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From The Narrow Road of the Interior

General Questions | Group Questions | Criticism | Pictures | Links

Country/Date Written/Published
Japanese
Written 1689

A subtle work: quiet and meditative as opposed to loud and boisterous. Take your time, think about the setting and what the narrator (Bashō) is thinking and, more importantly, what is he trying to get his readers to think.

For starters, consider the following quote:

Mishima Yukio that 'Americans sometimes tend to over-exist. ... The Japanese, nurtured as they are on Buddhism, have the curious conviction that existence is a transitory and basically unessential phenomenon, a shifting process which changes with each moment, a relative state as opposed to nothingness.” (qtd. in Foard)

How might this explain our (American readers) impatience with this text where it seems that “nothing happens”?  What is Yukio’s point?

ON HAIKU “One element which must always be present in a haiku is the kigo, or 'season word'. This will be a reference to a natural phenomenon or an adjective like 'cold', which places the haiku in some season. The kigo seems to be the clearest manifestation of the haiku postulate that time, rather than being homogenous, consists of different moments, each with its own particular aesthetic content.” (Foard)

“Although only six months were included in the diary itself, he was away from Edo for two and a half years, this time with no destination, unless we can say that the whole trip was a destination” (Foard). In this, he's much like Thoreau, who in Walden compressed two years of solitude into one year for artistic effect.

Terms to know

haiku [hy-koo]    A form of Japanese lyric verse that encapsulates a single impression of a natural object or scene, within a particular season, in seventeen syllables arranged in three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Arising in the 16th century, it flourished in the hands of Bashō ( 1644 – 94 ) and Buson ( 1715 – 83 ). At first an opening stanza of a longer sequence (haikai), it became a separate form in the modern period under the influence of Masaoka Shiki ( 1867 – 1902 ). The haiku convention whereby feelings are suggested by natural images rather than directly stated has appealed to many Western imitators since c.1905 , notably the Imagists . See also tanka . For a fuller account, consult William J. Higginson , The Haiku Handbook ( 1985 ).

"haiku"  The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Ed. Chris Baldick. Oxford University Press, 2008. Oxford Reference Online. Web  21 September 2010.

           
Pilgrimage: In a sense, the defining characteristic of the human species is its pilgrimage aspect. That is, we are all significant sojourners because we live with the constantly present metaphor of a journey. Of all species, we appear to be the only one concerned with the idea of the journey of life. Poets from the Gilgamesh bard and Homer to John Bunyan, Robert Frost, and Jack Kerouac have always explicitly or implicitly celebrated this fact. In the words of Frost's poem “The Road Not Taken,” “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood … /I took the one less traveled by, /And that has made all the difference.”

Behind the metaphor of the road of life is our unique human ability to conceive of plot—mythos—of what Aristotle defined as narrative with a significant beginning, middle, and end. Ultimately we conceive of our lives that way, and that makes us, at least mentally, pilgrims on a pilgrimage.

The religious pilgrimage is a ritual journey. The pilgrim knows exactly where he is going, exactly what he will find there, and exactly what he is supposed to do once he gets there. The trip can be difficult; it may require discipline, but, as in the majority of such quests, the most surprising aspect of the journey is the mysterious spiritual and emotional effect particular enactments of rituals can sometimes have. “Ritual” as used here must be seen in the context of a religious understanding indicated by the Latin word religare—meaning to bind back, to re-collect—not only people, but ideas—to make sense of things in the cosmos. What ritual does is to provide the possibility for the individual and/or the community to remember, to re-create the myth—the sacred story that is essential to the given religion. Almost always, ritual involves some sort of consecrated or sacred space that itself reflects the essential myth. A pilgrimage, then, is a ritual process carried out by pilgrims who, by traveling to a sacred place, renew the power of their culture's sacred narrative in their lives.

