The only substantial
collection in English
of Basho's renku, tanka,
letters and spoken word
along with his haiku, travel
journals, and essays.
The only poet in old-time
literature who paid attention with praise
to ordinary women, children, and teenagers
in hundreds of poems
Hundreds upon hundreds of Basho works
(mostly renku)about women, children,
teenagers, friendship, compassion, love.
These are resources we can use to better
understand ourselves and humanity.
Interesting and heartfelt
(not scholarly and boring)
for anyone concerned with
humanity.
“An astonishing range of
social subject matter and
compassionate intuition”
"The primordial power
of the feminine emanating
from Basho's poetry"
Hopeful, life-affirming
messages from one of
the greatest minds ever.
Through his letters,
we travel through his mind
and discover Basho's
gentleness and humanity.
I plead for your help in
finding a person or group
to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material,
to edit and improve the material, to receive 100%
of royalties, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide
and preserve for future generations.
Quotations from Basho Prose
The days and months are
guests passing through eternity.
The years that go by
also are travelers.
The mountains in silence
nurture the spirit;
the water with movement
calms the emotions.
All the more joyful,
all the more caring
Seek not the traces
of the ancients;
seek rather the
places they sought.
Two legends about women told by Hearn in his collection of supernatural tales Kwaidan may relate to particular Basho verses. The Legend of Uba-zakura, the Wet-Nurse’s Cherry Tree,’ which is older than Basho, originated in Matsuyama on the island of Shikoku; Basho’s mother came from this province, so it is possible she told it to him when he was a child, a tale from the faraway place where mama lived when she was a child.
The Legend of the Wet-Nurse’s Cherry Tree
An old childless couple appealed to the gods at the local temple, Tosai-ji (a short walk from Matsuyamtation) and were blessed with a daughter. An uba breastfeed the infant, and after weaning, was her attendant. The girl grew up in beauty until at age 15 she became fatally ill. The uba went to the temple and beseeched the gods, “spare the child, take me instead”. The gods accepted, the girl got better and the old woman faded. Before she died she told the parents of her bargain with the gods and asked them to fulfill the promise she made to plant a cherry tree in the temple garden in gratitude for the child’s life. They did, and the tree prospered for 254 years. Each Spring, on the anniversary of the uba’s death, the tree came into glorious full bloom. Hearn says “The flowers were always pink and white like the breasts of a woman full of milk.”
We notice how feminine-positive the legend is. The little girl is loved and cherished, the uba a paragon of kindness and altruism. We also notice how physical is Hearn's perception: how he focuses on the colors of milk and nipples, so every year when cherries are in bloom, I look at the blossoms and consider whether they look like breast milk and a pink nipple.
In 1664, when he was just 19, Basho wrote his third recorded haiku:
Cherry blossoms of the uba — in old age her memories
The standard interpretation of this haiku posits that uba zakura ("wet nurse cherry tree") is one species of cherry tree, and the verse concerns an old man recalling his glorious youth. Another interpretation takes it to mean “a faded beauty,” an old woman who recalls her days (and nights) or youthful elegance under cherry blossoms. The interpretation here, in accord with the legend, takes the uba in uba-zakura to actually be a wet-nurse. The memories may be of the babe at her breast, the child playing merrily, the teenager getting sick, the prayer to the gods that saved her life. Or Basho may be ‘sketching’ his family’s uba with baby Basho – or maybe his little sister Oyoshi, a baby nursing when seven year old Basho first became aware of the world. Or it can be a sketch of any woman who can remember breastfeeding. All these feminine memories are seen and felt in the gorgeous cherry blossoms filling the tree with pink and white, like the milky nipples long ago.
In another collection, Kokoro, Hearn tells the story of a Japanese baby whose mother died from cholera just after she gave birth; before she passed she requested her husband to keep the baby close to her ihai, a small portable memorial tablet, every day for three years. He did so, and while he had no money to properly feed the baby, Hearn notes the child was strong and healthy. The idea is that even through she was dead, the mother, through her ihai, did breastfeed her child. Hearn notes that all Japanese carry about the belief that the dead are still with them, helping and advising them. Here is a renku in which Basho explores breastfeeding, and we see how ideas from Lafcadio Hearn add to our appreciation of Basho's thought.
No longer black
I scratch my scalp with
hardwood plectrum
Breastfeeding on my lap
what dreams do you see?
