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.
The “Energy” is the ki of Oriental medicine and martial arts, and through four renku Basho shows us how to dance with this Energy.
Ki is "an active principle forming part of any living thing": literarily "breath", "air", or "gas", and figuratively as "material energy", "life force", or "energy flow" or "The Force" in Star Wars. A Japanese scholar says that ki here means “intuition” and also “breath,” and so Basho is saying: “Intuitively grasp the essential quality of the subject to write your poem in a single breath.” Each poet (after the first one) “rides the energy” from another mind to generate a new reality.
In the stanza-pair from the first sequence Basho participated in, the first poet offers an elegant image of Japanese classical dance, and Basho rides that energy into the world of children:
Hand of the dancer quietly descends
More than appears small child is obedient to the Energy
Movement of dancer’s hand expresses more, much more, than simply getting from up to down;it expresses the dancer’s obedience to ki. The hand rides the Energy downward, as a surfer stays on the board even as the board drops and rises. Likewise the small child may not follow adult commands, but is obedient to that universal Energy. As the child at play “rides on the energy,” the poet follows and blends with the Energy to write his stanza.
A Google search of the words “ride the energy” leads to this by the American dancer and musician Gabrielle Roth (1941-2012):
Ride the energy of your own unique spirit.
If you just set people in motion, they’ll heal themselves.
Roth believed and taught that dance heals the body/mind/spirit - and maybe we can see some of this modern vision of ki in Basho's renku about dance.
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In the 12th century the shogun Yoritomo sent henchman to capture his younger brother Yoshitsune, but unable to find him, they took Yoshitsune’s mistress, the dancer Shizuka, and brought her to Kamakura to dance for the bully-in-command.
Beneath her eyelids overflow the stars
Forced to stand against her will, she dances so delicately
Starlight shines from Shizuka’s tears as she struggles to hold them back in defiance of the bastard Yoritomo. Basho continues with a remarkably active, motionful stanza. Yoritomo roughly yanks Shizuka to a stance and demands that she dance, renouncing her love for Yoshitsune. Shizuka mocks him by dancing superbly while singing a song of her love for Yoshitsune. Shizuka stands up to Yoritomo’s patriarchy, dancing for the dignity of women.
Breaking off a lotus to adorn a lovely girl
Iridescent kingfisher alights on dance stage
The kingfisher is a bright blue bird. Basho puts women on center stage; the girl becomes a stage where a flower, or a bird, descends gracefully and mysteriously as a classical dancer.
Youngest daughter hates the mole on her face
Robe for dancing aimlessly she folds it inside the box
The mole does not interfere with her intelligence or motor ability, but everyone who meets her sees it,
and consciousness of this saps her self-confidence. Growing up together with sisters who have no moles, she hates the unfairness of this, but there is nothing she can do about it.
For kuyamu, the dictionary says “regret, be sorry for,” however I remember when my daughters were teenagers, they used “hate” for this sort of feeling. I told them this was too extreme and they should use a more moderate term, but they kept on using “hate.” Now I understand that for a teenage girl to say she
“hates” something is an expression of the teenage-girl qualities Shakespearean actress Janet Suzman describes in Juliet and Ophelia: “the appalling worries, the despair, how passionately one feels about every little thing.”
Someone who cares for the daughter’s happiness has given her a gorgeous robe for dancing in the local shrine festival, but she is too ashamed of her mole to show it to the whole town. Basho always focuses on simply physical activities – folding the robe inside the box – to convey complex emotional states In between the physical “youngest daughter” and “mole on her face” is the vivid emotion of “hates.” In between the physical “robe for dancing” and “she folds it inside the box” is the disappointment, frustration, hopelessness swirling about in “aimlessly.” The flow of energy from “hates” to “aimlessly” produces a masterpiece of ordinary uncomfortable teenage-girl experience.
When I first saw and translated this stanza-pair, in my mind lodged the idea that because of her mole the girl could not find a boy to go to the dance with, and I wrote up a commentary with this idea. The next day I remembered that Japanese in Basho’s time did not have boy-girl dances; dancing was done individually, or in a group of individuals – but the idea that Basho’s stanza was about girl who cannot find a boy to escort her to the dance remained in my head, so I was confused. I went to the Fukuoka City Library and consulted with a librarian to resolve my confusion. She went through the library data bank and brought out two books on Japanese dance, but I could see that these did not answer my question. I kept on asking her how could this stanza be about boy-girl dancing when Japanese did not have boy-girl dances. It took her quite a while to figure out what I was saying – since my notion was complete nonsense. Finally, she understood, and
said “I don’t think this is about girl who cannot find a boy to dance with; the girl is embarrassed to be seen by the townspeople.”
I was flabbergasted; my whole notion of boy-girl dancing instantly evaporated, and I saw exactly what Basho was saying. I have thought about this incident a great deal since then, and realized that whenever I cannot understand a renku stanza, I assume that to understand I require some scholarly information, but this is a misconception. Rather than needing more information, I need to clear out the misconceptions from my mind, and then Basho’s meaning becomes altogether clear. I suggest that the same may be true for you as well.
And yet there is still more to say: in the context of Basho’s time and society, the notion of a boy-girl dance does not belong to this stanza – however Basho’s words do not preclude such a dance. I believe we can bring Basho’s stanza to our time and society, and imagine the girl with a mole on her face unable to find a boy to take her to the dance, so she aimlessly folds the gorgeous dress in the box. This is Basho4Now.
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.
