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.
Feminism isn't about making woman stronger. Women are already strong.
It's about changing the way the world perceives that strength.
Gillain Andrson
Miss Cellany
Left or right wherever I put my tray, the loneliness
右左 /膳をすえても / 淋しくて Migi hidari / zen o suete mo / sabishikute
This may be the actual experience of a child - boy or girl -in school today, or the memory of long ago eating lunch not surrounded by friends. As he so often does, Basho portrays physical activity along with emotion.
Beauty of her voice when she has a cold
Sliding back her tray with lunch untouched
風ひ きたまう / こえの うつくし
手もつかず / 昼 の 御膳も / すべり 来ぬ
Kaze hikitamau / koe no utsukushi
Te mo tsukazu / hiru no gozen mo / suberi kinu
Etsujin begins with sound and physical condition: the respiratory hoarseness of a cold adds a different sort of delicacy and fascination to her voice. Basho makes her silently return the tray with the lunch she has no appetite to eat. Her immune system is weakened by a cold, and food will only make it worse. Teenage girls may tell how to appreciate the link between these two female stanzas, and also the single stanza LEFT OR RIGHT.
Gatekeeper lets him in lock on mansion gate Leaning against the screen, bunch of maids knock it over
Wretched the bathroom’s bamboo floorboards
待人入れし / 小御門のかぎ 立かかる / 屏風を倒す / 女子共
湯殿は竹の / 作すの子侘しき
Machibito ireshi / ko-mikado no kagi Tachikakara / byoubu o naosu / onna kodomo
Yudono wa take no / sunoko wabishiki
To find the meaning hidden among the words, we have to search;
that is what makes the verse interesting.
The young mistress has bribed the gatekeeper to let her lover enter. The two decide to take a bath together. (Hey, Basho, what a great idea!) Floorboards beside the tub provide a dry place for bathers to stand.
Eager to see their young mistress and her lover, the teenage maids - who Basho calls "female children" --
crowd against the screen, trying to keep silent, but in their excitement they knock it down.
“Wretched” is the feeling of the maids as they stare at the floorboards; aware of the trouble they are in, their eyes downcast, struggling to keep from looking upward at the naked lovers staring back at them while trying to cover their privates, struggling not to break out laughing.
Father and son-in-law greeting to make-up –
Castle servant in her home village close to tears
Things from lacquered box taken out and put back
むこと舅の / なおる挨拶 御局の /里下りして / 涙ぐみ
ぬったはこより / 物のだし入れ
Muko to shuuto no / naoru aisatsu o-tsubone no / sato kudari shite / namida gumi
nutta hako yori / mono no dashi ire
The husband has been adopted into the bride’s family, so he lives with them. For some time now, he has had problems with his father-in-law, and they have not been very cordial to each other. This morning they greet each other with words that begin to repair their relationship.
With her sister and husband taking over the household, a second daughter has gone to the provincial castle to serve in a daimyo’s household. On her day off she returns to her native home where her joy seeing her father and brother-in-law start to get along brings tears of joy to her eyes.
Because this is renku, the joy in the second stanza enters into the third stanza, though tinged with sadness. From the fancy lacquered box, she takes out things (nowadays photos) that remind her of her parents, sister, husband, and kids, looks at them, and returns them to the box.
Plum blossom scent old storybooks read by a young girl
梅が香や/ しらら落窪 / 京太郎 Ume ga ka ya / shirara ochikubo / kyoutarou
The second and third lines of the Japanese are actually titles of three story book a young girl Joruri-hime reads in a storybook popular in Basho’s time. Instead of giving you these titles which will be utterly meaningless to you, I give you the information these titles gave to readers of this time. Jane Reichhold translates “a series of storybooks for children,” leaving out the crucial information that these are storybooks
read by a girl.
She reads beside the open window near a plum tree in bloom, her youth in contrast to the classical elegance of plum blossoms and the romantic tales old centuries before she was born. Unable to go outside and wander as her brothers can, she does her traveling inside books. Tales from long ago inspire her -- as that old storybook Little Women inspired the young girls who became Gertrude Stein, Gloria Steinem, Simone de
Beauvoir, Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Ginsberg, Hillary Clinton, J.K.Rowling. and Ursula LeGuin – who said:
Jo Marsh was the original image of women writing, an image Alcott made accessible to ordinary girls, as close as a sister, as common as grass… it may not seem like much, but I don’t know where else or many girls like me, in my generation or my mother’s or my daughter’s, were to find this model, this validation.
Basho, as well as Louisa May Alcott and Ursula LeGuin, support literacy along with contemplation in young girls.
