Basho Natsuishi

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Modernity and anti-urbanism in Basho Matsuo

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© frihaiku.se/Natsuishis_Basho.html

Modernity and anti-urbanism in Basho Matsuo
by Ban’ya Natsuishi

Basho Matsuo was born in Iga-Ueno in Western Japan in 1644. At that period, about 40 years had passed after the inauguration of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603, and the political system of Japan permitted the whole country enjoy freedom from warfare at home and abroad for about 250 years, a result partly of having closed its borders to other countries with exception of China and the Netherlands.

In his native town, Iga-Ueno, Basho wrote this haiku:


たんだすめ住めば都ぞ今日の月
Tanda sume / sumeba miyako zo / kyô no tsuki
(1666)

Only live and let it be clear!
If you live in the capital Kyô,
today’s full moon so clear

Basho played with homonyms: “sume” means “clear” and “live”; “kyô” means “Kyoto” and “today”. His haiku at this time was far from his later work that developed a mental depth that was non-existent in haiku before. The above poem followed the examples by haiku school called Danrin which was quite popular at that time. This school was most characterized by playing with words and humor and lacked mental or emotional substance. Basho’s rhetorical skill at this point in his career is not so excellent, though it was far from mediocre. His haiku writing was not based on the particulars of reality experienced by himself. Basho was a mere young countryman of poetry imitating the days’ fashion of haiku writing.


During Basho’s youth, Edo city is in the process of rapid economic growth. In 1672, Basho dared to move to Edo, ambitious to become a haiku master with great popularity. At this time, Basho wrote a haiku praising the prosperity of two Japanese capitals: Edo and Kyoto.


天秤や京江戸かけて千代の春
Tenbin ya / Kyô Edo kakete / chiyo no haru
(1676)

On the giant scales
Kyô and Edo balance
spring of one thousand years


In Edo where Basho was residing, a Kabuki actor Danjuro Ichikawa (1660-1704) made his flashy debut in 1673. In 1677, “Edo Suzume”, a guidebook of Edo sites, illustrated by an ukiyo-e painter Moronobu Hishikawa (1618-1694) was published. Commercial wealth and a growing chônin (bourgeois) population gave birth to a lively and gorgeous culture in big cities: Osaka, Kyoto and Edo. “Tenbin” (scales) in the above haiku suggests money changer’s prosperous activity. So, the haiku shows us that Basho, free from worry and hesitation, was sympathized with the urban atmosphere of Edo under economic and cultural development. Basho’s rhetoric is bold enough to make up “the giant scales” which weighs Kyoto and Edo. His bold rhetoric was directly related to the expanding urbanism of Edo.


We can easily find frivolous merriment in Basho’s haiku written in the 1670s when Edo was a populace city with inhabitants numbering more than 150,000 but less than 1000,000 people.


あら何ともなや昨日は過ぎて河豚汁
Ara nani tomo naya / kinou wa sugite / fuguto-jiru
(1677)

Oh, without any incident
yesterday has passed--
a globefish soup party


Of course, safely cooking globefish needs a professional technique even in our days, because otherwise the diner risks illness and even death. Basho’s haiku informs us that people of his day could take pleasure in gastronomic delights such as globefish, at the risk of their life. It speaks of peaceful urban life which allowed the temptation for danger, such was the degree of security of the time.


Frivolous urban merriment can be found in the first two lines of Japanese haiku by Basho: “Ara nani tomo naya / kinou wa sugite” (Oh, without any incident / yesterday has passed--) which makes a parody of the serious and lonesome lines in a Noh play “Ashikari” (Reaping reeds), to which it refers and changed the reference into comical words. Around the year 1677, Basho made his home in the central quarter of Edo named “Nihonbashi Odawarachô” and Edo’s urbanism was tightly connected with Basho’s playful merriment.


Doubtlessly Basho considered Edo as the center of the whole world.


甲比丹もつくばはせけり君が春
Kapitan mo / tsukuba hase-keri / kimi ga haru
(1678)

Even the Captain of the Dutch Commercial Office
arrived groveling
at spring of shogun-king


This haiku refers to the fact that only Dutch merchants as foreigners were permitted to stay in the office built up on the artificial islet named Dejima in Nagasaki. In return, every year they were obliged to make a voyage from Nagasaki to Edo to call on Tokugawa shogun-king to pay their official respects. Not knowing other Western foreigners, Basho regarded the Dutch merchants’ long processions as absolute subjection to his shogun-king. The cited haiku sings of peaceful prosperity that reigned in the capital Edo at the beginning of the year. The Japanese word “Kapitan” derived from a Portuguese word “Capitão” adds this haiku the novelty of Edo which had thus become slightly internationalized. The second line “tsukuba hase-keri” (arrived groveling) has a quite humorous nuance peculiar to the Danrin haiku school. Basho at this time in his career can be seen to be satisfied totally with Edo’s urbanism, moreover sympathized with it.


All of a sudden in 1680, Basho Matsuo retired from the central quarter of Edo to its suburb “Fukagawa”. The reason of his moving to the suburb and retirement from being a haiku master in a large metropolis, whose main job it was not to compose an excellent haiku, but to select amateurs’ haiku is unknown even nowadays. Nevertheless we can suppose that he had tired of haiku as being nothing more than a frivolous urban playing with words. Basho had decided to contemplate alone and deeply in a poor hermitage. We can surmise that he had concluded that a man shall not live by rice alone.


