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Bashō

Matsuo Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Deep North

Three genres: travelogue; picaresque; haibun ••• Bashō’s Narrow Road is, arguably, the most famous and influential work of . In essence, the piece belongs to the travelogue genre, being Bashō’s first-person account of a journey (or pilgrimage of sorts) that he undertook in 1689 with fellow-poet Kawai Sora (also known as Soga) as his companion. Narrow Road first appeared in 1702, after Bashō’s death (at around age 50, in 1694). Westerners sometimes refer to Bashō as the “Shakespeare of .” ••• As with Voltaire’s Candide, a later work, Narrow Road conforms to the formula identified with the picaresque genre, namely: a central protagonist (Bashō) who, while experiencing a journey made up of didactic episodes (called “Stations” in this case) is informed by a mentor, also known as preceptor (or by several such individuals). Some of Bashō’s mentors are living people (e.g., Sora/Soga), but others are dead sages and poets whose influence continues to be felt at many of the sites that Bashō chooses to visit. ••• the Narrow Road odyssey, Sora kept a journal, known as Sora’s Diary (or Sora Nikki), which was lost for many centuries until rediscovered in 1943. Details in Sora’s account sometimes differ from details in Bashō’s, suggesting that Bashō may have edited or “spun” elements of his content to make certain ideological points or even to hide certain potentially embarrassing details (e.g., a possible dalliance with a prostitute). Towards the end of Narrow Road, Sora finds himself “seized by an incurable pain in his stomach,” so he cannot finish out the journey with Bashō.

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••• Executed largely on foot within Honshu (the largest island in the archipelago that constitutes Japan), the journey covered almost 1,500 miles, beginning in Tokyo — then called — and moving north, as far as the three mountains of Dewa (i.e. Haguro, Gassan, and Yudono, discussed later in these notes) before turning homeward. ••• In Narrow Road, Bashō presents his long trip as 44 episodes, known as “stations,” most of which concern places that at the time of his setting forth were already widely celebrated in Japan. ••• This consensus about iconic sites is comparable to how most Americans recognize as culturally important such locations as the Grand Canyon and the Statue of Liberty. For example: Station 21 focuses on a place called Matsushima, which Bashō characterizes as “the most beautiful spot in the whole country of Japan.” Spared serious damage when hit by the massive earthquake-tsunami event of March 11, 2011, Matsuhima (松島)gets its name from the pine trees (matsu) on around 260 islands (shima) in a bay (see the image in the top left-hand corner of this page). ••• Critics say that each place visited and discussed by Bashō has an auratic quality — in other words, it manifests a special, almost sacred aura derived from: (1) its name (which may reflect a natural phenomenon, such as an exceptional pine tree, or a supernatural phenomenon, such as a god); and (2) a body of legends and poems. Sometimes, the poems are physically displayed at a given venue, carved into wood or stone or painted onto silk hangings. ••• Each place that Bashō chooses to visit already has meaning: that is, a semiotic configuration derived in large part from the poems written about the place by earlier visitors. While anything that Bashō adds can enhance and/or complicate the preexisting meaning, that meaning cannot be ignored. ••• When Bashō revised his travel notes to produce the final text of Narrow Road (known in Japanese as Oku no Hosomuchi), he chose a presentational style called haibun, which is prosimetric — that is, a combination of prosa (prose) and metrum (verse). In Japanese literature, Bashō helped pioneer the haibun genre. ••• Typically, a haibun work consists of a series of prosimetic units. In Narrow Road, each of these units (episodes/stations) focuses on a particular place, visited on their journey by Bashō and Sora. ••• A unit within a haibun work begins with a fairly detailed prose exposition of a happening or experience. That text is then followed by a verse, whose purpose is to distill the essence of the prose exposition. Arguably, the prose exposition expresses the “what,” while the verse distillation expresses the “so what.”

