Basho

Mattsuo Basho (1644-1694) was one of the most prolific haiku writers of his time in Japan. He chronicled his travels and the haiku inspired by them in The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Poets such as Basho “pioneered a new style in writing prose essays(haibun) such as travelogues, and they produced striking oil paintings (haiga), which are sparsely and poignantly sketched in ink as haikus are sketched in words”(321). In the following video Matsuo Basho, created by Raul Santiago Sebazco, Basho’s poetry is explored and set to music and haiga, beautiful and delicate paintings that render the spirit of the haiku.

http://youtu.be/zXvzgR3A9_I  

The first illustration in the video shows the trail Basho followed on his journey. He was inspired by “famous poetic sites” (324) to write haiku that summed up his experience in nature. Following is the painting of an older man evoking Basho, an old man worried that he may not make it through this trip alive. Further in, we see the image of a woman combing her hair with the line “wrapping rice dumplings in bamboo leaves with one hand she fingers the hair over her forehead”. The creator of this video chose the simple sketch to share Basho and other poets of his era’s interest in the beauty of everyday life.

The pictures take a turn towards the autumn season signaling the close of the year as well as the life cycles of trees, insects and wildlife. The passage “with the air of a century past, the fallen leaves on the garden” is accompanied alongside a snow covered landscape. Haiku such as “that they will son die is unknown to the chirping cicadas” is paired with picture of a woman clipping the last water lilies of the season to show acknowledgement of the seasons impending close.

We are signaled by Sebazco that winter is upon the landscape when he pairs Basho’s stanza “In the fish shop the gums of the sea bream are cold” with sketches depicting fishermen on their boats in the bitter cold, still making a living on the bream that are caught on their lines from the freezing water. Opposite the line “watching the comorant fishing boats in time I was full of sorrow” shows a woman writing much as Basho did, contemplating landscape as writing inspiration

Basho felt his age on his journey. Sebazco balances the stanza “This autumn- old age I feel, in the birds, the clouds” with ducks on the water and an old man contemplating how they swim on in spite of the challenge of the impending cold. They must live their life despite harsher circumstances of nature. “Ill on my journey my dream wanders over a withered moor” is harmonized with a bridge and a full moon at night, ending of a day, a bridge to the other side of death from life.

Works Cited:

Puchner, Martin, ed. "Matsuo Basho."The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Vol. I. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2013. 324-325. Print.

Basho, Matsuo, "The Narrow Road to the Deep North." The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Ed.  Martin Puchner. Vol. I. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2013. 325-336. Print.