Title: The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches
Author: Bashō, Matsuo
Published by: Penguin Books
Year: 1966
Date reviewed: 08.23
ISBN: 978-0-140-44185-7
Translated with an Introduction by Noboyuki Yuasa

Matsuo Bashō was a 17th Century Japanese poet considered to be a master of the haiku, a traditional form of poem written in three sections of five, seven and five syllables. In his comprehensive introduction translator Yuasa traces the history of the haiku through the preceding centuries showing how it developed from earlier forms and through the concept of ‘linked verses’ into the mature form it achieved in Bashō’s time.

This collection of Bashō’s works consists of Yuasa’s introduction followed by five of Bashō’s accounts of his travels:

• The Records of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton
• A Visit to the Kashima Shrine
• The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel
• A Visit to Sarashina Village
• The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Bashō himself and the world he describes seems completely alien to a 21st Century Western reader. It is a world where an ascetic with few material needs travels on foot or horseback with the sole purpose of seeking out beauty and harmony. He could travel for several days just to admire the cherry blossom at a particular shrine, or to see the full moon rise over a single pine tree – perhaps one made famous by an earlier painter – or to contemplate the serenity of islands scattered in a bay.

For food and lodging he relied on inns, farms, priests, the hospitality of villagers, fisherman and the like, or of friends, often poets or artists themselves. He might spend several days with a fellow poet, exchanging haikus and composing linked verses. Against the background of undeveloped 16th century rural Japan the journeys he made are astonishing, though it’s hard for us now to imagine the full reality.

Reading ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’, which I thought was the best of the collection, I was reminded of Jack Kerouac and ‘The Dharma Bums’. Kerouac was deeply interested in Zen Buddhism and haiku poetry, which feature strongly in that novel. Kerouac doesn’t mention Bashō in ‘Dharma Bums’ although he does reference the earlier (9th century) Chinese poet Hanshan and his ‘Cold Mountain’ poetry. I think Bashō’s travels would have appealed to Kerouac.