------------------------------------
Collective roof thatching autumn in the village
Lowly women serve nembutsu dancers cups of tea
雇にやねふく / 村ぞ秋なる
賤の女が / 上総 念仏 に/ 茶を汲みて
Yui ni yane fuku / mura zo aki naru
Shizu no onna ga / kazuki nembutsu ni / cha o kumite
All the men work together without charge to repair the thatch on each village roof before snow comes, competing with each other to show how hard they can work, all for the common good. Basho follows this vision of male altruism with women coming out from the house to give cups of tea to a troupe of missionaries chanting the nembutsu prayer for salvation, accompanied by drums and gongs, dancing along the street. Basho notes that patriarchal society considers them “lowly women,” but even though they are not beautiful or alluring, not royal or special in any way, and are doing nothing extraordinary, he sees them as worthy of praise as are the men in the first stanza.
After such a long time he seeks her pardon
An employee has leisure time only in others’ eyes
久しぶり にて/ 訪 妹 が 許
奉公の / 隙 も 余所 目 の / 隙 と みつ
Hisashiburi nite / tō imo ga gari
hōkō no / hima mo yoso me no / hima to mitsu
He has not visited her for a long while – but here he is now, and he obviously wants sex. Basho’s stanza is the excuse he gives her. Is he telling the truth or lying? Does his job actually take up so much of his time? Or is he actually spending his spare time with another woman? If he is lying, how much else of his words are lies? Do I really want to sleep with a liar? Shall I forgive him and go on with our relationship, or break up and go on without him? The eternal dynamic of men seeking a way into women, and women wondering about men’s fidelity.
Storehouses and fences overgrown with water weeds
Seen by morning, woman who stayed the night, Goddess of Poverty
蔵も籬も / 水草生けり
今朝みれば / いてこし女は /貧乏神
Kura mo magaki mo / mikusa ikekeri
Kesa mireba / itekoshi onna wa / bimbō-gami
After a tsunami and/or rainy typhoon, with no repairs, man-made structures gradually disappear in watery abundance. From this sketch of wrack and ruin, Basho makes another bizarre link – to a woman waking up after a one-night stand; before she combs her hair, washes her face, or puts on make-up, he sees her as ragged and unkempt as “storehouses and fences overgrown with water weeds (That’s bad. Very bad.) The Japanese have no female form of this deity who brings misfortune, but since she is female, for fun, I have dubbed her “Goddess of Poverty.”
Market town above the smell of things summer moon
"So hot, so very hot!"
voices at every gate
市中は物のにほいや夏の月
あつしあつしと門々の聲
Ichi naka wa /mono no nioi ya / natsu no tsuki
Atsushi atsushi to kado kado no koe
In a market town many vegetables, fruit, fish, and seafood are on display, sold and traded, so the air is full of odors which rise below the cool evening moon. Scholars take Basho’s stanza as stanza-neutral, but women are usually the ones who stand at their gates, talking to other women. They have left the closed-in rooms of the house, and come outside to enjoy the evening cool, while they jabber to their peers in their native dialect. The weather is a frequent topic of conversation.
Convenience on a journey daybreak lantern she placed
How depressing: the wisdom of women is so fleeting
旅の馳走に / 有明しおく
すさまじき / 女の智恵も / はかなくて
Tabi no chisou ni / ari ake shi oku
susamajiki / onna no chie mo / hakanakute
The previous stanza to the above was about the freezing cold winter wind, so Basho takes the traveler from miserable outdoors into a Japanese inn. We must remember there are no electrical appliances anywhere. The innkeeper’s wife, while Basho was asleep, entered his room and placed a lit oil lantern by his futon so he could wake up to light. As in numerous other poems, Basho recognizes and praises the quality of hospitality in women. Kyorai finds it depressing that the wisdom of women, their hospitality, is ephemeral: nobody notices, and everybody forgets, all that women do to make life “convenient” for men and children.
From his seclusion he comes to peak in on his wife and kids
With one song in his ears the play quarters linger
遁世の /よ所に妻子を / 覗き見て
つぎ歌耳に / のこるよし原
Tonsei no / yoso ni tsumako o / nozoki mite
Tsugi uta mimi ni / nokoru Yoshiwara
He abandoned his family long ago to join the fun and games in the pleasure-quarters; he no longer goes there, but has not returned to them. Instead he stays in seclusion, without responsibility for anyone but himself. Sometimes he peaks in on them and wonders what would of happened if… then he returns to his seclusion. Can the wife and children feel his presence peeking in on them?
Sometimes in his auditory brain he recalls a particular merrymaking song along with memories of the place where he heard and sang it, memories of the woman he had sex with instead of with his wife. .