The pilgrimage begins with a definitive breaking away from the ordinary—home, everyday concerns, ordinary pursuits. The middle of the pilgrimage is a ritual process clearly defined by the tradition in question. Often it involves seemingly irrational but actually symbolic acts that separate it from the mundane: odd postures; the chanting of strange words, the doing of strange things, the wearing of clothes that in the “real”—or some would say “unreal” world—would be considered bizarre; and, most of all, the dominant presence of a sacred object or place. Hindus journey to Banares to bathe in the sacred river or they go to other sacred places that they circumambulate, creating a sacred circle of wholeness, or mandala, as they chant sacred words, or mantras. Buddhists visit such sacred places as the Buddha's footprint on Adam's Mount in Sri Lanka or the Bodhi Tree under which the Buddha achieved enlightenment. People of animist traditions frequently see the world itself as a pilgrimage site and live in spaces that symbolize that understanding. The traditional Navajo home, the hogan, with its low, rounded form and its doorway facing east, is built as both a pilgrimage to the Mother as Earth and the Father as Sun. Jews make ritual visits to the old Temple Wall, as they once did to the Temple itself on particular pilgrimage feasts. Christians follow the path of Jesus on the Via Dolorosa and travel to places where the Virgin Mary has appeared to the faithful or where martyrs gave their lives.

For Muslims, the pilgrimage to Mecca—the hajj, specifically to the Ka'bah, the place of the creation, the sacred construct of Ibrahim ( Abraham), the place ordained by the Prophet Muhammad as the point toward which prayer is directed—is one of the essential “Five Pillars” of their religion. Like all religious pilgrims, the Muslim on the hajj imitates the original culture hero and in so doing, in a sense, becomes the hero. Following the last pilgrimage of Muhammad in 632, the faithful Muslim on the hajj leaves the comforts of home, wears special clothes, accepts certain material deprivations, approaches the place that is the center of the universe, and cries out, “Here am I O God, Praise, blessing and dominion are yours, Nothing compares to you, Here am I O God,” after which he or she kisses the Black Stone from Heaven itself, performs specific circumambulations, and recites certain prayers. The effect on the pilgrim can be analogous to that on the mythic hero who discovers the ultimate lost object or comes face to face with ultimate reality. The return from the hajj or any pilgrimage, like the return of the hero, involves the transference of energy from the sacred place or object to the individual and/or community. We can call that transference healing, enlightenment, renewal—even recreation, which is, of course, re-creation.

Another kind of pilgrimage is the interior pilgrimage of the mystic. In an interior pilgrimage, the individual, through particular disciplines—meditation, yoga, or contemplative prayer, for example—journeys to the god within. In merging with God, the mystic, like the hero, possesses elements of deity itself.

Perhaps the primary difference between the interior and exterior pilgrimage lies in the fact that the interior pilgrimage lacks the sense of community that is involved in the exterior pilgrimage. In fact, some might argue that the mystic, like the patriarchal hero, takes on during the interior pilgrimage something of the separateness that makes it difficult for the ordinary human to follow. We think of the ascetic yogi who has no need of visiting any of the sacred cities because through his strict discipline he can visit them all within himself. We think of the Buddha himself under the Bodhi Tree, St. John of the Cross and his “dark night of the soul,” or the praying Thomas Merton in the hermitage at Gethsemane. Each of these mystical heroes achieves a state of purity and ecstasy that seems to be beyond us.

Not all mystics practice the lonely journey of the separated hero. Communal ritual can be mystical. For instance, in the “whirling” dance ceremonies of the Mevlevi Sufis of Jelaladin Rumi we find a perfect balance between the communal act and the personal. In this ceremony pashas, shoemakers, plumbers, professors, and jewelers—nobles, professionals, and menials alike—dance in planetary togetherness in trance-like personal ecstasy circumambulating love. The center of Sufi being is conveyed in Rumi's words, “Joy's dawn has arisen, /Now is the time of union and seeing.”

For the ordinary human, various possibilities for something between the exterior and interior pilgrimage-as-hero journey exist in forms of ritual or liturgy (“God's service”) in churches, mosques, temples, and other sacred spaces to which long journeys are not required and in which leaders and fellow worshippers contribute to a movement toward the sacred center.

