samidare wo Gathering the rains
atsumete hayashi of the wet season—swift
Mogamigawa the Mogami River72
. . .
Haguroyama, Gassan, and Yudono are called the Three Mountains of Dewa.73 At Haguroyama, Feather Black Mountain—which belongs to the Tōeizan Temple in Edo, in Musashi Province—the moon of Tendai concentration and contemplation shines, and the lamp of the Buddhist Law of instant enlightenment glows. The temple quarters stand side by side, and the ascetics devote themselves to their calling. The efficacy of the divine mountain, whose prosperity will last forever, fills people with awe and fear.
On the eighth, we climbed Gassan, Moon Mountain. With purification cords around our necks and white cloth wrapped around our heads, we were led up the mountain by a person called a strongman. Surrounded by clouds and mist, we walked over ice and snow and climbed for twenty miles. Wondering if we had passed Cloud Barrier, beyond which the sun and moon move back and forth, I ran out of breath, my body frozen. By the time we reached the top, the sun had set and the moon had come out. We spread bamboo grass on the ground and lay down, waiting for the dawn. When the sun emerged and the clouds cleared away, we descended to Yudono, Bathhouse Mountain.
On the side of the valley were the so-called Blacksmith Huts. Here black-smiths collect divine water, purify their bodies and minds, forge swords admired by the world, and engrave them with “Moon Mountain.” I hear that in China they harden swords in the sacred water at Dragon Spring, and I was reminded of the ancient story of Gan Jiang and Mo Ye,74 the two Chinese who crafted famous swords. The devotion of these masters to the art was extraordinary. Sitting down on a large rock for a short rest, I saw a cherry tree about three feet high, its buds half open. The tough spirit of the late-blooming cherry tree, buried beneath the accumulated snow, remembering the spring, moved me.75 It was as if I could smell the “plum blossom in the summer heat,” and I remembered the pathos of the poem by Priest Gyōson.76 Forbidden to speak of the details of this sacred mountain, I put down my brush.
When we returned to the temple quarters, at Priest Egaku’s behest, we wrote down verses about our pilgrimage to the Three Mountains.
suzushisa ya Coolness—
hono mikazuki no faintly a crescent moon over
Haguroyama Feather Black Mountain77
kumo no mine Cloud peaks
ikutsu kuzurete crumbling one after another—
tsuki no yama Moon Mountain78
katararenu Forbidden to speak—
yudono ni nurasu wetting my sleeves
tamoto kana at Bathhouse Mountain!79
Left Haguro and at the castle town of Tsurugaoka were welcomed by the samurai Nagayama Shigeyuki. Composed a round of haikai. Sakichi accompanied us this far. Boarded a boat and went down to the port of Sakata. Stayed at the house of a doctor named En’an Fugyoku.
Atsumiyama ya From Hot Springs Mountain
Fukuura kakete to the Bay of Breezes,
yusuzumi the evening cool80
atsuki hi o Pouring the hot day
umi ni iretari into the sea—
Mogamigawa Mogami River81
Having seen all the beautiful landscapes—rivers, mountains, seas, and coasts—I now prepared my heart for Kisagata. From the port at Sakata moving northeast, we crossed over a mountain, followed the rocky shore, and walked across the sand—all for a distance of ten miles. The sun was on the verge of setting when we arrived. The sea wind blew sand into the air; the rain turned everything to mist, hiding Chōkai Mountain. I groped in the darkness. Having heard that the landscape was exceptional in the rain,82 I decided that it must also be worth seeing after the rain, too, and squeezed into a fisherman’s thatched hut to wait for the rain to pass.
By the next morning the skies had cleared, and with the morning sun shining brightly, we took a boat to Kisagata. Our first stop was Nōin Island, where we visited the place where Nōin had secluded himself for three years.83 We docked our boat on the far shore and visited the old cherry tree on which Saigyō had written the poem about “a fisherman’s boat rowing over the flowers.”84 On the shore of the river was an imperial mausoleum, the gravestone of Empress Jingū. The temple was called Kanmanju Temple. I wondered why I had yet to hear of an imperial procession to this place.