On his journey to the Deep North, in a town famous for growing safflowers and producing the orange-red dye used in make-up, Basho conceived haiku which he included in his travel journal A Narrow Path in the Heartlands.
Eyebrow brush is the vision I see in safflowers
眉掃きを / 俤 に して / 紅の 花 Mayu haki o / omokage ni shite / beni no hana
Looking at the living flowers, Basho ‘sees’ into the future this bit of safflower substance applied to a woman’s eyebrow. In older anthologies, the verse had another version alongisde it:
In the future whose skin shall they touch? these safflowers
行くすえは / 誰が肌ふれん / 紅の花 Yuku sue wa / taga hada furen / beni no hana
Safflower dye was also used to color a woman’s under-kimono; a red under robe would be worn by a girl or young woman, not for a formal occasion – such as calling on someone at home – but for a party. So here Basho ‘sees into the future’ the female flesh this bit of dyestuff will touch and move over. He explores her body underneath her clothing. This version he did not include in his journal; he just let it drift away from him. Modern scholars have decided that this other version is too erotic to be by Basho, so someone else wrote it and attributed it to Basho. They remove it from the main section of anthologies to place it in a special "authorship doubtful" section at the end of the anthology where no one will see it.
If I thought, as most scholars do, that Basho was austere and detached from sexuality, I would have trouble believing that he wrote this – but since I see him as the most sensual of all old-time poets, and he very often focuses on the female body and frequently transcends the barriers of time to see the past or the future, this other haiku completely suits Basho and should be explored. The connection between flowers and future eyebrow makeup is somewhat interesting, but between flowers and future under garments is far more intimate and titillating. Far more fun.
Here is two more Basho haiku which may be erotic, or may not be, depending on how you look at them.
Peony petals, deep within, the bee’s reluctance to part
牡丹蕊深く這い出るはちの別れ哉 botan shibe fukaku /hai-deru hachi no /wakare kan
Peonies have a multitude of pistils surrounded by a profusion of petals. Michael Pollon, in The Botany of Desire, says
The bees will let themselves be lured into the most ridiculous positions, avidly nosing their way like pigs through the thick purple brush of a thistle, rolling around helplessly in a single peony’s blond Medusa thatch of stamens… ‘Flying penises’ is what one botanist called bees.
This is actually a farewell verse from Basho to his followers in Nagoya where he has stayed as their guest for some time; he saying, “I want to stay here forever.” He is the bees, Nagoya is the peony. He communicates this message to his followers through an image of female sexuality.
Trembling and all the more moist maiden flower
ひよろひよると /なほ露けしや /女郎花 Hyoro hyoro to / nao tsuyukeshi ya / ominaeshi
This is another farewell verse from Basho to his followers before he and Etsujin leaves on their journey through the Kiso mountains. The translation is as literal as can be, however words take on divergent
meanings in our private minds. Whether the sexuality in this translation comes from Basho or from my own mind, no one can say for sure.
Evening dusk startled by a frog in thick grass -
To pick buds of coltsfoot lantern shaken goes out
Her devotion arose when blossoms were in the bud
草群に /蛙に怖がる /夕まぐれ
蕗の芽採りに /行灯揺り消す
道心の / おこりは花の / つぼむ時
Kusa mura ni / kawazu ni kowagaru / yuumagure
Fuki no to tori ni / andon yuri kesu
Doushin no / okori wa hana no / tsubomu toki
Basho portrays a woman on her way one evening to gather flower buds of the fuki plant, coltsfoot, like small artichokes, an early spring delicacy which emerges where snow has melted. Fried or boiled they are eaten with salt or miso. The frog startles her so she jumps back in surprise, knocking out her lantern flame. There she is, hidden in the twilight, her heart trembling within her. The woman’s experience, her actions and her feelings, are central, yet hidden, in Basho’s vision.
In TO PICK BUDS OF COLTSFOOT, a light went out; Kyorai instead has a light turn on, the “light” of devotion guiding a woman to renounce the world and become a nun. This happened either one spring as the in green buds of cherry blossoms turned pink and white, or when she herself was beginning to blossom sexually.