艪の声波ヲを打つて腸凍ル夜や涙
Ro no koe nami o utte / harawata kooru / yo ya namida
(1680)

Sounds of an oar hitting waves
my bowels get frozen
tears in the night


A haiku of 10, 7 and 5 syllables in Japanese talks grievously about his solitude and poverty. It is true that Basho’s newly awakened anti-urbanism gave to his haiku poems mental depth and sonority, but his former urban training in playing with the multiple meanings of words provided him with the means to express depth in few words at his will. It is impossible to express something without sophisticated rhetoric, thus it can be said that Basho’s prior training provided him with an urbane sense that had accumulates throughout his education and shown hitherto in his published documents.


In addition to his retirement from being a haiku master, Basho made a trip to Western Japan under severe conditions from 1684 to 1685. The notes and haiku poems from this trip were edited into a work “Nozarashi Kikô” (Travel Sketch of Weather-Exposed Skeleton). Haiku poetry included in it announces a renewed haiku poetics of Basho based on his growing anti-urbanism.


馬に寝て残夢月遠し茶の煙
Uma ni nete / zanmu tsuki tooshi / cha no keburi
(1684)

Dozing on horseback
I’m half in a dream faraway from the moon --
smoke for morning tea


The Basho’s haiku differs from his earlier mere playfulness with words and depicts his vividly half-dreaming consciousness on a painful trip. It demonstrates a sophisticated urban rhetoric, an allusion to ancient Chinese poetry, as well as novelty in diction which when combined were useful tools for Basho to express unexpected and previously unarticulated experiences found on his trip.


海暮れて鴨の声ほのかに白し
Umi kurete / kamo no koe / honokani shiroshi
(1684)

The sea darkens--
a voice of the wild duck
dimly white


Basho’s bare consciousness caught a faint whiteness in the voice of a wild duck. This synesthesia that mixes the senses of hearing and the sight is highly fresh and modern. This type of novel expression could be possible only after Basho had acquired a sophisticated urban rhetoric and also separated himself from urbanism.


Basho struck a rich vein of haiku in his bare and keen consciousness that had awaken in him in proximity to wild and chaotic nature as he became more separated from urbanism and the sound of human noises. Poetic freshness and an unexpected modernity were born from the anti-urbanism experienced by Basho, while the new poetic expression he had discovered was supported by the sophisticated urban rhetoric he had earlier mastered.


It is often said that Basho’s haiku born from his trips marked the summit of his work. These peaks are a synthesis of his rhetorical urbanism and his adventures in anti-urbanism.


Basho’s trip traversing northeast Japan in 1689 led Basho’s work up to the highest peak. Records that are quite fictionalized of this journey are famous throughout the world in the book he wrote called “Oku no Hosomichi” (The Narrow Road to the Deep North).


夏草や兵どもが夢の跡
Natsu-kusa ya / tsugamono domo ga / yume no ato
(1689)

Summer grass--
brave warriors’dreams
only their remains

Tall summer grass covered the fields and the hills where “brave warriors” fought each other to realize their dreams. Begun with existing vigorous grass, the haiku poem flashes before us images of warriors’ fights and dreams several hundred years before, then relinquishes these images suddenly to take us back to wild grass again. We can fly from the present to the past, from the past to the present within a few words. Basho’s poetics now developed a new freedom in the use of time. This rapid moving of times suggests the temporality of our life in this world.


荒海や佐渡に横たふ天の河
Araumi ya / Sado ni yokotau / ama-no-gawa　　
(1689)


Rough sea--
over Sado Isle
extends the Milky Way

In the masterpiece haiku above, three elements “Rough Sea”, “Sado Isle” and “the Milky Way” build up a dynamic and refreshing universe. Each element in clear contrast to the others; for example, there is an extremely impressive contrast between “Rough sea” and “Sado Isle”, the same contrast between “Sado Isle” and “the Milky Way” and the same contrast between “the Milky Way” and “Rough sea”, and this contrasting of images makes each other striking and distinguished. Faraway from urbanism in which everything is in disorder, Basho discovered radical and bare principles and framework of our universe by his instinct in wild natural landscape of northeast Japan that had not yet been encroached upon by urbanism. Basho’s poetics developed a spatial dynamism with cosmologic depth.


Two masterpieces of Basho’s haiku in “Oku no Hosomichi” (The Narrow Road to the Deep North) illustrate a quite modern and even super-modern freedom and dynamism in his poetical synthesizing of rhetorical urbanism and his acquired anti-urbanism.


After the journey in 1689, Basho’s haiku couldn’t reach a higher peak. Dynamic synthesis of his rhetorical urbanism and anti-urbanism was diminished in his work thereafter, except perhaps for his last haiku:


旅に病んで夢は枯野をかけ廻る
Tabi ni yande / yume wa kareno o / kakemeguru
(1694)


Illness on a journey
my dream wandering around
a withered field

In his last haiku poem, Basho wrote not “yume ni” (in my dream), but “yume wa” (my dream as subject). It’s an incredibly surreal expression. Even on his deathbed in the large city of Osaka, Basho was searching for poetic dynamism synthesizing rhetorical urbanism and anti-urbanism.


English text by Ban’ya Natsuishi & Jack Galmitz

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