CHAPTER 3

POETRY

Literature of Japan

The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Matsuo Basho

Let’s begin

At the end of the lesson, the students are expected to:

A. Summarize the text understudied considering its important elements;
B. Learn new vocabulary;
C. Describe the characteristics of haiku;
C. Interpret how the haikus reflect the life of Basho; and
E. Enrich one’s background about the country where the literature originated.

Meet the Author

Matsuo Bashō was the most famous Japanese poet during the Edo period. He is recognized as
the greatest master of haiku then called hokku. His poems were influenced by his firsthand
experience of the world around him, often encapsulating the feeling of a scene in a few simple
elements and is deeply rooted from Zen Buddhist. Bashō was a servant to Tōdō Yoshitada who
influenced him to love haikai no renga, a form of collaborative poetry composition. After his
death, he moved to Edo, to further his study of poetry. His famous works include Kai Ōi (The
Seashell Game), Minashiguri ("A Shriveled Chestnut"), Fuyu no Hi (Winter Days), Oi no
Kobumi, or Utatsu Kikō (Record of a Travel-Worn Satchel), Bashō no Utsusu Kotoba (On
Transplanting the Banana Tree), Heikan no Setsu (On Seclusion) and many more.

Catch the Word

Directions: Give the meaning of the following words.

Wabi
Sabi
Haiku
Zen Buddhist
muga

Fuel the Thrill

Poetry is worded less but speak a lot. When it conveys, it embraces both candidness and
mystery. Learn the travel of Basho and his reflection about life through this link
https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/the-great-eastern-philosophers-matsuo-basho/
Untwist the loop

Directions: Read and answer the questions briefly.

Summarize the story using this diagram.

Persona
Addressee
Vision

Voice
Tone
Mood

How can we sense the philosophy of Zen Buddhist in Basho’s haiku?

What common description about life can we get from the haiku?
What insight about the self can a person get from the haiku of Basho?
Do you think Basho’s haiku is a reflection of his realizations in life? Why do you say so?

Let’s dig deeper

Haiku is a Japanese poem composed three lines with 5-7-5 syllable pattern. It is made up of two
elements, haikai and hokku. Haikai is a renga or linked verse poem which includes humor while
hokku features a vivid description of the nature and season. It rose to prominence in Tokugawa
period through Basho who consider haiku as new style of writing poetry. Basho used haiku to
chronicle his travels and experiences around Japan. Other writers such as Issa, Masaoka Shiki,
Takahama Kyoshi and Kawahigashi Hekigoto contributed to the continuous prosper of haiku.
After the World War II, haiku has gained recognition from the Imagist in the early 20th century
until to any races of the world today.

Speak your mind

Compose a haiku about your reflection of life.

Extend your horizon

Fall in love with haiku by clicking this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90-

2Dg2CJdw
 THE NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH

Matsuo Basho

In the West, we have a vague sense that poetry is good for our ‘souls’, making us sensitive and wiser. Yet
we don’t always know how this should work. Poetry has a hard time finding its way into our lives in any
practical sense. In the East, however, some poets—like the 17th-century Buddhist monk and poet
Matsuo Bashō—knew precisely what effect their poetry was meant to produce: it was a medium
designed to guide us to wisdom and calm, as these terms are defined in Zen Buddhist philosophy.

Matsuo Bashō was born in 1644 in Uego, in the Iga province of Japan. As a child he became a servant of
the nobleman Tōdō Yoshitada, who taught him to compose poems in the ‘haiku’ style. Traditionally,
haikus contain three parts, two images and a concluding line which helps to juxtapose them. The best
known haiku in Japanese literature is called ‘Old Pond’, by Bashō himself:

Old pond . . .

A frog leaps in

Water’s sound

It is all (deceptively) simple – and, when one is in the right, generous frame of mind, very beautiful.

