Gazing in wonder at the many faces of the moon
Why do the sun and the moon see so little of each other? Their quarrel, explains the eighth-century chronicle "Nihon Shoki," was one between siblings. Amaterasu, the sun goddess, was born of their father's left eye; Tsukiyomi, the moon god, of his right eye. ...
Be a frog and jump into Basho's pond
We must know, "that a haiku does not express ideas but that it puts forward images reflecting intuitions." — Daisetsu T. Suzuki
Wabi lies at the heart of Japanese history
You could spend your entire life in modern Japan without ever hearing the term wabi, though no overview of Japanese history or art is complete without it. It's a beautiful word, hard to define like most beautiful words. Poverty is the heart of ...
With only a few words, a Haiku master can paint a picture so vivid it's as if the reader is standing beside them — great travel writers have similar abilities. Matsuo Basho was both. The Narrow Road to the ...
Cheap train to the north with Basho
On July 19, the Yamagata Shinkansen debuted a luxury ashiya (foot bath) service. A ticket from Tokyo to Yamagata City, in Tohoku Prefecture, costs around ¥11,000, but 15 minutes in the foot bath car is extra. If Matsuo Basho, Japan's most well-known poet, were ...
Walking on water: the seven bridges over the Seto Inland Sea
Through the clouds of steam rising from the hotel's hot spring, I can make out Jupiter — a tiny pinprick of light beaming over the twinkling black waters of the Seto Inland Sea. It's easy to see why this hotel is called Bella Vista. ...
Tsuruga: truly a 'port of humanity'
The man in the black-and-white photograph wore a dark jacket with wide lapels. His hair was cut short and parted to one side. His eyes were directed toward the camera as if he were looking directly at me. I recognized him immediately: Chiune Sugihara, ...
Guided through Japan's deep north by the holy spirit of Basho
Tohoku is Japan's "deep north," through which the famous Zen monk and haiku poet Matsuo Basho walked in 1689, writing one of the most famous travelogues in world literature, "Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North)." In the 17th century this was ...
