During the 300 years since his death, Basho has turned into Japan's most famous poet, the personification of haiku culture and an icon of its perceived sensibility. He has been interpreted and reinterpreted and now, three centuries later, he is being not only rediscovered, but reinvented.
An example is the Basho Symposium that was held in London in 1994. Scholars gathered upon this 300th anniversary of the poet's death and gave a number of papers (the main body of this book); there was also a haiku "exhibition," a "composition stroll" along the Thames, followed by the compilation of some "renga," commemorative linked verses.
Later in the year, a party of British haiku poets set out on their own journey into the deep north, departing with due ceremony from Chepstow and proceeding into the Welsh Borderland hills, writing haiku all the while. A sycamore tree was "dressed" with penned haiku that fluttered leaf-like for an entire week, and there was a tea ceremony in celebration of the life and work of the poet.
Haiku were read to the accompaniment of a temple prayer bell, and there was an event on Primrose Hill in London in which 50 small helium-filled balloons were released one by one, each of which bore a Basho haiku suspended on a poem-card. As these were launched (each one color-coordinated to match the seasonal reference), the haiku was read aloud in Japanese and English.
Indeed, as the editors of this volume celebrating these events aver, "This was no dry academic conference!" Rather, it seems a spirited celebration, with scholars launching balloons, penning haiku in the Welsh fens, and writing papers about the contemporary relevance of Basho.
A relevance, it transpires, the poet has much of. All of the writers stress this concurrent quality: Basho, our contemporary. Stephen Gill, who edits this collection and contributes the most papers, indicates how this occurs in his essay on Basho in the arts and media.
Beginning with contemporary representations, the essay continues through prints and sketches by Hiroshige, Hokusai, Yoshitoshi -- the poet growing more stylized with the passing years. By the beginning of this century, Basho is a revered institution, and after World War II he has become a business. Basho tourism turns into a Basho boom and Sendai's "Narrow Road Fun Map" shows the poet taking snapshots and playing baseball.
In England, the playwright Edward Bond seizes on him for "a lengthy and somewhat weary" play, and there is a TV program that shows how the poet underwent rigorous training as a ninja spy and used that journey to the deep north as an excuse to arrange some quality time for the shogun.
This democratization of Basho, if that is the term, causes some doubt. (Gill quotes the famous haiku about the cicada and the silent rocks and finds it odd that "largely as a result of this poem, silence will now be hard to find at Yamadera.") Most of the contributors, however, are very up about the Basho-for-Our-Times that they are creating.
His appeal is found to be so universal that things culturally specific to the poet and his times take a back seat to some visionary prophecies for the future. His significance 300 years after his death is considered. It will be great. His influence on modern poetry is discussed. It is considerable. Haiku in the year 2094 is projected. It will be more around than ever. There is even a consideration of poetry for the computer age. Haiku is discovered to be both short and swift and fitting nicely on the laptop.
It is most pleasant to be liked (even though rival poet Masaoka Shiki said that "over half of Basho's works were trash") and the reader need only ask if the Basho celebrated here is the one we know and presumably love. The answer is, of course, yes.
At the same time, however, in the creation of a man for all seasons from a literary figure (be he Shakespeare, Hemingway or Basho) one has a feeling that something might have been lost in transition. In searching about for what that might be, I decided that Basho's poems are not celebratory, though all celebrations are. The poet noted down his observations, but that is all that he did. This, of course, is not enough if one is celebrating 300 years of being read. Still, the result is curiously prolix.
It must be. Such a celebration is not only a literary occasion -- it is a social occasion as well. Basho certainly attended lots of these in his time and so he would know that some explanation is thought needed, even though he devoted himself to a craft that made explanation unnecessary. He would probably have understood that upon such occasions we are therefore to be told what he really meant.
For example, the famous haiku: "Furuike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto." There are various translations (Hiroaki Sato has collected 100 of them), but the one sent up in the balloon was "A frog jump/ Amplifies/ The pond's antiquity/ With its water sound." We are given what Basho probably meant, but we are not given what he wrote.
This is what celebrations do. They explain. The reader must decide whether this (as was clearly intended) amplifies the poet Basho. Order from Global Books, Ltd. P.O. Box 219, Folkestone, Kent, CT20 31LZ, UK, fax 01303 243087, e-mail: [email protected]. It is also distributed in Japan by Tuttle Shokai at 2,950 yen.
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