We imagine the story as though Hearn was telling it. This woman has both grey hair and an infant at her breast, so she may be a grandmother who, after her daughter died, saves the life of her grandchild. (A woman who has breastfed before may be able to “induce lactation” and breastfed again, without having a baby or getting pregnant, even after menopause. Anthropologist Sarah Hrdy explains: “In allomothers able to produce milk, there is no colostrum, but otherwise the composition of induced milk is adequate to sustain infant growth.”) The plectrum is for plucking the strings of a shamisen or lute. “She scratches her scalp” in difficulty understanding or accepting her fate: the death of her daughter, the three needs conflicting within her: to nurture the infant, to continue her adult life, and to rest her aging body. The ever-present conflict of these needs drives her to distraction –and so she absent-mindedly uses her tool for plucking strings to scratch an itch under her hair.
Knowing nothing of grandmother’s sorrow, the child delights in the softness of her body and flavor of her milk. From Hearn, we form the idea that the dead mother is, in fact, feeding her infant through her mother's breasts. The old woman looks into baby’s eyes and forehead searching to see the dreams within. Unlike her own dreams gone sour, these dreams are fresh and new – and she wonders whether her grandchild will overcome the hardship of losing mother to realize those dreams, or whether the mother is nourishing and supporting her child from the other world..
We finish this section with a suitable single stanza of Basho renku:
Kite string cut -- soul of the milk-giver soars to heaven
The vivid physical image of a kit string cut, a bond being broken, the kite floating off to the vastness of space, flows into the spiritual image of the nurse parting from the living earth.
The Legend of Green Willow
A samurai on a journey overtaken by storm and night, takes shelter in a cottage. Here live an old couple and a maiden named Green Willow as graceful as a sapling. They fall in love and marry to live happily for five years -- until suddenly one day Green Willow cries out in pain, saying she will now die. Someone has taken an axe to the willow tree which is her heart, its sap her life blood.
Her whole form appeared to collapse in the strangest way, and to sink down, down -- level with the floor. Tomotada sprang to support her, but there was nothing to support! There lay on the matting only the empty robes of the fair creature and the ornaments that she had worn in her hair: the body had ceased to exist
Tomotada shaved his head to wander about offering prayers for her salvation. Returning to the cottage, he found three willows stumps remaining, two old and gnarled, and a sapling cut down long ago.
Green Willow reaching to the mud of low tide
Scholars say a willow tree on the riverbank has some of her branches ending underwater, but now at low tide, these reach down to mud. If the verse is merely a “nature verse,” this interpretation may be sufficient – however perhaps we can find a more interesting interpretation along a personal, feminine path. Willows in Japan are always associated with the young female. If we allow “Green Willow” to be the young woman in the legend, we can spend some time with her slender graceful youthful form at low tide reaching down for a shell stranded in the mud, a shell containing a creature full of protein, minerals, and omega 3 fatty acids. If we search for humanity in Basho’s works, we find it.
We can also meet the human Green Willow in this linked verse:
Green willow her hips and hair like willows
Wretched waiting wind through the pines also is yearning
Both hips and hair, as slender and flexible as willow branches covered with young green leaves swaying sensually in the wind; a most gorgeous female image. Basho, now 22 years old, chooses to have this young willowy woman waiting for a lover who may never show.Notice the contrast between willow beauty and unfulfilled desire so intense it overflows self to fill the wind with longing.
I plead for your help in finding a person or group to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material, to edit and improve the presentation, to receive all royalties from sales, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide and preserve for future generations.
The only substantial
collection in English
of Basho's renku, tanka,
letters and spoken word
along with his haiku, travel
journals, and essays.
The only poet in old-time
literature who paid attention with praise
to ordinary women, children, and teenagers
in hundreds of poems
Hundreds upon hundreds of Basho works
(mostly renku)about women, children,
teenagers, friendship, compassion, love.
These are resources we can use to better
understand ourselves and humanity.
Interesting and heartfelt
(not scholarly and boring)
for anyone concerned with
humanity.
“An astonishing range of
social subject matter and
compassionate intuition”
"The primordial power
of the feminine emanating
from Basho's poetry"
Hopeful, life-affirming
messages from one of
the greatest minds ever.
Through his letters,
we travel through his mind
and discover Basho's
gentleness and humanity.
I plead for your help in
finding a person or group
to take over my 3000 pages of Basho material,
to edit and improve the material, to receive 100%
of royalties, to spread Basho’s wisdom worldwide
and preserve for future generations.
Quotations from Basho Prose
The days and months are
guests passing through eternity.
The years that go by
also are travelers.
The mountains in silence
nurture the spirit;
the water with movement
calms the emotions.
All the more joyful,
all the more caring
Seek not the traces
of the ancients;
seek rather the
places they sought.
