Reading post: Narrow Road to the Interior

I have (finally!) read my third book for the 2022 Classics Challenge: Basho's Narrow Road to the Interior, sometimes translated as Narrow Road to the Deep North or Narrow Road to Oku. Yes, the library finally came up with the book. It describes a journey, on foot, taken by the famous haiku poet Matsuo Basho in 1689, and it was published in 1702, a few years after Basho's death in 1694. I chose this book to fulfill category #11, "Classic set in a place you'd like to visit."

The first book I read for this year's Challenge, The Tale of Genji, dates from Japan's Heian Period (794-1185), and my second book, The Tale of the Heike, came into being during the feudal era (1185-1600). We have now jumped forward into the Edo Period (also called the Early Modern Period) of Japanese history and literature (1600-1868).

In a previous post, talking about the book of poetry by Kimiko Hahn entitled The Narrow Road to the Interior, I observed that it could be a good title for almost any book of poetry. In the introduction to his version of Basho's work, translator Sam Hamill explains the title (Oku-no-hosomichi):

Oku means "within" and "farthest" or "dead-end place"; it also means "interior" both in the sense of interior country and spiritual interior. No is a possessive and is prepositional. Hosomichi means "path" or "trail" or "narrow road." Oku-no-hosomichi can then be taken to mean both a narrow road through the country's mountainous interior lying between Miyagino and Matsushima, and the metaphoric narrow trail leading into one's spiritual center.

It's a tiny book. Only 97 pages, but some of those pages are illustrations and several are less than half filled with text. Even the filled pages are tiny -- the book is only 4.25" x 5". So, you see, it all works out -- The Tale of Genji was 1155 pages, The Tale of the Heike was 710, and now we have a little book that might be, oh, I don't know, 25 pages if printed on normal-sized sheets?

But it's not really a quick read. I read many of the little pages over and over, trying to understand them. Many of them include a haiku, or sometimes several poems, from different authors. For instance, in the little section devoted to his visit to Hiraizumi, in the far north, he includes four poems: two by Tu Fu (a Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty), one by Basho himself, and one by Sora, his companion on the journey -- as if to give different people's opinions of what they saw.

One of my favorite sections -- they're so short, "section" doesn't seem like the right word, but "page" isn't the right word either, because sometimes they're two or three pages -- is the one about chestnut trees. I think they are in Sukagawa at this point. It's page 22 in this edition.

In the shade of a huge chestnut at the edge of town, a monk made his hermitage a refuge from the world. Saigyo's poem about gathering chestnuts deep in the mountains refers to such a place. I wrote on a slip of paper: The Chinese character for chestnut means "west tree," alluding to the Western Paradise of Amida Buddha; the priest Gyoki, all his life, used chestnut for his walking stick and for the posts of his home.
               Near the eaves
               the chestnut blooms:
               almost no one sees.

That's the whole thing, the whole page, the whole "section." It includes so many things: an actual chestnut tree, a bit of history about it, a reference to a poem by Saigyo (a Japanese poet from the late Heian era), a note Basho writes to himself about the chestnut's religious connection, a bit of history about a priest, and finally a curious little poem.

Not all the sections are so perfect; some are quite pedestrian -- oh, I shouldn't use that word, because they're mainly walking, Basho and Sora, so it's a silly pun. But this section is kind of pedestrian too. It's not beautiful, except the haiku. At the same time, it's lovely.

The book ends quietly. His companion Sora becomes ill and has to go stay with relatives, so Basho continues on without him for a while longer. They meet up again at Ogaki and gather together with friends, I guess to celebrate the journey. I was a little confused, because they aren't actually home yet -- Ogaki is a long way from Edo. 

After all the trouble I went through to get this book from the library, I'm thinking I might like to own it after all, or possibly an edition that has more of Basho's poems included. I could order it straight from Shambhala Press, wouldn't have to deal with Amazon at all.