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.
The boss pretends / not to see their love / yet he knows / Figures half hidden / behind the umbrella
見ぬふりの /主人に恋を /しられけり /すがた半分 / かくす傘
The boss pretends
not to see their love
yet he knows
Figures half hidden
behind the umbrella
芭蕉連句全註解 ８巻：１５３
Complete Basho Renku Interpetations, volume 8, p. 153
Minufuri no / shujin ni koi o / shirarekeri Fushi
27 見ぬふりの /主人に恋を / しられけり 普子
町を一緒に歩いていると、上司に出くわし、彼女は驚いてます。
上司はクールで彼らの関係に気づかないふりをしているが、 愛人どうしだと悟られている。
Walking together in town, they are surprised to see, and be seen by, the boss;
he is cool and pretends not to notice them, but he knows they make love.
Sugata hanbun / kakusu karakasa Basho
２８ すがた半分 / かくす傘 芭蕉
恥ずかしそうに、彼女は傘の後ろにできるだけ身を隠します。
Embarrassed, she hides as much of herself as she can behind umbrella
Walking together in town, the lovers are surprised to see, and be seen by, the boss – and the poet allows us to imagine who the lovers are and how the boss relates to them. The boss can see the Energy between the two of them, but he is cool, saying nothing and not staring at them – however the Japanese female’s heart shrinks with haji – which can be translated as “shame” or “embarrassment” or “bashfulness” or merely a feeling of discomfort. She clutches the umbrella handle to cover as much of her as possible without any movements to attract his attention.
The first stanza, although it is not by Basho, is the interesting one; it contains the “boss” and the lovers. Basho’s stanza is merely a cliché, but as a cliché, Basho’s image perfectly completes and fulfills the interesting stanza. (This cliché often appears in film, because the image of an open umbrella hiding lovers is so visual. In fact, the first kiss in Japanese film was in a movie called “A Certain Night’s Kiss” in 1946; the lovers kissed behind the umbrella, so could not be seen at all, yet the film aroused much controversy. Things have changed in Japanese film and society.)
Miyawaki Masahiko, in Basho’s Verses of Human Affection, says,
“Probably no other following stanza so well expresses the
sense of shame felt when one’s love becomes known to others."
His comment carries this stanza-pair deep into the realms of anthropology. I imagine Margaret Mead asking the teenage girls of Samoa how they feel when an older person sees them with a lover. Japan is said to be a “shame culture” rather than a Judeo-Christian “guilt culture” or a Pacific island no-shame culture. Miyawaki is Japanese and writes about Japanese people, but what about us, women (or men) in all sorts of different cultures, with different perceptions of love, young or old, married or unmarried, do we, or did we long ago, feel “shame” (or whatever we call it) when, together with a sexual partner in a non-sexual situation, we are seen by an authority figure who gets the picture?
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.