For Christians who follow a strong liturgical tradition, for example, the Eucharist, or Mass, is a mysterious reenactment of the essential myth, that of the pilgrimage undertaken by the culture hero Jesus from birth and baptism to the adventure in search of the Kingdom of God, an adventure that includes death and culminates in the return that is resurrection and the reunion with the “Father” in Heaven. The worshipper leaves home, enters the cross- shaped sacred space almost animistically symbolizing the Body of Christ, and, like the hero of old, participates in the mantras, circumambulations, and other ritual actions that are intended to bring him or her to a mystical union with God. Traditionally the Mass moves the initiate from the font of baptism at the western foot of the body to the altar of the sacrificial death and re-membrance in the eastern head where the sun rises. The process is from the darkness of the outer world to the light of the inner.

"Pilgrimage."  The Oxford Companion to World mythology. Ed. David Leeming. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Reference Online. Web.  22 September 2010

Questions to mull over as you interpret the story

• Consider Shelly's "Ozymandias" as a western equivalent to this work
• How does Bashō structure his journey?  Is it just aimless wandering?
• "Coming to know any thing, including a place, is a process that begins long before one has direct acquaintance with that thing, and the process may continue long after one has left it behind” (Heyd). How does the work show this?

The following questions deal with translation: a particularly difficult undertaking when working with character based languages such as Chinese and Japanese.

• Look closely at the title: consider the following by Victoria Price: “Oku no hosomichi has been translated in several ways; it is difficult to express in English all that the word oku includes. On the one hand, the name is that of an actual road that Bashō traveled; oku is also a short form for Michi-no-Oku (or Michinoku), generally translated as “the road’s far recesses.” Michi-no-Oku was a popular name for a region called Ōshu, or the “far provinces.” Over and above the literal explanations of the word, it carries a sense of an “inner recess” or something “within oneself.” Bashō was known for choosing titles such as this that could be interpreted on more than one level”  Given this, how can the title be interpreted?  What light does it shed on your understanding of the work?  How does it reflect the work as a whole?
• Go to 618, read the haiku and then decide, given the context, if the poem should end with a question mark. “(The summer grasses/ Of brave soldiers’ dreams/ The aftermath). Since the proper English punctuation is not clearly indicated in the Japanese version, some translations render the last two lines as a question: Are warrior’s heroic deeds/ Only dreams that pass?” (Price)
• Go to top of 624.  How do these comments on loneliness and the stars play out in the poem? (may need to go back to 623) Does the more literal translation (Heaven’s River) convey a greater sense of loneliness? Why or why not.  The “sabi, a kind of loneliness in which the immensity and strength, or even indifference, of the universe is set in contrast to man’s finiteness and insignificance. A reader may experience the feeling of being overpowered or dissolved in the face of the infinite. One poem, in which there is no trace of humanity, but only an expression of the primitive universe, illustrates this concept: “Araumi ya/ Sado ni yokotau/ Amanogawa” (The rough sea/ Extending toward Sado Isle,/ The Milky Way). Sometimes “amanogawa” is translated more literally as something like “Heaven’s River”; the effect, however, is that of the configuration of the stars in such an arrangement that they look something like a river flowing across the sky, forming what is called the Milky Way in English” (Price)

Back to more general questions

• 610 – why “detest  / building any shelter at all” ?
• 612: how does this page show the link between art (aesthetics) and experience?
• Why does old monument move Bashō to tears (615)?
• Why include the incident with the prostitutes?  What does this add, literally and symbolically? (624)
• What is the condition of many of the shrines he visits?
• How is the following, from a later essay by Bashō, prefigured in “Narrow”?

  If someone comes to see me, I have to waste my words in vain. If I leave my house to visit others, I waste their time in vain. Following the examples of Sonkei and Togorō, therefore, I have decided to live in complete isolation with a firmly closed door. My solitude shall be my company, and my poverty my wealth. Already a man of fifty, I should be able to maintain this self-imposed discipline.

  • Only for morning glories
    I open my door—
    During the daytime I keep it
    Tightly barred.