We sat down in the front room of the temple and raised the blinds, taking in the entire landscape at one glance. To the south, Chōkai Mountain held up the heavens, its shadow reflected on the bay of Kisagata; to the west, the road came to an end at Muyamuya Barrier; and to the east, there was a dike. The road to Akita stretched into the distance. To the north was the sea, the waves pounding into the bay at Shiogoshi, Tide-Crossing. The face of the bay, about two and a half miles in width and length, resembled Matsushima but with a different mood. If Matsushima was like someone laughing, Kisagata resembled a resentful person filled with sorrow and loneliness. The land was as if in a state of anguish.
Kisagata ya Kisagata—
ame ni Seishi ga Xi Shi asleep in the rain
nebu no hana flowers of the silk tree85
shiogoshi ya In the shallows—
tsuru hagi nurete cranes wetting their legs
umi suzushi coolness of the sea86
. . .
Reluctant to leave Sakata, the days piled up; now I turn my gaze to the far-off clouds of the northern provinces.87 Thoughts of the distant road ahead fill me with anxiety; I hear it is more than 325 miles to the castle town in Kaga.88 After we crossed Nezu-no-seki, Mouse Barrier, we hurried toward Echigo and came to Ichiburi, in Etchū Province. Over these nine days, I suffered from the extreme heat, fell ill, and did not record anything.
fumizuki ya The Seventh Month—
muika mo tsune no the sixth day, too, is different
yo ni wa nizu from the usual night89
araumi ya A wild sea—
Sado ni yokotau stretching to Sado Isle
Amanogawa the River of Heaven90
Today, exhausted from crossing the most dangerous places in the north country—places with names like Children Forget Parents, Parents Forget Children, Dogs Turn Back, Horses Sent Back—I drew up my pillow and lay down to sleep, only to hear in the adjoining room the voices of two young women. An elderly man joined in the conversation, and I gathered that they were women of pleasure from a place called Niigata in Echigo Province. They were on a pilgrimage to Ise Shrine, and the man was seeing them off as far as the barrier here at Ichiburi. They seemed to be writing letters and giving him other trivial messages to take back to Niigata tomorrow. Like “the daughters of the fishermen, passing their lives on the shore where the white waves roll in,”91 they had fallen low in this world, exchanging vows with every passerby. What terrible lives they must have had in their previous existence for this to occur. I fell asleep as I listened to them talk. The next morning, they came up to us as we departed. “The difficulties of road, not knowing our destination, the uncertainty and sorrow—it makes us want to follow your tracks. We’ll be inconspicuous. Please bless us with your robes of compassion, link us to the Buddha,” they said tearfully.
“We sympathize with you, but we have many stops on the way. Just follow the others. The gods will make sure that no harm occurs to you.” Shaking them off with these remarks, we left, but the pathos of their situation lingered with us.
hitotsu ya ni Under the same roof
yūjo mo netari women of pleasure also sleep—
hagi to tsuki bush clover and moon92
I dictated this to Sora, who wrote it down. . . .
We visited Tada Shrine where Sanemori’s helmet and a piece of his brocade robe were stored. They say that long ago when Sanemori belonged to the Genji clan, Lord Yoshitomo offered him the helmet. Indeed, it was not the armor of a common soldier. A chrysanthemum and vine carved design inlaid with gold extended from the visor to the ear flaps, and a two-horn frontpiece was attached to the dragon head. After Sanemori died in battle, Kiso Yoshinaka attached a prayer sheet to the helmet a
nd offered it to the shrine. Higuchi Jirō acted as Kiso’s messenger. It was as if the past were appearing before my very eyes.
muzan ya na “How pitiful!”
kabuto no shita no beneath the warrior helmet
kirigirisu cries of a cricket93
. . .
The sixteenth. The skies had cleared, and we decided to gather little red shells at Iro-no-hama, Color Beach, seven leagues across the water.94 A man named Ten’ya made elaborate preparations—lunch boxes, wine flasks, and the like—and ordered a number of servants to go with us on the boat. Enjoying a tailwind, we arrived quickly.95 The beach was dotted with a few fisherman’s huts and a dilapidated Lotus Flower temple. We drank tea, warmed up saké, and were overwhelmed by the loneliness of the evening.
sabishisa ya Loneliness—
Suma ni kachitaru an autumn beach judged
hama no aki superior to Suma’s96
nami no ma ya Between the waves—
kogai ni majiru mixed with small shells
hagi no chiri petals of bush clover
I had Tōsai write down the main events of that day and left it at the temple.
