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.
11 Basho renku and 2 prose passages on getting horny, then replete, then horny again.
Legend:
Words of Basho in bold
Words of other poets not bold
The days pile up
getting used to a woman who floats along
The grass of love weakens his arm for archery.
This samurai neglects his responsibilities to be with a play-woman who “floats along” – doing no real work (according to men’s idea of work), just riding the waves of sexual desire and fulfillment. All his manhood poured into her has left him unable to shoot thousands of arrows in 24 hours in the archery competition at the Sanjusando in Kyoto. He who discharges too many of one sort of arrow cannot shoot so many of the other sort.
Male puberty: the process of physical changes by which a boy's body matures into a man capable of sexual reproduction. In response to hormonal signals from the brain, the testes produce hormones that stimulate the growth, function, and transformation of the brain, bones, muscle, blood, skin, hair, and sexual organs, while also stimulating the libido. The major landmark of puberty for males is first ejaculation, which occurs on average at age 13.
Spring arrives late in sacred Nachi Mountains,
New Year’s Arrow: all the young sons try to shoot the best
The Nachi mountains near Kumano in Wakayama-ken are famous for warrior disciplines such as archery in freezing cold weather. Archery competitions are a New Year’s ritual, and for boys coming of age, a manhood ritual. (Sort of like "who can pee the furthest?") In the link between the stanzas, we may discover the nature of male puberty. Sexuality is conceived as a type of “heat.” Children, because they lack this “heat,” are winter. New Years (In February) is like puberty, when we start to feel that heat in some places, though other places are still cold and non-sexual. We look forward to Spring when that heat becomes pleasant, but beware of things getting too hot in summer.
Basho and Sora climb Mount Yudono to the famous shrine where the kamisama reside inside a large, reddish rock, shaped like a man’s testicles, with hot water gushing from the side. Pilgrims can climb the rock or enjoy walking barefooted through the hot stream flowing from the massive rock.
Restrictions set for pilgrims to Mount Bathhouse forbid telling the details of one’s experience here, so now my brush stops and I give no account.
On Mount Bathhouse of which I may not speak we wet our sleeves
We see why this shrine forbids telling one’s experience on themountain: the place is so charged with sexuality that it cannot be discussed in polite Japanese. Translators show no awareness of the eroticism; they say that you are not supposed to reveal your experience because the place is so "sacred" and "spiritual." Sato Hiroaki says this haiku expresses “gratitude for being able to be in such a spiritual place” and notes that some commentators consider the verse “to contrived and force to be good.” This, of course, is what someone would think without an awareness of the masculine sexuality of this shrine. If we open our minds to Basho making a risqué joke, imaging the testicle-shaped rock with water gushing out, the whole spiritual façade washes away. I’m not so sure what the joke means, but that just makes it funnier.
At the end of summer in 1693, overcome by the death of his nephew Toin and the especially hot and oppressive summer , Basho went into seclusion for a full month、refusing to go outside or allow visitors to see him, The story of Toin is so well hidden that we know almost nothing about him before he died at age 32. Because of the evidence in Letters 22 and 147 to Hanzaemon, I believe it possible that 15 year old Toin committed some “indiscretion” in Iga, maybe involving his emerging male sexuality, and had to hide out for the rest of his life in the vastpopulation of Edo where people could survive without the government knowing. Basho was not in complete seclusion; his 15 year old grandnephew Jirobei stayed with him part-time and did light cooking. With his father dead, and his hormones getting in on the act, Jirobei probably needed a break away from his dying mother and two younger sisters.
The following essay, An Explanation for the Gate Being Closed, written during this period when Jirobei was nearby, may have been indented for Jirobei, to help him understand his parents' sins, so he will not reproduce them.
In the section below, Basho refers to the words of Confucius:
“When young, do not let your future be decided by hot blood.”
Sexual passion was despised by Confucius,
and Buddha placed abstinence from sexual misconduct as first among his Five Precepts, however such feelings are difficult to discard for they involve much emotion. Beneath plum blossoms on the dark mountain unknown to people, unexpectedly we may be stained by the fragrance. On a hill of deep longing, with no one to guard the gate, somehow indiscretions occur. Many have wet their sleeves on a pillow of waves with a mermaid, selling home and ruining life however to torment the soul for rice or money or for the aged self to crave the future is to misjudge the pathos of existence, a far greater sin, so let us forgive the sins of lovers.
Writing a letter to his first beloved,
his hand falters
Accustomed to the world the monk makes it risqué
To intimately entrust paper lanterns to a hot spring girl
Adolescent sexual urges have confused his motor coordination, so he cannot manage to write the elegant phrases and calligraphy that will impress her. Basho has a monk write the letter for the youth, but the monk, being experienced in these matters, writes in sexual allusions that the boy cannot understand -- though the girl might.