• James Foard addresses the spirituality of Bashō’s quest:

  Eventually, he treated virtually everything as partaking of an immanent sacrality conferred by the past, often seeking an ancient tradition or classical allusion in the commonest things. While not neglecting several tradition-laden paths, then, Bashō became a pilgrim in an entire world of immanent sacrality. He found himself in a sacred context wherever he went, thus pushing the wandering life into new areas of the country and new subjects of concern (Foard). 

Find quotes or scenes from “Narrow” which support this claim.

Group Questions

1. Why is the Shiogama Shrine so important to Bashō? What aspect of Japanese culture seems to be highlighted here?
2. Why is Hiraizumi such an important place to Bashō (618)? What where the people who are immortalized there? Why would these people be so important in Japanese culture.
3. Consider the following quote on Japanese pilgrimages:

Joseph M. Kitagawa lists three types of pilgrimage in Japan: (1) pilgrimage to sacred mountains; (2) pilgrimage to shrines or temples associated with certain divinities; and (3) pilgrimage based on faith in certain charismatic holy men.” (Foard)  “We might also note two further aspects of Japanese pilgrimage. First, it was not necessary that everything connected with a pilgrimage be religious. A pilgrimage often involved seeing relatives, simple sightseeing, sampling famous foods, and so on.39 Secondly, it was a practice well suited to religious syncretism, for one travelled from shrine to temple to famous landmark, partaking of a veritable supermarket of deities and traditions. (Foard) 

Does “Narrow” illustrate these five different kinds of pilgrimage? 

4. Choose three different haiku from different parts of the text: how do the prose and poetry blend?  Extension of ideas? Ironic commentary? Setting a mood?
5. What’s the last word of this work? Why?
6. On Bashō: “Narrow”

reveals a man who is [, as Earl Miner writers,] “aware of so much--his memory and imagination swell with associations of the past--and his rapid movements of mind and heart from the high or sublime to the low reveal a very wide-eyed, knowing man” (Foard)

How does the work show this? How does it show Bashō as a “very wide-eyed, knowing man”?

What the author/critics say

“wandering--the act of leisurely, albeit attentive, traversing the land in a relatively unaided way--has an aesthetic that may help us to recover a sense of the depth of space, of the real diversity of places, and of our human lives within the larger context of nature.” (Heyd)

“Bashō's lifelong dedication to this art form issued in a kind of poetry that was at once deep and light. (7) That is, for Bashō poetry was meant to reach the very essence of things, but the occasions that open the way to this very essence were to be found in common, everyday experience. (8)” (Heyd)

Bashō “contended that it was primarily a practice dependent on a flash of insight and its immediate articulation in language, (10) But what circumstances are propitious for this practice? The answer that we can gather from Bashō's peripatetic life seems to be: wandering. (11)” (Heyd)

“The traveler provides perspective on the here and now (the ephemeral everyday) by reporting on the reality of other, distant places throughout the spread of space. One may say that a place here and now only properly becomes apprehensible as such by receiving a horizon in space. In this context we may characterize the poet-wanderer's activity, as exemplified by Bashō, as exceptionally appropriate for the recovery of space and the recognition of place.” (Heyd)

“The poet-wanderer is like the shaman, however, in that she travels to distant, disconcerting places through (relatively) unknown and possibly dangerous space, eventually reporting back on those other places to the ordinary person in the everyday. And, qua poet-wanderer, she does this in not just one way but two: literally, as other travelers do, and metaphorically, as other poets do.” (Heyd)

“he further affirms the reality of the remote places he has visited (adding to our conception of them in a manner reminiscent of the transformation of mythical maps by the Yolngu) by reporting on his own insights while at these places” (Heyd)

“In the preamble to an earlier travel account, The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel, he notes that the hallmark of great art is "the poetic spirit, the spirit that leads one to follow the ways of the universe and to become a friend with things of the seasons."” (Heyd)

“For Bashō the task of the poet is to view the human condition from a detached perspective, and, in this way, all aspects of living will become subjects for aesthetic appreciation.” (Heyd)

“Doho, one of Bashō's followers, comments that in this text "'Learn' means to enter into the object, perceive its delicate life, and feel its feeling, whereupon a poem forms itself."” (Heyd)

Heyd, Thomas. "Bashō and the aesthetics of wandering: recuperating space, recognizing place, and following the ways of the universe." Philosophy East and West 53.3 (2003): 291+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Sept. 2010.

