Matsuo Basho (1644-94) is considered Japan's greatest haiku poet. "Narrow Road to the Interior" (Oku no Hosomichi) is his masterpiece. Ostensibly a chronological account of the poet's five-month journey in 1689 into the deep country north and west of the old capital, Edo, the work is in fact artful and carefully sculpted, rich in literary and Zen allusion and filled with great insights and vital rhythms. In "Basho's Narrow Road: Spring and Autumn Passages," poet and translator Hiroaki Sato presents the complete work in English and examines the threads of history, geography, philosophy, and literature that are woven into Basho's exposition. He details in particular the extent to which Basho relied on the community of writers with whom he traveled and joined in linked verse (renga) poetry sessions, an example of which, "A Farewell Gift to Sora," is included in this volume. In explaining how and why Basho made the literary choices he did, Sato shows how the poet was able to transform his passing observations into words that resonate across time and culture.

Bashō 's Haiku offers the most comprehensive translation yet of the poetry of Japanese writer Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694), who is credited with perfecting and popularizing the haiku form of poetry. One of the most widely read Japanese writers, both within his own country and worldwide, Bashō is especially beloved by those who appreciate nature and those who practice Zen Buddhism. Born into the samurai class, Bashō rejected that world after the death of his master and became a wandering poet and teacher. During his travels across Japan, he became a lay Zen monk and studied history and classical poetry. His poems contained a mystical quality and expressed universal themes through simple images from the natural world. David Landis Barnhill's brilliant book strives for literal translations of Bashō 's work, arranged chronologically in order to show Bashō 's development as a writer. Avoiding wordy and explanatory translations, Barnhill captures the brevity and vitality of the original Japanese, letting the images suggest the depth of meaning involved. Barnhill also presents an overview of haiku poetry and analyzes the significance of nature in this literary form, while suggesting the importance of Bashō to contemporary American literature and environmental thought.

Basho (1644-1694) is the most famous Haiku poet of Japan. He made his living as a teacher and writer of Haiku and is celebrated for his many travels around Japan, which he recorded in travel journals. This translation of his most mature journal, Oku-No-Hosomichi, details the most arduous part of a nine-month journey with his friend and disciple, Sora, through the backlands north of the capital, west to the Japan Sea and back toward Kyoto. More than a record of the journey, Basho's journal is a poetic sequence that has become a centre of the Japanese mind/heart. Ten illustrations by Hide Oshiro illuminate the text.

Bash-o’s haiku are a series of superb pictures in which whole landscapes and seasons are evoked by description of the crucial details.

A collection of Basho's prose works include all of his longer prose pieces--the travel journals and Saga Diary--along with eighty short essays in haibun, prose in the spirit of haiku.

In his perfectly crafted haiku poems, Basho described the natural world with great simplicity and delicacy of feeling. When he composed The Narrow Road to the Deep North he was a serious student of Zen Buddhism setting off on a series of travels designed to strip away the trappings of the material world and bring spiritual enlightenment. He wrote of the seasons changing, of the smell of the rain, the brightness of the moon and the beauty of the waterfall, through which he sensed the mysteries of the universe. These travel writings not only chronicle Basho's perilous journeys through Japan, but also capture his vision of eternity in the transient world around him.

This is the essential English edition of the complete poems of the eminent Japanese master of the haiku, Matsuo Bash�.   Matsuo Bash� (1644–1694) is arguably the greatest figure in the history of Japanese literature and the master of the haiku. Bash�: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Bash� offers in English a full picture of the haiku of Bash�, 980 poems in all. Andrew Fitzsimons’ translation is the first to adhere strictly to form: all of the poems are translated following the syllabic count of the originals. This book also translates a number of Bash�’s headnotes to poems ignored by previous English-language translators.   In Fitzsimons’ beautiful rendering, Bash� is much more than a philosopher of the natural world and the leading exponent of a refined Japanese sensibility. He is also a poet of queer love and eroticism; of the city as well as the country, the indoors and the outdoors, travel and staying put; of lonesomeness as well as the desire to be alone. His poetry explores the full range of social experience in Edo Japan as he moved among friends and followers high and low, the elite and the demi-monde, the less fortunate: poor farmers, abandoned children, disregarded elders. Bash�: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Bash� reveals how this work speaks to our concerns today as much as it captures a Japan emerging from the Middle Ages. For dedicated scholars and those coming upon Bash� for the first time, Fitzsimons’ elegant translation—with an insightful introduction and helpful notes—allows readers to enjoy these works in all their glory.  

A beautiful translation of one of the most-loved classics of Japanese literature.

Bash (1644-1694)--a great luminary of Asian literature who elevated the haiku to an art form of utter simplicity and intense spiritual beauty--is renowned in the West as the author of Narrow Road to the Interior, a travel diary of linked prose and haiku recounting his journey through the far northern provinces of Japan. This edition features a masterful translation of this celebrated work. It also includes an insightful introduction by translator Sam Hamill detailing Bash 's life and the art of haiku, three other important works by Bash --Travelogue of Weather-Beaten Bones, The Knapsack Notebook, and Sarashina Travelogue--and two hundred and fifty of his finest haiku, making this the most complete single-volume collection of Bash 's writings.