Long hanging sleeves’ fine silk, yet a beard is being born
The fate of Komachi to female-impersonate
ふり袖の / 薄地も髭と / 生出でて
小町が果の / 女方ども
Furisode no / usuji mo hige to / oi-idete
Komachi ga hate no / onna-gata domo
Furisode, or “hanging sleeves,” is a most formal style of kimono worn by young unmarried women in Japan: from the arms held out sraight, the sleeves hang down freely to her knees. Made of fine brightly colored silk, this type of kimono is extremely expensive. Basho shows us a young beauty in a furisode, but looking closely, we see the beginnings of a beard. He is a young boy favored by a wealthy pederast who likes
his boy to appear as a girl, but no amount of money he spends can stop the hormones from growing hair
on "her" chin. Basho's attention is always attracted to any difference between appearance and reality;
he is also drawn to the aspect of ‘giving birth’ emphasized in the final words in his stanza: 生出でて、
the Chinese characters for “birth” following by “emerging.” Basho no doubt knows the words of Lao Tzu:
To see a thing in the seed, is genius.
here he 'sees' the future hair growth and masculinity sprouting in the face above a feminine furisode.
The next poet extends that contrast of appearance and reality: the termonna-gata is, in Japanese theater,
a man who impersonates a woman, because women were not allowed to perform in theater. The poet says that when the 9th century poetess Ono no Komachi, the most beautiful woman Japan ever produced, grew old, as she was destined to do, as she did in various Noh plays where she was played by a man, she, the actual female, was no longer was female, but instead pretending to be female. Mia says "The fact that there’s a connection to an actual woman makes it so much more personal... I love the emphasis on gender as a performance—how true."
In both stanzas, young female is the ideal, and there is impersonation of that ideal, first by a young boy, then by an old woman. Likewise in popular men's magazines the cover usually shows a woman either young or with some quality of youth that attracts male attention, while in popular women's magazines, it is the same: either a woman young or 'pretending to be young.' Magazines covers are selected to sell.
Sake drinking auntie is so very lonely –
In a letter she tells all her grief playing dice
酒 飲む 姥 の / いかに さびしき
双 六の / 恨み を 文に / 書 尽し
Sake nomu uba no / ika ni sabishiki
Sugoroku no /urami o bun ni / kaki tsukushi
The old woman lives out her life with no purpose except to drink and write in detail her misery gambling over dice. So much diversity in Basho works.
To follow in the footsteps of a wandering madwoman
Compassion is learned when the gold has rotted away
狂女さまよう/ 跡し たう なる
情 しる / 身 は 黄金の / 朽ちてより
Kyōjo samayou / ato shitau naru
Nasake shiru / mi wa ōkon no / kuchite yori
Noh plays contain many madwomen such as Ono no Komachi who spent her youth in romance and luxury to lose all, including her sanity, in old age and die as a beggar in rags.
A Rustic Home:
Crone waves a fan over the food she cooked cool evening ease
Kaka is a rustic word for “old mother.” The word is “vulgar,” meaning “of the common people” but not derogatory; most Japanese consider it a term of affection. (Western translators have taken it as derogatory, embarking on a journey that makes this verse heavy and unpleasant. We do not follow that path.) Chiso is literally “a treat” but EVERY Japanese knows this word as part of go-chiso sama deshita, the common everyday expression of gratitude to the one who prepared food. Kon Eizo, preeminent Basho scholar of the late 20th century, recognizes the gratitude contained by the verse, and tells us the meaning he sees:
“Crone waves her round paper fan over the hot food to cool it off. This is an impoverished farm house, so we see her husband has returned from the fields, (taken off his sweaty cloths) and sits
in his loincloth. Watching his beloved wife (aisai) bestow her heart (kokoro tsukai) on the food,
he enjoys the evening cool and waits for the food.”
Kon recognizes the psychic energy, the love, she bestows on the food as she waves her fan over it. The scholar reveals that this is a love poem, not the love of young people at the beginning of their search, but the love of an old couple near the end. In the poetry of heaviness, we would grieve over their poverty and misery. However, with this “tune of Lightness”（軽み調、karumi shirabe) we forget all that, and focus on peaceful feelings of wholeness, of love and gratitude, even in old and impoverished country folk. This haiku written four months before his death is Basho’s vision near the end of his life of a peasant woman near the end of her life.
Through Kon’s interpretation of Basho, we see into one part of humanity: old people living in the boonies, aged and decrepit, without education or culture, yet Basho says something extraordinary about them: after all the decades of hard work and poverty, they still love each other. Reichhold, who obviously does not understand the gratitude in the word chisō and does not approve of Basho’s “concept of Lightness,” renders this verse as,
Boiled rice slop
his old lady fans the treat
with evening coolness
The crude, ugly words (“rice slop” and “his old lady”) destroy the peaceful feelings of wholeness. Reichhold claims that meshi is “the most low-class way of describing eating.” Kitteridge Cherry says that kaka is a “nasty” word offensive to women. NOT SO! Shoko, who is native Japanese and a Japanese Language Instructor, assures us that meshi and kaka are informal words suitable for this rustic scene. She also affirms that CRONE WAVES A FAN is a love poem.
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.