Rotsū came as far as the Tsuruga harbor to greet me, and together we went to Mino Province. With the aid of horses, we traveled to Ōgaki. Sora joined us from Ise. Etsujin galloped in on horseback, and we gathered at the house of Jokō. Zensenshi, Keiko, Keiko’s sons, and other intimate acquaintances visited day and night. For them, it was like meeting someone who had returned from the dead. They were both overjoyed and sympathetic. Although I had not yet recovered from the weariness of the journey, we set off again on the sixth of the Ninth Month. Thinking to pay our respects to the great shrine at Ise, we boarded a boat.
hamaguri no Autumn going—
futami ni wakare parting for Futami
yuku aki zo a clam pried from its shell97
[NKBZ 41: 341–386, translated by Haruo Shirane]
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1. From Arano. The original version in Diary of the East (Azuma nikki) is kareeda ni karasu no tomaritaru ya aki no kure. Bashō first composed this hokku in the spring of 1681, during his late Danrin and Chinese-style period. Aki no kure can be read as either “end of autumn” or “autumn nightfall.” In Hakusen shū (1698), a collection of Bashō’s hokku, this hokku is preceded by the title “On Evening in Autumn” (Aki no kure to wa), indicating that the poem was written on a seasonal topic closely associated with Fujiwara Shunzei (d. 1204) and his medieval aesthetics of quiet, meditative loneliness. Because crows perched on a withered branch was a popular subject in Chinese ink painting, Bashō’s hokku juxtaposes a medieval waka topic with a Chinese painting motif, causing the two to resonate in montage fashion.
2. Bashō composed this hokku in the Eleventh Month of 1684 while visiting the Ise area during the Skeleton in the Fields (Nozarashi kikōd) journey. Drawing on the phonic connotations of shirauo (literally, white fish), Bashō establishes a connotative correspondence between the semitranslucent “whiteness” (shiroki koto) of the tiny fish and the pale, faint light of early dawn (akebono). The poem has a melodic rhythm, resulting from the repeated “o” vowel mixed with the consonantal “s.”
3. This is a good example of a semiallegorical poetic greeting. Bashō composed this hokku, which appears in Skeleton in the Fields, when he left the house of Tōyō (1653–1712), a friend in Atsuta (Nagoya), in the Fourth Month of 1685. The bee, representing Bashō, is resting peacefully in the peony, an elegant summer flower that symbolizes Tōyō’s residence, joyfully imbibing the rich pollen of the pistils, but now, with much reluctance, it must leave. The hokku is an expression of gratitude and a farewell not only to Tōyō but to all the Nagoya-area poets who have hosted him on this journey.
4. The opening verse of a kasen sequence composed in Atsuta, in Nagoya, in 1685. The poet looks out toward the voice of the wild duck (kamo), which has disappeared with the approaching darkness, and sees only a faint whiteness (shiroshi implies a kind of translucency), which may be the waves or the reflection of the sea in the dusk. Kamo is a seasonal word for winter.
5. Written in 1686 and collected in Spring Days (Haru no hi). Since the ancient period, the frog had been admired for its singing and its beautiful voice. In the Heian period it became associated with spring, the yamabuki, the bright yellow globeflower (Kerria japonica), and limpid mountain streams. According to one source, Kikaku, one of Bashō’s disciples, suggested that Bashō use yamabuki in the the opening phrase. Instead, Bashō works against the classical associations of the frog. In place of the plaintive voice of the frog singing in the rapids or calling out for its lover, Bashō evokes the sound of the frog jumping into the water. And instead of the elegant image of a frog in a fresh mountain stream beneath the yamabuki, the hokku presents a stagnant pond. At the same time, the hokku offers a fresh twist to the seasonal association of the frog with spring: the sudden movement of the frog, which suggests rebirth and the awakening of life in spring, is contrasted with the implicit winter stillness of the old pond.
6. This hokku, which Bashō composed in 1688, appears in Backpack Notes (Oi no kobumi). The wisteria (fuji no hana), with its long drooping flowers, is blooming outside the lodge even as it functions as a metaphor for the traveler’s heart.
