BASHO'S FINAL HAIKU Part II

It was no mystery that Basho, at the end of a life spent wandering in pursuit of plain and humble beauty, chose as his resting place this small, quiet temple that perfectly manifests the principle of sabi, its thatched roof the earth-brown color of Basho's robes. It is also no mystery given the view of the Lake this place afforded during Basho's time; he visited here often for poetry gatherings and no doubt steeped himself in its history.

The mystery for me was why Basho, after an entire life spent in pursuit of the ephemera of words, as a lover of beauty, as a recluse who lived much of his life in simple austere refinement, as one who named himself after a useless banana plant (growing in a clime too cold for it to bear fruit) and having visited the many beautiful places in Japan on his far wanderings, should in his will reveal the wish to have his grave placed beside that of Kiso Yoshinaka, a renowned, ambitious, vengeful warrior who had been slain by his Minamoto cousins on the spot where this temple, Gichuin (Gichu is another pronunciation of Kiso's name) was built to commemorate him, warrior star of the Heike Monogatari, centuries before Basho was born.

Basho himself was born to a lowly samurai family of Ueno and was reputedly a ninja (Iga-ueno was (and still is) the ninja ‘capital’ of Japan), but not much credence is placed in this theory, which might link Basho-as-samurai to Kiso-as-samurai. I think it's more likely, given Basho's skills, that in choosing this place he did the same thing he did in his poetry: he combined very disparate elements to great dissonantive effect. Much more evocative than a monotone grave in a forest somewhere.

So there they lie, side by side: the tragic, vainglorious, multiply betrayed warrior and the simple, reclusive wandering poet, in precincts dotted with many haiku-carved stones - placed there by Basho's students and admirers over the centuries - and the grave stone of Kiso's Kyoto mistress over there in the corner (she killed herself upon hearing Kiso had been slain; Kiso's wife was forced to marry into the victorious side of the Minamoto clan, later became a mendicant nun and returned to Nagano in her final days...

By choosing to reside in these simple grounds, Basho has created his final, unspoken and unending poem, evoked in the spirit of all who come to visit here and let the long silence tell the stories that lie quietly in this place...

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Here's an English translation of Basho's "The Narrow Road to the Deep North" (Oku no Hosomichi).

BASHO'S FINAL HAIKU - Part I

After our visit to Ishiyamadera we went looking for Basho's grave, which I'd been surprised to learn was in Otsu (where Basho spent lot of time) and had since wanted to visit. In our fully intact expedition naivete we didn't need a map, of course; who would need a map to find the small-town grave of Japan's most famous poet and the whole world's haiku master?

We simply got off the train at Ishiyama Station and headed in the general direction down one of the narrow streets that follow the slope toward the Lake, looking for all the signs and other myriad indications that would no doubt surround the famous final precincts of such an illustrious artist - pointing fingersigns, flags, fireworks, billboards, neon signs flashing "This way to Basho's grave," hot dog stands, loudspeakers, haiku recitations, haiku CD hawkers, fleets of tour buses and what not: these would lead us to the location of one of Japan's must-be-most-famous tombs...

There were a lot of interesting shops to see as we walked and walked around and around: a bakery, a mahjong tile shop, a bicycle shop, a great looking sake bar, but just typical old-Japan neighborhood shops, no sign whatsoever that the supreme being of haiku was anywhere within a hundred kilometers of where we journeyed along the narrow road to the deep nowhere. Not even a Basho t-shirt store; I would've bought one. We checked the local area maps that are posted here and there at key intersections to aid seekers of known addresses (buildings in Japan are addressed in the order of their construction, so a known address is about as useful as "go south"), but the maps had never heard of Basho, or his reputed grave.

So we asked a young woman who lived around there, she didn't know. We asked in various shops; an elderly man (the elderly remember the ancient things) said "it's down there somewhere, ask down there." We went down there and asked, they said "ask over there, they might know." Over there they said "it's down that narrow alley over there, you see that alley? Go down there."

We went down the narrow alley, still no signs of any kind bespeaking local pride in the fact that Japan's most famous poet, the guy who wrote the world-renowned frog haiku, was resting just a gravestone's throw away. We came out of the alley and there, from over the non-descript wall of an unassuming precinct along a side street peeked a couple of basho (banana tree) leaves, especially green in the rain. That must be the place. What a haiku, bright basho leaves telling us where Basho was. Bet that was his idea.

Nobody else in the neighborhood seemed to notice. We were the only ones there, for our entire visit. It appears that Basho, who never liked fame and preferred seclusion, had chosen his gravesite well, in a humble place amid local folks who honored his wishes. And there in that small, quiet temple in the rain I encountered another of the many mysteries about Basho...

(To be continued...)