••• Many critics identify the verses in Narrow Road with the tradition, to which your high school education most likely exposed you. The standard explanation is that a haiku contains three lines, the first

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and last of which consist of five syllables each and the middle of which consists of seven syllables. While this explanation is serviceable, it requires refinement. ••• First, with reference to the , one identifies morae (plural of mora) or individual sound- units, as opposed to syllables. ••• Second, a haiku is historically not a free-standing, short verse; instead, the term haiku referred to the first or starting verse in a long, multi-author poem, an instance of the Japanese literary genre known as linked (chain) verse or , which emerged in the fourteenth century. In other words: while most of us think “short” in connection with the haiku, we should instead think “long” — the start of a renga or linked- verse poem. ••• In a renga poem, a master-poet creates the starting verse (i.e. the 17-mora haiku); then, other poets add additional verses over time. In Bashō’s era, many renga poems ended up with 36 verses, although there was no official rule about potential length. A 36-verse renga poem is known as a kasen. ••• Over and over in Narrow Road, Bashō relates how he experiences not just a place but also a renga poem about it — a poem that earlier visitors to the place had produced, verse after verse, over time. In general (as we have already seen), Bashō describes, in prose, his intellectual and emotional interactions with the venue; then he produces a new, original verse to be added to the preexisting poem. The verse distills the content in Bashō’s prose description. ••• An excellent example of the above is Station 17, which centers on the pine tree with “twin trunks” at Takekuma. Bashō acknowledges that the unusual tree (or, at least, one of its ancestors] was “described by the ancient poets.” He also highlights how he “wrote … a reply” to a new verse about Takekuma, which was authored by one of his friends, “[t]he poet Kyohaku.” ••• In one instance (Station 31), at a town called Tsuru-ga-oka, Bashō and two acquaintances — the poet and fabric-dyer Zushi Sakichi; and the warrior Nagayama Shigeyuki — each compose verses for a work of linked verse. This action echoes Bashō’s giving instruction in how to write linked verse when, near the complex of three sacred mountains called Dewa, he encounters a group of “rural poets” (Station 27) unsure about best practices in the genre: “It was … a great pleasure for me to be of such help.” ••• In another instance (Station 38), at a place called Shiogoshi, Bashō determines that a five-line poem by a twelfth-century poet and Buddhist monk, Saigyō Hōshi, captures perfectly “[t]he entire beauty” of the pine tree for which the place is famous. Thus, he forebears from composing an additional verse, asserting that any attempt to do so “would be like trying to add a sixth finger to [one’s] hand.” Incidentally, the region’s pine trees were largely cut down to make possible a golf course, although many of the other locales Bashō visited remain fairly intact to this day. ••• Thousands of Japanese adopt as a goal retracing some or all of Bashō’s Narrow Road journey. A tourist industry has emerged around that desire, perhaps comparable to how many of us might attempt “the great American road trip.”

Bashō and the Tokugawa (Edo) Dynasty ••• This course, World Literature Two, concerns the literatures of modernity, and Bashō’s life coincided with a significant period of modernization in his native Japan. The country evolved from being a

