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Basho's compassionate account of the abandoned child he met in 1684 has been misunderstood so the compassion is lost. In this article, I try to repair the damage done with a dose of reality.
Parents in Japan, as well as in other societies, abandoned infants. Although the child might survive if taken up by others and have a better life than the parents would have provided, still this is oftenconsidered a form of infanticide—as described by the Roman Christian philosopher Tertullian: "it is certainly the more cruel way to kill. . . by exposure to cold and hunger and dogs". Tertullian, however, was speaking about ancient Rome. In 17th century Japan conditions were more cruel, or more kind - according to which sources you follow. Some tell us abandoned children were a frequent sight along roads, suggesting that the Japanese were a cruel and heartless people. Others say abandoned children were reported to the village leader who would to find a home to take in the child. In this chapter are Basho’s observations of this problem which occurs in all societies where support for mothers and infants is insufficient.
In Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale, King Leontes claims that his Queen committed adultery and her newborn daughter was not his: He goes on, insanely, to Antigones.
These people were rich. More often children are abandoned because there is no way to feed the child, nothing that a baby can eat – or because a mother cannot live without working, and cannot work while taking care of a baby. Basho gave us this image:
A layer of frost coats the ground as a bitter wind whips by. This child may not be ‘real’ but instead be part of a metaphor, a poetic expression for the feeling in the actual frost and wind. In Basho’s time, however, and our time as well, children do sleep without adequate shelter or blankets; this child huddling for warmth
can be as real to us as our hearts allow.
Shiko sets the place, near pine trees; the weather –the wind blows zun zun, continuously, not so strong a wind, but it never lets up - and the time. Nowhere does Shiko say anything about human life. Basho follows with an abundance of humanity – not only the child and the gatekeeper, but also the one who left the child outside the temple or mansion and snuck away in the dark, and the narrator, either a priest or owner of the mansion woken up by the gatekeeper - all these people are contained in Basho’s words.
Who abandoned this child? Why? Will the priest or mansion owner take in the child? We contrast the inconstancy of the parents with the steadiness of the chilly wind. Basho wrote of compassion
for these children:
The first poet provides an empty space with boundaries – the aged nun and her enthusiasm in telling the story – with no story content. Basho fulfils this vision within the boundaries set. The old Buddhist nun recalls a night long ago when she commanded a temple servant to go out and rescue that baby crying. Buddhism tells us to let go of attachments and accept the passage of life and death – but this nun chose instead to rescue a life. She feels the glory of her deed.
Kikaku transfers the compassion in Basho’s stanza to a deer – probably female -- who found the abandoned child in the mountains, and was “filled with pity” for this baby of another species. Realizing her absolute inability to do anything to help, she walked, carrying compassion with her, to a village where she chose a human being with a warm heart, and pulled on her sleeve, to get her to come up to where the child was. (Could this really happen?)
The poet places the “pity” and “message to rescue” from Basho’s stanza into an entirely different species and reality, so compassion transcends the barriers between us and another life form. This stanza by Kikaku embodies the spirit of renku. The connection between aged nun and compassionate deer, like a riddle, is Kikaku’s mastery – and we note that Basho set this up for him.
The Fuji River flows on the west side of the mountain and enters Sagami Bay where today two Stygian black smokestacks of a paper mill spew pollution into our view of Mount Fuji from train or highway. At the end of September, 1684, Basho and his follower Chiri were traveling west on this road:
Basho says “I toss some food as we pass by” which sounds pretty callous—as if he were throwing scraps to a dog—but these words are an idiom – like “raining cats and dogs” –that does not really mean what it says. Japanese Language instructor Shoko says Basho’s real meaning (honne) here is something like “I’m sorry I cannot give the child any good food.” Basho scholar Imoto Noochi conveys, with great precision,
the feeling in Basho’s Japanese heart: “In his powerlessness he was overcome with self-recrimination.”
We must realize how absolutely powerless Basho and Chiri are in this situation. Neither has a cell phone, and there is no one to call. They have nothing—diapers, soft bland food, bedding—that this child needs.
They are traveling on foot and cannot carry a child with them. They have no house nearby where they can take care of her.
Maybe you think they can carry the child door to door, asking folks to take her in. No. If they — two men, strangers in this village—did that, the people would consider the child their responsibility and be more likely to refuse. What this child needs is simple: a woman with a home. Japanese villages are insular; the
initiative to help the child must come from within the village. The best thing Basho and Chiri can do for this child is to give her some food and then go away, so the village women can go into action. This child is very small but she has a powerful tool which Basho calls “ crying pitifully.” That cry tugs at the heart of every woman within hearing distance. But Japanese women will stay away as long as two strange men are nearby.
Beatrice Bodart-Bailey violates all logic in her contention that
Basho gave the “child some food; but though he knew it would not
survive the frost of night, he went on his way without further ado…
Basho felt no twinge of conscience at passing, leaving the child to die.”
An illustration by the 20th century woman artist Ogura Reiko presents another image of this scene. This is no isolated mountainside, but rather a village where a major road meets a large river. The time is late September; the weather pleasant both day and night; there will be no frost for at least another month. This is no helpless baby; at two years she can walk and run and speak a few words, her favorite being “No!” Abandoned by her mother, she may not take so well to two strange men in black robes who try to
comfort her; the compassionate act, then, is to leave.
In my phone conversation with Bodart-Bailey, she clearly expressed her view that Basho was that “horrible man who left the child to die.” In her book on the shogun Tsunayoshi, she notes that three years
after this incident, he promulgated an edict commanding villagers to take in and care for infants abandoned in the village. So if (IF!) Basho had encountered this child three years later than he did, she says
“Basho’s conduct of doing no more than sharing his provision with a deserted child and recommending it to the Gods was now (she should have said “would now be”) a criminal offence”.
No! The Edicts were commands, not laws; villagers were not convicted for non-obeyiance. Bodart-Bailey actuallly means it was a moral offence. I, however, fail to see how a command to the village to care for abandoned children would apply to a traveler passing through the village. With no knowledge of Basho’s works about children, of the affection he expresses for infants, and altogether no knowledge of Basho scholarship, she invents this derogatory conclusion. Basho and Chiri did not “leave the child to
die.” They left the child to give her a chance to be taken in by a woman able to care for her. His compassion, together with his powerlessness, produced self-recrimination –so he accuses himself of being callous -- when in reality he was as kind and compassionate as possible in this situation.
He ends with the core idea of Japanese Buddhist determinism, the idea that there is a fate attached to our birth, and so shoganai, “it can’t be helped”, nothing can be done. Compassion, however, did flow in 17th century Japanese villages, so sometimes something could be done.
Basho has given us a sketch of the dilemma that confronts us each time we encounter the poor or homeless: do I walk by and forget? Do I toss a few coins or a word of greeting to the person?
Do I wish the government or a charity would do something? Or do I actually help the person?
And what can I do that will actually help?
basho4humanity@gmail.com
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The Three Thirds of Basho