koe naki chou to / mi o wabite
The family has adopted a son-in-law from the far northern island of Hokkaido where (from a mainland Japanese point of view) there are no attractive women – but many bears. He can barely speak a few
words of Japanese so is frustrated in trying to communicate with his bride; he just stands there, “a wordless butterfly in a haze” gazing as the beauty he has been given. Miyawaki points out that she may not be “beautiful” to our standards but, compared to what he has seen before, she is Aphrodite.
Like navel cord visits to the brothel shall be cut off
I resent the thunder of the midnight drum
Heso no o o / Yoshiwara ga yoi / kire hatete
Kaminari no taiko / urameshi no naka
(BRZ 1: 107) Money getting tight, after tonight he can no longer rent a woman in the Yoshiwara pleasure quarters. Being cut off from a courtesan’s vagina recalls being cut off from mother’s womb. The penis goes where the umbilicus came from.Although he is the subject of this verse, the play-women, and in particular her vagina, is the center of this verse, that which draws his and our minds.
He has enjoyed her body and spirit till midnight, but cannot afford to stay over. A taiko, or great drum, sounds at this time telling men they must leave the walled quarters. Parting from a woman who has taken him inside her womb, he feels as if being born, hearing for the first time sounds of the world unmuffled by mother’s womb, a sound like thunder he resents.
The two stanzas together lead to the realization that a man’s attraction to women’s genitals is a remainder, and reminder, of his connection to his mother’s womb.
Breaking off a lotus
to adorn a lovely girl
Iridescent kingfisher alights on dance stage
蓮華をおりて / 美女にかんざす
彩 の / 翡翠 舞筵に / 落ちる か と
Renge o orite / bijo ni kanzasu
Aidori no / hisui mushiro ni / ochiru ka to
The lotus, which symbolizes divine perfection growing from the mud of a pond, adorns the girl.
The kingfisher, a bird with remarkably bright plumage, gracefully descends upon her.
Starting to flirt hair parted in the middle long and glossy
So a vision emerges from back of her head
だてなりし / ふり分け 髪 は / のび ねる や
俤 に たつ / かの うしろ つき
Date-narishi / furiwake kami wa / nobi neru ya
Omokage ni tatsu / kano ushiro-zuki
“Hair parted in the middle” suggests a young girl; as she enters adolescence and starts to flirt, her hair becomes long and shiny to attract the attention of others.How does Basho, now about 20 years old, respond? Behind her, he “sees” through her hair and head to a vision of the beauty hidden to his eyes.
He is so very Japanese here: the famous painting of the great beauty Ono no Komachi shows her from behind, so her beauty is hidden and therefore attractive.
Flirting with
the old river, willow opens her eyes
古川に / こびて目を張る / 柳かな Furu kawa ni / kobite me o haru / yanagi kana
Kon says, “Spring still shallow, grasses and trees the withered color of desolation, on an old river bank, only the buds of willow trees have opened.” In Japanese “eye” and “bud” have the same pronunciation, so the two meanings occur together in the verse. The way a girl opens her eyes when she is charming a man – such as her father - is how willow leaf buds open on their branch tips. Of all Basho haiku, this is the most charming.
She has cut her hair yet maintains her self -
For such fragrance watchtower curtains are pushed aside
髪を切ても / 身を作りけり
焼かおる / 物見るの筵 /おしまくり
Kami o kite mo / mi o tsukurikeri
Taki kaoru / mono miru no mushiro / oshi makura
When a woman cuts her hair, symbolically she cut off her self, to serve only Buddha – however this nun seems to have retained her selfhood as a woman. Basho focuses on her “fragrance” – not her smell, but the aura of beauty that surrounds her and attracts us to her. She seems to be at a picnic held under the tower whose samurai are ready to defend against an attack. So there are dozens or even hundreds of people – nobles, generals, elegant ladies, servants -- in this scene, yet Basho has eyes only for the alluring nun. Likewise the warriors who have pushed aside the woven straw curtains to get a glimpse of her.
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After visiting the Inner and Outer Shrines of Ise, Basho passes through the nearby town of Ise. Because of it association with the high holy shrine of Shinto, you might expect the place to be sanctimonious, off-limits to a brothel. But actually it was the reverse: the street before the shrine is packed with entertainment services, such as “tea-houses” where there might be a prostitute on duty to provide sex to paying customers.
In his travel journal Basho says
The same day, on the way back, we stop at a tea house where there is a woman named Butterfly. “A haiku on my name, will you?” She hands me a piece of white silk where I write.
This woman, we later find out, used to be a prostitute in this “tea-house” but then was taken by the owner to be his wife. She continues working in her husband’s business, using the skills she developed as a prostitute to stimulate his customers so they come back for more. The situation is fraught with sensuality: the mature and sexually experienced woman, he name and tempting request (Aga na ni hokku se yo) – she sounds like that airline stewardess: “Hi, I’m Cheryl, fly me!” – the piece of white silk she puts into Basho hand. He responds in kind:
Orchid fragrance upon wings of Butterfly sniff the incense
蘭の香や / 蝶の翼に / 薫物す Ran no ka ya / chou no tsubasa ni / takimono su
One issue in this haiku is whether we see “butterfly” as a woman or as an insect. You will notice I have prejudiced you to see the woman by using a capital “B” and not proceeding with "a" or "the.". Even seen as an insets, this haiku is pretty sensul, but as a woman it is down right erotic.