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collection of quasi-independent, feudal microstates (which often fought one another) to being a unitary, modern, and largely peaceful nation-state under a central regime or shogunate, headed by a dynasty named Tokugawa. The Tokugawa family established its power-base in the coastal settlement of Edo, which would grow into the mega-city of Tokyo. Thus, “Edo dynasty” is a synonym for “Tokugawa dynasty.” ••• It made sense that, historically, Japan consisted of multiple microstates: first, the country is a collection of islands; second, it straddles a major seismic zone (the Pacific “Ring of Fire”). Volcanic activity shaped Japan’s mountainous terrain, which separates communities from each other. It was easier to move over water (i.e. the sea, rivers, and lakes) than over mountains. Narrow Road regularly alludes to Japan’s seismic character; for example, Station 4 concerns a religious shrine, Muronoyashima, associated with fire. According to Bashō, the place-name means “burning cell,” a reference to the birth there of a deity called lord born out of the fire. ••• In bringing Japan’s traditional microstates together, the Tokugawa dynasty used military force or the threat of such force, depending on the circumstances. The dynasty obliged all regional lords to recognize the central authority in Edo (i.e. Tokyo) and, even, to maintain residences in the capital city. This model is congruent with the political theory of a commonwealth under a strong single leader, advanced by the English philosophe Thomas Hobbes in his treatise Leviathan (1651). While we should acknowledge the Tokugawa regime’s military nature, its bureaucratic nature is probably just as consequential. ••• A feature of modern societies is complex state bureaucratic or administrative systems. Think, for example, of the US Postal Service, an independent federal agency, embedded in the executive branch, that traces its roots to the Second Continental Congress of 1775. Another example: One extremely popular feature of the United Kingdom’s state bureaucracy is the National Health Service (NHS), created immediately after World War II. In 2020, this instance of so-called socialized medicine became the hero of the Covid-19 crisis in the UK, but even before then Britons regularly referred to it as a “national treasure.” ••• We can see Bashō’s commitment to mass communication through the written word (exemplified in Narrow Road and other works) as congruent with the turn to bureaucracy, for state systems require robust, effective communications strategies and infrastructures. By communicating to his Japanese readership the meaning and significance of the places he visited in 1689, Bashō reinforces a national identity based on shared knowledge, values, and priorities. His ranging over a considerable amount of territory effectively unites the diverse places visited into a single experience of Japanese-ness as the country becomes ever more united under the Tokugawa dynasty. ••• Now and then (and sometimes with a hint of regret), Narrow Road acknowledges the trend away from a feudal past where the local warrior (i.e. member of the samurai class) — rather than the national bureaucratic — featured prominently. In Station 14, for example, Bashō comments on the “ruined house” of (and the tombs associated with) Motoharu Sato, a twelfth-century feudal warrior whose two sons also distinguished themselves as warriors. While Bashō exhibits respect for the long-dead heroes by “[weeping] bitterly” over their loss, the fact that the Sato family’s homestead is ruined underscores that a new, different lifestyle and value-system has emerged. ••• In Station 20, Bashō meditates on another warrior, Izumi no Saburo, who lived “five hundred years” earlier. Deeming him the “flower of chivalry [i.e. the feudal system],” he lauds certain of his qualities, holding them up as proof that “if one performs one’s duty and maintains one’s loyalty, fame comes naturally in the wake [i.e. as a result].” Interestingly, Bashō must be highly attentive to detect signs of the past. He notices Izumi no Saburo’s name in an obscure location: inscribed on the metal door of a lantern that the warrior had gifted to a local shrine in 1187. In other words, even in the backcountry, Japan’s past isn’t readily available as modernity solidifies its dominance. ••• One way of interpreting Narrow Road is as a response to anxiety about the modernization of Japan under the city-based Tokugawa dynasty (which endured from 1603 until 1867). The dynasty’s policies emphasized autarky — that is, economic self-sufficiency — for Japan; thus, agriculture and rural existence became less dominant as manufacturing industry and internal trade increased, giving rise to an artisan and merchant middle class in expanding cities (especially Edo/Tokyo, Ōsaka, and Kyōto). Predictably, a divide emerged between the urban centers and the rural hinterland. With modernity becoming ever more assertive