Bashō on the banana tree in his yard: “The tree does bear flowers, but unlike other flowers, there is nothing gay about them. The big trunk of the tree is untouched by the axe, for it is utterly useless as building wood. I love the tree, however, for its very uselessness ... I sit underneath it, and enjoy the wind and rain that blow against it” (qtd. Yuasa)

Bashō “What is important is to keep our mind high in the world of true understanding, and returning to the world of our daily experience to seek therein the truth of beauty. No matter what we may be doing at a given moment, we must not forget that it has a bearing upon our everlasting self which is poetry” (qtd. in Yuasa)

“What must be borne in mind in reading the travel sketches by Bashō is that travels in his day had to be made under very precarious conditions, and that few people, if any, thought of taking to the road merely for pleasure or pastime. Furthermore, as I have already indicated, Bashō had been going through agonizing stages of self-scrutiny in the years immediately preceding the travels, so that it was quite certain that, when he left his house, he thought there was no other alternative before him. To put it more precisely, Bashō had been casting away his earthly attachments, one by one, in the years preceding the journey, and now he had nothing else to cast away but his own self which was in him as well as around him. He had to cast this self away, for otherwise he was not able to restore his true identity (what he calls the 'everlasting self which is poetry' in the passage above).” (Yuasa)

“In the imagination of the people at least, the North was largely an unexplored territory, and it represented for Bashō all the mystery there was in the universe. In other words, the Narrow Road to the Deep North was life itself for Bashō, and he travelled through it as anyone would travel through the short span of his life here--seeking a vision of eternity in the things that are, by their own very nature, destined to perish.” (Yuasa)

Yuasa argues that variety and unity are two things that separate “Narrow” from other works.

Yuasa, Nobuyuki. "Introduction." Bashō: The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches. New York: Penguin Books, 1966. 9-49. Rpt. in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 62. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Sept. 2010.

“Upon his withdrawal from samurai life, Bashō had lost that supportive, sacred context of social relations which could have offered him a fulfilling life [ . . . . ] A sense of isolation, and hence for a Japanese of his times, a sense of meaninglessness in life, began to haunt him” (Foard).

“Joseph M. Kitagawa lists three types of pilgrimage in Japan: (1) pilgrimage to sacred mountains; (2) pilgrimage to shrines or temples associated with certain divinities; and (3) pilgrimage based on faith in certain charismatic holy men.” (Foard)

Foard, James H. "The Loneliness of Matsuo Bashō." The Biographical Process: Studies in the History and Psychology of Religion. Ed. Frank E. Reynolds and Donald Capps 1976. 363-391. Rpt. in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 62. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Sept. 2010

Pictures

Bibliography from Victoria Price

Bashō, Matsuo. A Haiku Journey: Bashō’s Narrow Road to a Far Province. Translated by Dorothy Britton. New York: Kodansha International, 1974. The translator’s introduction provides valuable insights into the ha iku and into Bashō’s artistry.

Kato, Shūichi. A History of Japanese Literature. 2 vols. Translated by Don Sanderson. New York: Kodansha International, 1979. In addition to placing Bashō in the context of Japanese literature, this treatment discusses Bash&o macr;’s association with both the haiku and the poetic diary as a literary genre.

Martins Janeira, Armando. Japanese and Western Literature: A Comparative Study. Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle, 1970. Since the Western reader is not always familiar with the haiku, this work is insightful in gaining some underst anding of the genre.

Ueda, Makoto. Literary and Art Theories in Japan. Cleveland: Press of Western Reserve University, 1967. Although this volume treats literary theories of a number of writers, Bashō receives thorough discussion in the light of his co ntribution to the principles that govern the writing of haiku.

Ueda, Makoto. Matsuo Bashō. New York: Twayne, 1970. One of the most valuable books on Bashō, this work provides substantive discussion of Bashō’s life and of his literary development, as well as critical commentar y and an evaluation of his place in literature.

© 2010 David Bordelon