Matsuo Bashō
For our final session, we’ll be looking at a very different genre of Japanese literature: perhaps one that many of you have some experience reading (or writing)—a genre known as haiku. We’ll be exploring this genre through one of its most famous practitioners and pioneers: a figure named Matsuo Bashō, who having been born in 1644 is a near exact contemporary of Ihara Saikaku. Like Saikaku, Bashō earned a living by offering instruction in poetry.
It’s important to realize that in premodern Japan (and in many other premodern societies as well), poetry is a serious matter. Nowadays, we perhaps relegate poetry to a marginal existence and think of it as something done in private. In premodern East Asia, however, poetry is often a highly social activity. The meaning or focus of a poem might be highly personal or subjective, but the composition and enjoyment of poetry is often done in a communal setting.
There are many different genres of poetry, each of which has its own rules and conventions, and it’s incumbent upon the practitioner of poetry to keep these rules and conventions straight. If you’re called upon to write a poem at a banquet, at a party, or at an important diplomatic function, you need to be able to do it. Thus, you’d be willing to pay someone like Bashō or Saikaku to teach you the rules that keep you from being humiliated.
The genre that Bashō is famous for is a genre known as haiku, which originally emerges out of the communal practice of “linked verse” (renga), in which participants take turns alternating verses and completing each other’s poems. These composition sessions would begin with a short three-line poem known as a hokku (opening verse). Over time, these opening verses acquire a cultural gravity of their own, and Bashō is famous for contributing to the emergence of the hokku/haiku as an independent genre.
These poems are short, but they follow a strict set of rules, including:
- syllable count: usually haiku consist of three lines, divided up into a 5-7-5 syllable structure
- the presence of a “season word” (kigo): a word that indicates when the poem takes place, and in doing so, provides some clue to the emotional, affective, and geographic associations of the topic
- an interesting, unusual, or unprecedented choice of image or diction: haiku emphasize the presence of new topics, new associations, and new places being described. The unfamiliar or unprecedented is an important element of haiku: moving away from clichéd topics, emotions, or images found in more canonical forms of classical poetry
Sometimes this is overtly humorous. You read, for instance, the poet Nishiyama Sōin’s take on a canonical poem by the twelfth-century poet, Saigyō.
Saigyō’s poem: “Thinking to gaze at them, I grew extremely close to the cherry
blossoms, making the parting ever so painful.”
Sōin’s haiku: “Thinking to gaze at the cherry blossoms . . . I hurt my neck.”
Othertimes, rather than humor, a haiku derives its power from a startling or unprecedented image. Consider the decidedly quotidian and unromantic focus of this haiku by Bashō:
“Bitten by fleas and lice, I slept in a bed / A horse urinating all the time /
Close to my pillow.”
Or, think about the unexpected pathos Bashō found in fishing implements as he stood on the shore where a famous battle had taken place in antiquity:“Octopus traps! Fleeting dreams under the summer moon.”
On the one hand, we have these very mundane (and probably awful-smelling) fishing traps, and on the other an elevated allusion to the dead warriors of antiquity. The poem is sad, it’s nostalgic, it’s startling, it’s maybe a bit humorous—we have a new set of allusions and emotions that are being juxtaposed in unusual ways.
Keeping this background in mind, let’s turn our attention to Bashō’s magnum opus—probably the most famous travel account in Japanese literary history, a work called “Narrow Road to the Deep North,” which is a deeply poeticized account of a journey Bashō took to the far north of Japan in 1689. This is a very remote area in Bashō’s time, and it’s very much in the spirit of discovering the new that Bashō undertakes his voyage. The sights and sounds he encounters in the north are free from the associations of classical poetry, and I like to think of this text as an attempt at creating a new poetic map of Japan.
Questions to Consider for “Narrow Road to the Deep North”
- As with the short fiction of Saikaku, consider the question of genre in the context of Bashō’s work. How would you describe this text in terms of genre? What role do the poetry and prose play in the account? Do you think Bashō intended his work to be read as a diary or accurate account of his time in the north? Why or why not?
- What is Bashō’s attitude toward the act of travel itself? What is his motivation in undertaking this expedition? What are some of the things he expects to see during his time in the north, and what is the significance of these objects?
- How do you read Bashō’s advice to would-be poets: “Don’t seek the traces of the ancients; seek that which the ancients sought.” Where do we see examples of this in “Narrow Road to the Deep North”?
Author Biography
William Hedberg's primary research focus is the literature and culture of early modern Japan, and his current project centers on the reception of late imperial Chinese fiction during the Edo and Meiji periods (17th-20th c.). This project brings together long-standing interests in Sino-Japanese literary contact, the history of translation in East Asia, and travel literature. Hedberg's first book, The Japanese Discovery of Chinese Fiction: The Water Margin and the Making of a National Canon (forthcoming, Columbia University Press), examines the Japanese reception of the influential Chinese vernacular novel, The Water Margin (Ch. Shuihu zhuan, Jp. Suikoden) as a lens for discussing Japanese theories of translation, early modern interest in Chinese language and material culture, and literary aesthetics. Hedberg's research has been published in the Journal of Japanese Studies, Japan Forum, The International Journal of Asian Studies, and Sino-Japanese Studies.
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