12018-06-27T17:50:51-07:00Ronae Matriano8ed24d71e6036affdb22f6e2fd0ec83a8e515e95149435plain2019-01-30T23:34:20-08:00Ronae Matriano8ed24d71e6036affdb22f6e2fd0ec83a8e515e95Keeping this background in mind, let’s turn 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.