After she saw Basho’s haiku, she said
“I used to the be the play-woman of this house, but now I have become the owner’s wife.
If we allow the outrageous notion that Butterfly considers Basho’s haiku to be a request for sexual favors – because that’s the sort of thing men said to her when they wanted sex - then her spoken repronse makes complete sense: she is politely saying “No” and helping Basho understand why.
Let’s go on another adventure into female attraction. A strong but penniless man saw the famous Yoshiwara prostitute Little Murasaki in a procession, and was so enthralled with her beauty that he killed 130
people to obtain the gold to make a statue of her which he offered to the brothel in exchange for her contract. Instead he was caught and executed. When Little Murasaki found out what he had done, that
she had been the cause of so many deaths, she committed suicide beside his grave. (What would you have done?) This happened in 1679. Four years later, in Empty Chesnuts, Kikaku’s anthology of
linked verses, he wrote and Basho followed:
Ridiculed for his Little Murasaki cast in gold.
Black as fins of bream nipples on big boobs
People made fun of the man and his obsession with Little Mursaki’s beauty. Imagine that: he cast her in solid gold; what an ego-trip! LOL Even her nipples were gold!! Basho counters with the nipples of Otafuku,
a legendary character who anthropologist Michael Ashkenezi calls a “full-checked, plump peasant woman laughing happily” -- her name means “large breasts.”
Kurodai often caught by fisherman are actually only black on the backside and fins; the rest of the fish is silver-grey – so I guess to Basho could look like dark nipples on a light-colored breast. Her breasts may
be huge, but Japanese men adore slender women, so Otafuku will never be loved by a brilliant shining Emperor, never be depicted in a golden statue. Unlike the golden nipples of the fool’s Little Murasaki,
her nipples will be “soiled by rice-seedling mud.”
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Basho envisions the tragic beauty of Lady Seishi: one of the Four Great Beauties of Ancient China, born in 506 BCE (22 centuries before Basho), so beautiful that “while leaning over a balcony to look at the fish in the pond, the fish would be dazzled and forget to swim, birds would forget to fly and fall from the sky” yet that beauty came from a rustic village.
His face red and beard scraggly Seishi’s papa
White camellia’s long village road to love
Basho creates an unusual way to imagine the beauty of Seishi: by focusing on her dad’s face, red from working in the sun, or skin disease, or drinking alcohol. His beard has not been trimmed for some time.
By portraying ugliness, Basho suggests the polar opposite, the beauty of the daughter. Ain’t it the truth?
In 490 when she was 16, she was taken from her family and trained to be a spy. She was sent in tribute to the King who was occupying her home state, with the purpose of using her female power to weaken their government from within. She seduced the King to forget about state affairs and to execute his wisest advisor and general. After 17 years of her efforts, her home state conquered their oppressor. Seishi did not enjoy her undercover mission; she probably wanted to live her own life instead of being a piece, even the Queen, in someone else’s chess game.
On his journey to the Deep North of Japan in 1689 Basho went to Kisakata on the rugged Japan Sea side of the main island where the sun rarely shines and storms are frequent, cold, and miserable. Here he wrote another verse on Seishi's attractiveness.
Gloomy Cove in the rain Lady Seishi’s eyebrow blossoms
象潟や /雨に西施が / 合歓の花 Kisagata ya / ame ni Seishi ga / nebu no hana
The blossoms of the nebu, a mimosa or silk tree, .in summer are clusters of long needle-like stamens, each with white on the inner section white and red on the outer, so they resemble long eyelashes with white and red makeup. In places where the sun shines, the blossoms are lovely, but in rainy Kisagata, they droop miserably.
It was said (by men) that Seishi was most beautiful when frowning, her eyes half-closed in resentment (a notion only a man could hold). Basho’s verse is a ‘sketch’ of Seishi, or any beautiful woman, frowning in resentment. The long red and white stamens of the flower suggest the make up on the eyelashes of an elegant courtesan like Seishi –yet the mascara is smeared by tears; since woman and Earth are one, smeared by rain. And under those lashes is that frowning motion in the muscles between the eyes (whose accumulation nowadays is removed with Botox).
Charles Darwin noted that frowning is the one facial expression unique to humanity:
In comparison (to human faces) apes’ faces are inexpressive, chiefly owing to their not frowning under any emotion of mind …(human) eyebrows may be seen to assume an oblique position in persons suffering from deep rejection or anxiety; for instance I have observed this movement in a mother while speaking about her sick son.
Seishi suffered from chest pains (i.e. tuberculosis). According to the tongue twister:
In Japanese:
Seishi shiji shijushi, shijushi-ji Seishi shi
(What fun! Try it three times in a row.)
In English:
Seishi dies at forty-four, at forty-four Seishi dies.
In Romanized Mandarin:
Xī Shī sishí sìshísì, sìshísì-shí Xī Shīsǐ.
(Oh God!)
In Chinese characters:
西 施 死 時 四 十 四，四 十 四 時 西 施 死
Although this tongue twisters is about the same women as Basho’s renku stanza HIS FACE RED and his haiku GLOOMY CAVE, it has no connection to Basho; why do I include it in these commentaries? Simply because I want to have, and want you to have, FUN with 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.
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