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in Japanese life, Bashō’s journey constitutes a deliberate departure from the principal urban center, Edo, in search of what remains of traditional, rural (or heartland) Japanese experiences. ••• It may be significant that, at Station 5, focused on Nikkō, Bashō does not mention that place’s Tokugawa mausoleums (or elaborate family burial shrines), the first of which was constructed in 1617. The Tokugawa dynasty built a ceremonial road, the Nikkō Kadiō, to connect the mausoleums to Edo. ••• We see a similar urban/rural divide in American politics between the “liberal coastal elites,” associated with such cities as New York and Los Angeles, and the “heartland” farm-belt and rust-belt populations, believed by certain reductive politicians to be focused on God and guns, oil-drilling and coal-mining, and moral conservatism. ••• This dichotomy is nothing new in our country. It receives attention in an important novel, White Noise (1985), written by the Italian-American author and public intellectual Don DeLillo. In that work, two characters, Jack and Murray, head out of an urban center and into the countryside to see if something real or authentic still exists beyond the phony universe (or “white noise”) created by advertising and popular media. Specifically, the men seek a barn in an agricultural landscape. The building has emerged as a potent symbol of the authentic lifestyle that many people fear modernity has caused to atrophy. As one drives to the site, one observes signs advertising it, as if modernity is making it into a commodity for public consumption. Jack explains, “Soon the signs started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus.” ••• Many other city folks are on the same quest as Jack and Murray; they want an authentic artifact or experience. However, it becomes abundantly clear that such authenticity is no longer really available. Given the crush of people — and the past-ness of the past, when the barn functioned as just a barn, not a symbol — the closest that anyone can come to accessing the barn’s essence is the act of photographing the structure. Murray comments that “[n]o one sees the barn,” that the people “are taking pictures of taking pictures.” In other words, modernity has won. ••• Sometimes, we call a manufactured version of an original — such as a photograph of a barn (or other culturally significant artifact) — a simulacrum. The “Main Street, USA” experience at Disneyland is an example of a simulacrum, according to the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. ••• On occasion during his journey, begun in May of 1689, Bashō believes that he comes close to experiencing not a simulacrum but, instead, “real” or “authentic” aspects of Japan’s traditional culture. One example occurs in Station 20, which recounts entering, around sunset, a coastal town called Shiogama (roughly 220 miles north of Edo/Tokyo). There, he hears “a blind minstrel singing to his lute,” and he concludes that the performance “retained the rustic flavor of the past.” Although he values the experience, Bashō is also equivocal about it. Rather than use the adjective “pleasing” in connection with the minstrel’s songs, he opts for the double-negative construction (or litotes) “not unpleasing”; in addition, he deems the recital “a bit too boisterous.” ••• Clearly, Bashō believes that something has been lost due to the modernizing and urbanizing of much of Japan. The ever-intensifying urban lifestyle wasn’t his cup of tea. In fact, in 1680, before embarking on the Narrow Road journey, he moved from a neighborhood (called Nihonbashi) near Edo’s city-center to a cottage in a suburban district on reclaimed land outside Edo (called Fukagawa). From the banana tree (bashō) that one of his disciples planted in the cottage’s yard, he adopted the pen name Bashō, replacing his family name of Kinsaku. ••• When analyzing the Narrow Road odyssey, we can usefully invoke the notion of nostalgia: Bashō exhibits nostalgia for what, increasingly, is a disappearing way of life. The noun “nostalgia” emerged during the long eighteenth century, when Swiss mercenary soldiers fighting abroad were diagnosed with a debilitating yearning for home. Embedded in “nostalgia” are the Greek words nostos (“home” or “homecoming”) and algos (“sickness”).

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••• While Bashō quests the real Japan in the nation’s backcountry, he also recognizes that there may never have been a fully original version of Japanese-ness. Several times, he acknowledges the influence of China on key elements of Japanese culture. Respecting religion, the Shugen sect (or Shugendō) dominates among the mountain people. It is a syncretic (hybrid) faith, combining aboriginal mountain- and fire-worship, which evolved organically in rural Japan, with both Confucianism, a Chinese philosophy and life-practice, and Buddhism. Of Indian origin, Buddhism spread to China and then Japan, where the version of the practice developed. In Station 7, set in the town of Kurobane, Bashō pays homage at Komyoji Temple, burial site of “the founder of the Shugen sect,” who “travelled all over the country [Japan] in wooden clogs.” ••• Also of Chinese origin is the Japanese writing system, known as kanji, which Bashō deploys.