7. Bashō composed this poem, which appears in Backpack Notes, in the Fourth Month of 1688. The octopus traps were lowered in the afternoon and raised the next morning, after the octopus had crawled inside. The octopus in the jars—and implicitly the troops of the Heike clan who were massacred on these shores at the end of the twelfth century and whose ghosts subsequently appear before the traveler in Backpack Notes—are having “fleeting dreams,” not knowing that they are about to be harvested. Bashō juxtaposes the “summer moon” (natsu no tsuki), which the classical tradition deemed to be as brief as the summer night and thus associated with ephem-erality, and the “octopus traps” (takotsubo), a vernacular word, giving new life to the theme of impermanence. The poem is intended to be humorous and sad at the same time.
8. Diverging from the classical poetic association of the cuckoo (hototogisu), which was its singing, Bashō focuses here on its arrowlike flight. In this poem, which Bashō wrote in 1688 during his Backpack Notes journey, the speaker implicitly hears the cuckoo, but by the time he looks up, it has disappeared, replaced by a single island, presumably Awajishima, the small island across the bay from Suma and Akashi, where the speaker stands. In haikai fashion, the hokku is also parodic, twisting a well-known classical poem in the Senzaishū: “When I gaze in the direction of the crying cuckoo, only the moon lingers in the dawn” (1188; Summer, no. 161). Another possible pretext is the following poem in the Kokinshū, attributed to Hitomaro: “Faintly, in the morning mist on Akashi Bay, it disappears behind an island, the boat I long for” (905, Travel, no. 409). In Bashō’s hokku, the flight of the disappearing cuckoo, which the poet implicitly longs to see, becomes the path of the ship, which “disappears” behind (shimagakureyuku) Awajishima, a “single island.”
9. Bashō composed this hokku while visiting Kyoto in the Twelfth Month of 1690 and later included it in Monkey’s Straw Coat (Sarumino). Kūya were lay monks or pilgrims who com memorated the anniversary of the death of Priest Kūya by begging and chanting Buddhist songs in the streets of Kyoto for forty-eight days beginning in the middle of the Eleventh Month. Kan (cold season), a roughly thirty-day period from the Twelfth Month through the beginning of the First Month (February), was the coldest part of the year. The three parts—dried salmon (karazake), the gauntness of the Kūya pilgrim (Kūya no yase), and the cold season (kan no uchi)—each of which is accentuated by a hard beginning “k” consonant and by the repeated mo (also), suggest three dimensions (material, human, and seasonal) of the loneliness of a traveler on a distant journey.
10. Composed in the winter of 1691. The two parts of the hokku—separated by the cutting word ya—can be read together as one continuous scene or separately as two parts reverberating against each
other. In the former, a person suffering from mumps (hohobare, literally, swollen cheeks) stands outside, his or her face contorted by the kogarashi, the strong winds that blow the leaves off the trees in the winter. In the latter, the person’s face inflamed by and suffering from mumps echoes the cold, stinging wind. The expectations generated by withering winds, a classical seasonal topic associated with cold winter landscapes, are humorously undercut by the haikai phrase hohobare itamu (pained by swollen cheeks), which then leads to a double reversal: after the initial collision, the reader discovers a connotative fusion between the withering winds and the painfully swollen cheeks.
11. “Cat’s love for its mate” (neko no tsumagoi), later simply called cat’s love (neko no koi), was a haikai seasonal topic that became popular in the Edo period. Bashō composed this hokku in 1691 and included it in Monkey’s Straw Coat. Bashō humorously depicts a female cat that has grown emaciated not only from being fed only barley—a situation that suggests a poor farmhouse—but from intense lovemaking. (Yatsururu modifies both mugimeshi and koi, implying “emaciating barley and love.”)
12. Bashō apparently wrote this hokku in the Fourth Month of 1693 after being urged by his disciples to compose on the topic of “cuckoos on the water’s edge.” As the cuckoo flies overhead, it makes a sharp penetrating cry, which “lies stretched” (yokotō), hanging over the quiet surface of the water, probably at dusk or night when it traditionally sings. The cuckoo quickly disappears, but the sound lingers, like an overtone.
13. This hokku, which appears in Backpack Diary (Oi nikki) and which Bashō composed in 1694 at the residence of Mokusetsu in Ōtsu (near Lake Biwa), uses hiyahiya (cool) as a seasonal word for autumn. The speaker, cooling the bottoms of his bare feet on the wall, has fallen asleep on a hot afternoon. The implied topic is lingering summer heat (zansho), which is captured from a haikai in a humorous angle, in the feet, through which the speaker feels the arrival of autumn.
Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900 Page 32