The next poet Kyoshi says, “Okay, Basho, if you are going to show us a monk with sex on the brain, I’ll really make it risqué.” The monk speaks to a hot spring girl who provides sex to guests at a resort. Paper lanterns are round, white, and have a light inside. Get the point? Intimately? Basho’s stanza is the bridge that connects the adolescent writing his first love letter to the “paper lanterns” and hot spring courtesan.
Along with his tears hillbilly’s dumb poem –
He combs his hair with bear grease, oh what a horrible name!
This hick from the boonies tries to express the depth of his love in a poem to her, but he is no Shakespeare. Bear's grease was a popular treatment for men with hair loss from at least as early as 1653 until
about the First World War. The myth of its effectiveness is based on a belief that as bears are very hairy, their fat would assist hair growth in others. He wants more than just his hair to grow like a bear’s.
Young guys are drawn to waves of doorway curtain
Bloated faces drowned in the watery pool of love
Doorway curtains are often seen in Japan today in the entrance to a shop or restaurant, where you walk through the vertical slit between two side flaps. Here the curtain is in the doorway to a brothel. Yes,
sex does lead men into some pretty miserable “pools.” We see their drowned, waterlogged faces through the flaps of doorway curtain (like the faces Frodo and Sam saw in the Dead Marshes).
One of Basho’s early renku links, in 1676, suggests considerable knowledge of male sexuality in this 32 year old man.
Like a navel cord his visits to Yoshiwara shall be cut off
He resents the thunder of the midnight drum
Heso no o o / Yoshiwara ga yoi / kire hatete Kaminari no taiko / urameshi no naka
Money is getting tight, so tonight is the last time he can afford to rent a woman in the Yoshiwara pleasure quarters; he has enjoyed her body and spirit for one evening but cannot stay the night. Parting from this woman who has allowed him inside her body, he feels like the navel cord connecting him to his mother’s inner organs is being cut. What other male poet would make such a comparison? What other man besides Basho would come out and say that entering a woman sexually is like returning to mother’s body?
A taiko, or great drum, sounds at midnight telling men they must leave. Being born, hearing for the first time sounds of the world unmuffled by the womb, must sound like thunder.
Watching by lantern at entrance to town
Taking a wife rice merchant pretends to be young
The watchman holds up lantern to see clearly the faces of people entering the town. Here is a man getting married; he must have some years behind him, since he has attained the position of boss – and the watchmen can clearly see how fake his youthfulness is. In the context of Basho’s stanza, that phrase “at entrance” may take on a sexual meaning. If you like it that way, go for it.
From his seclusion he comes to peak in on his wife and kids
With one song in his ears the pleasure-quarters linger
He abandoned his family long ago to join the fun and games in the pleasure-quarters; he no longer goes there, but has not returned to them. Instead he stays in seclusion, without responsibility for anyone but himself. Sometimes he peaks in on them and wonders what would of happened if… then he returns to his
seclusion. Sometimes in his auditory brain he recalls a particular merrymaking song along with memories of the place where he heard and sang it.
Going to see traces of a house washed away
Dojo loach soup makes him do it better than young men
Drop in price of tea to sell out the stock
When we see a place where a tidal wave or typhoon has washed away a house with all the possessions of a family, we exclaim, “how weak and vulnerable is man against the forces of nature!” Dojo loach are slender eel-like fish, bottom-feeding scavengers, with some unique strengths: they can stay alive in poor-quality
water, or cold water, or even periods of no water. Dojo loach are survivors, and soup made from then is considered an aphrodisiac. So old man, forget about that house washed away, have some dojo loach soup and be strong, strong in the loins, stronger than nature and time.
If we read the third stanza by itself, we would consider it merely in a business sense, opening shelf space by selling at a discount, however in the context of the second stanza, “drops” takes on a clear sexual and geriatric meaning. Let’s have fun with Basho.
Walking about offering to do laundry, her lowly work -- She resents the snarling cries of cats fighting
High on top, low on bottom: how love is done
As she walks about the town announcing her services, she encounters male cats fighting for access to a female. She resents their snarling fury scratching and spitting at each other because it is so damn noisy,
but also because no males are fighting for access to her. No one wants a poor, old, unattractive launder woman. She observes that cats and humans do it the same way: males fighting to dominate a female. Not only in sex. In every aspect of life, those on top stay on top – having fun and sex and leisure -- while those on bottom remain there for life.
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.