After Yoshitada died in 1666, Bashō left home and wandered for many years before moving to the city
of Edo, where he became famous and widely published. However, Bashō grew melancholy and often
shunned company, and so until his death in 1694 he alternated between travelling widely on foot and
living in a small hut on the outskirts of the city.

Bashō was an exceptional poet, but he did not believe in the modern idea of “art for art’s sake.” Instead,
he hoped that his poetry would bring his readers into special mental states valued by Zen. His poetry
reflects two of the most important Zen ideals: wabi and sabi. Wabi, for Bashō, meant satisfaction with
simplicity and austerity, while sabi refers to a contented solitude. (These are the same mindsets sought
in the well-known Zen tea ceremony defined by Rikyu). It was nature, more than anything else, that was
thought to foster wabi and sabi, and it is therefore unsurprisingly one of Bashō’s most frequent topics.
Take this spring scene, which appears to ask so little of the world, and is attuned to an appreciation of
the everyday:
First cherry

budding

by peach blossoms

Bashō’s poetry is of an almost shocking simplicity at the level of theme. There are no analyses of politics
or love triangles or family dramas. The point is to remind readers that what really matters is to be able
to be content with our own company, to appreciate the moment we are in and to be attuned to the very
simplest things life has to offer: the changing of the seasons, the sound of our neighbours laughing
across the street, the little surprises we encounter when we travel. Take this gem:

Violets—

how precious on

a mountain path

Bashō also used natural scenes to remind his readers that flowers, weather, and other natural elements
are—like our own lives—ever-changing and fleeting. Time and the changing of weathers and scenes
need to be attended to, as harbingers of our own deaths:

Yellow rose petals

thunder—

a waterfall

This transience of life may sometimes be heartbreaking, but it is also what makes every moment
valuable.

Bashō liked to paint as well as write, and many of his works still exist, usually with the related haikus
written alongside them. This one depicts the above haiku. (“Yellow rose petals…”)
In literature, Bashō valued “karumi,” or “lightness”. He wanted it to seem as if children had written it.
He abhorred pretension and elaboration. As he told his disciples, “in my view a good poem is one in
which the form of the verse, and the joining of its two parts, seem light as a shallow river flowing over its
sandy bed.”

The ultimate goal of this “lightness” was to allow readers to escape the burdens of the self —one’s petty
peculiarities and circumstances—in order to experience unity with the world beyond. Bashō believed
that poetry could, at its best, allow one to feel a brief sensation of merging with the natural world. One
may become – through language – the rock, the water, the stars, leading one to an enlightened frame of
mind known as muga, or a loss-of-awareness-of-oneself.

We can see Bashō’s concept of muga or self-forgetting at work in the way he invites us almost to inhabit
his subjects, even if they are some rather un-poetic dead fish:

Fish shop

how cold the lips

of salted bream

In a world full of social media profiles and crafted resumes, it might seem odd to want to escape our
individuality—after all, we carefully groom ourselves to stand out from the rest of the world. Bashō
reminds us that muga or self-forgetting is valuable because it allows us to break free from the incessant
thrum of desire and incompleteness which otherwise haunts all human lives.

Bashō suffered for long periods from deep melancholy; he travelled the dangerous back roads of the
Japanese countryside with little more than writing supplies, and he spent some truly unglamorous
nights:

Fleas and lice biting;

awake all night

a horse pissing close to my ear

Yet muga freed Bashō—and it can also free us—from the tyranny of glum moments of individual
circumstance. His poetry constantly invites us to appreciate what we have, and to see how infinitesimal
and unimportant our personal difficulties are in the vast scheme of the universe.
Bashō’s poetry was a clever tool for enlightenment and revelation – through the artfully simple
arrangement of words. The poems are valuable not because they are beautiful (though they are this too)
but because they can serve as a catalyst for some of the most important states of the soul. They remind
both the writer and the reader that contentment relies on knowing how to derive pleasure from
simplicity, and how to escape (even if only for a while) the tyranny of being ourselves.

SOURCE: https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/the-great-eastern-philosophers-matsuo-
basho/