This book is part of the Shambhala Pocket Library series.

The Shambhala Pocket Library is a collection of short, portable teachings from notable figures across religious traditions and classic texts. The covers in this series are rendered by Colorado artist Robert Spellman. The books in this collection distill the wisdom and heart of the work Shambhala Publications has published over 50 years into a compact format that is collectible, reader-friendly, and applicable to everyday life.

"The travel writings of Matsuo Basho are of enormous literary importance, and so it is a joy to see them collected in this compact volume, in translations of exemplary elegance, faithfulness, and accessibility. The annotations are especially valuable: they show a solid grasp of the author's life, work, and times, and provide rich and detailed background information about allusions to Chinese and Japanese classics. Along with the high quality of the translations themselves, this thorough commentary makes the book a significant scholarly resource and will help readers appreciate the density and delicacy of Basho's writing. A very welcome addition to the English-language literature on one of the central poets of the Japanese tradition ." David B. Lurie, Columbia University

These 253 selections reveal Basho’s mastery of the genre.

Quintessential classical Japanese haiku - selected and translated by one of America's premier poet-translators - now available in a pocket edition. In this collection of haiku, translator Sam Hamill has compiled the best from the tradition, spanning the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, with particular focus on the three great masters: Bash, Buson, and Issa. Based on images from nature, the poems address the themes of joy, temporality, beauty, wonder, loneliness, and loss.

A tale of civic action among a town of mice teaches lessons about teamwork, initiative, good sportsmanship, and the importance of relationships between old and young When Miss Flora visits the home of twins Timothy and Sarah, she laments to their mother that a building that was once a vibrant gathering place for the entire town is now dilapidated and considered by many to be haunted. Together, Mother and Miss Flora come up with a plan to hold a cake-baking contest to generate the money needed to refurbish the building. As news of the contest spreads throughout the town, everyone from young to old responds with enthusiasm. When the day of the contest arrives, beautiful cakes of all shapes, sizes, and flavors are ready to be judged and then sold. Young listeners and readers delight to the fantastic cakes as well as to the surprising results of the contest."

Collection Of Japanese Haiku Poems Translated To English.

Collection Of Japanese Haiku Poems Translated To English.

Basho stands today as Japan’s most renowned writer, and one of the most revered. Wherever Japanese literature, poetry or Zen are studied, his oeuvre carries weight. Every new student of haiku quickly learns that Basho was the greatest of the Old Japanese Masters.

Yet despite his stature, Basho’s complete haiku have not been collected into a single volume. Until now.

To render the writer’s full body of work into English, Jane Reichhold, an American haiku poet and translator, dedicated over ten years of work. In Basho: The Complete Haiku, she accomplishes the feat with distinction. Dividing his creative output into seven periods of development, Reichhold frames each period with a decisive biographical sketch of the poet’s travels, creative influences and personal triumphs and defeats. Scrupulously annotated notes accompany each poem; and a glossary and two indexes fill out the volume.

Reichhold notes that, "Basho was a genius with words." He obsessively sought out the right word for each phrase of the succinct seventeen-syllable haiku, seeking the very essence of experience and expression. With equal dedication, Reichhold sought the ideal translations. As a result, Basho: The Complete Haiku is likely to become the essential work on this brilliant poet and will stand as the most authoritative book on the subject for many years to come. Original sumi-e ink drawings by artist Shiro Tsujimura complement the haiku throughout the book.

THIS 26 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East: Japan, by Charles F. Horne. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766100111.

THIS 26 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE BOOK: Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East: Japan, by Charles F. Horne. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766100111.

Zen Buddhism distinguishes itself by brilliant flashes of insight and its terseness of expression. The haiku verse form is a superb means of studying Zen modes of thought and expression, for its seventeen syllables impose a rigorous limitation that confines the poet to vital experience. Here haiku by Basho are translated by Robert Aitken, with commentary that provides a new and far deeper understanding of Basho's work than ever before.
In presenting themes from the haiku and from Zen literature that open the doors both to the poems and to Zen itself, Aitken has produced the first book about the relationship between Zen and haiku. His readers are certain to find it invaluable for the remarkable revelations it offers.

"The travel writings of Matsuo Basho are of enormous literary importance, and so it is a joy to see them collected in this compact volume, in translations of exemplary elegance, faithfulness, and accessibility. The annotations are especially valuable: they show a solid grasp of the author's life, work, and times, and provide rich and detailed background information about allusions to Chinese and Japanese classics. Along with the high quality of the translations themselves, this thorough commentary makes the book a significant scholarly resource and will help readers appreciate the density and delicacy of Basho's writing. A very welcome addition to the English-language literature on one of the central poets of the Japanese tradition ." -David B. Lurie, Columbia University