Three Mountains of Dewa ••• One of the highlights of Narrow Road is Bashō’s experiences at “the three most sacred shrines of the north”: a complex of mountains known as Dewa Sanzan (or, simply, Dewa). The entrance to “the province of Dewa” features in Station 24, where Bashō hires a “young man of tremendous physique” to guide him and Sora across some “terribly uncertain” alpine terrain. ••• Ultimately, by means of a perilous boat trip on the swollen (Station 28), Bashō and Sora arrive at Dewa, a popular center of asceticism — that is: rigorous, self-denying spiritual practice — since the late 500s. Bashō gains an audience or interview with Egaku, the bishop-like individual who presides over the Dawa’s three mountains: Haguro, Gassan, and Yudono. ••• Bashō relates his early-June ascents of Haguro and Gassan (which, at 6,510 feet, is the tallest of the three peaks). However, save an admission that the accomplishment moved him to tears, he remains silent about his climb of Yudono, for tradition forbids discussion of one’s experiences on that mountain: “don’t speak; don’t ask.” ••• According to many, tackling Haguro facilitates an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual encounter with one’s present; while tackling Yaduno facilitates such an encounter with one’s future. For its part, Gassan (“moon mountain”) allows one to meditate on the afterlife. Bashō recalls how, after an eight-mile trek up Gassan, he was “completely out of breath and frozen to death.” He also invokes the memory of a swordsmith named Gassan, associated with the Dewa complex. That craftsman blended a natural resource — “a certain mysterious power latent in the [local] water” — with his own “deepest devotion” to perfecting his artisanal skills. Absent such devotion, Bashō claims, “you will not be able to accomplish anything,” irrespective of “where your interest lies.” ••• The Japanese regularly invoke the word gambate, sometimes translated as “keep going” (“persevere”) or “try your best.” Another commonly used term is hansei, which indicates constantly reflecting on one’s actions with a view to future improvement. Both of these concepts are applicable to Gassan the swordsmith.

Narrow Road and Japanese Worldview ••• Bashō’s emphasis on “deepest devotion” to one’s tasks and the building of one’s skills underscores an important dimension of Narrow Road. While one should avoid facile national stereotyping, many critics maintain that Bashō’s famous and beloved text reflects a Japanese national ethic, characteristic, or worldview that places stress not just on hard, goal-oriented work but also on painstaking, consistent attention to detail. ••• One American characteristic and quality is to think — and act — big, as exemplified in the US’s landing the first humans on the moon. On September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy announced, “We [the people of the United States] choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do … other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept,

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one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” Less than seven years later — on July 20, 1969 — Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the lunar surface. ••• One Japanese characteristic and quality is to think analytically about small details (or “sweat the small stuff”), whereas Americans are generally drawn, first, to big ideas and aspirations. Each proclivity or practice has validity and worth. ••• The “grand” in Grand Canyon indicates why that natural feature became an American icon. Our privileging of something grand or big contrasts with many phenomena that the Japanese espouse as key national icons. The American popular imagination would not likely care about a pine tree with “twin trunks,” such as the one at Takekuma that Bashō celebrates in Narrow Road. However, that tree possesses immense cultural significance for the Japanese. Americans tend to value the exceptional individual; however, honoring joint effort and community coherence, as exemplified by the twin trunks, is an essential aspect of Japanese society. The Japanese term wa refers to an attitude of cooperation and a consciousness of one’s personal obligations to the group. ••• Bashō regularly manifests attention to detail. As he embarks on the Narrow Road trip, he remarks not on the great mass of Mount Fuji — Japan’s highest mountain, which overlooks Edo/Tokyo — as an American might well do. Instead, he remarks on the “faint shadow” of the mountain (in “thinning” moonlight). This concern with both precision and aesthetics helps us understand why Japan has gained success in such industries as vehicle-manufacture. ••• From the late 1970s, Japanese car brands (Honda, Toyota, Datsun/Nissan) began to infiltrate the American market, then dominated by big, undependable, and inefficient domestic vehicles. Japanese models, such as the Honda Accord, gained a reputation for detail-oriented engineering that resulted in mechanical reliability and fuel economy. In time, Japan’s Toyota would surpass America’s General Motors as earth’s #1 car-maker. ••• The values of (1) nuanced attention to even the smallest detail and (2) valuing the people in one’s ecosystem are clearly displayed in Narrow Road. As already stated: Bashō perceives the “faint shadow” of Mount Fuji (attention to detail), and he participates in the shared enterprise that is linked verse (valuing other people). The two qualities enumerated above are central to the so- called Toyota Way, a set of managerial and production principles advanced by Toyota Corporation and adopted by many other companies globally. •••

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