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| Matsuo Bashō |
The Jones have left Japan and are flying to Quito, Equator. There, they're going to fly to their final destination: The Galapagos Islands.
They are a lot of hours of flying and sleeping, watching TV, playing with their Japanese games or reading are activities very useful to spend time.
The Grandma is reading some beautiful haikus written by Matsuo Bashō, who is considered, one of the best and most famous Japanese writers in history.
Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694), born then Matsuo Chūemon Munefusa, was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest master of haiku, then called hokku.
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Matsuo Bashō's poetry is internationally renowned; and, in Japan, many of his poems are reproduced on monuments and traditional sites. Although Bashō is justifiably famous in the West for his hokku, he himself believed his best work lay in leading and participating in renku. He is quoted as saying, Many of my followers can write hokku as well as I can. Where I show who I really am is in linking haikai verses.
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| Matsuo Bashō |
Bashō was introduced to poetry at a young age, and after integrating himself into the intellectual scene of Edo, modern Tokyo, he quickly became well known throughout Japan.
He made a living as a teacher; but then renounced the social, urban life of the literary circles and was inclined to wander throughout the country, heading west, east, and far into the northern wilderness to gain inspiration for his writing. His poems were influenced by his firsthand experience of the world around him, often encapsulating the feeling of a scene in a few simple elements.
More information: Famous Poets and Poems
Matsuo Bashō was born in 1644, near Ueno, in Iga Province. The Matsuo family was of samurai descent, and his father probably was a musokunin, a class of landowning peasants granted certain privileges of samurai.
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| Matsuo Bashō |
Little is known of his childhood. In his late teens, Bashō became a servant to Tōdō Yoshitada probably in some humble capacity, and probably not promoted to full samurai class. It is claimed he served as cook or a kitchen worker in some near-contemporaneous accounts, but there is no conclusive proof. A later hypothesis is that he was chosen to serve as page to Yoshitada, with alternative documentary evidence suggesting he started serving at a younger age. He shared Yoshitada's love for haikai no renga, a form of collaborative poetry composition. A sequence was opened with a verse in 5-7-5 mora format; this verse was named a hokku, and would centuries later be renamed haiku when presented as a stand-alone work.
The hokku would be followed by a related 7-7 mora verse by another poet. Both Bashō and Yoshitada gave themselves haigō, or haikai pen names; Bashō's was Sōbō, which was simply the on'yomi of his adult name, Munefusa.
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In 1662, the first extant poem by Bashō was published. In 1526, two of Bashō's hokku were printed in a compilation.
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| Matsuo Bashō |
In 1665, Bashō and Yoshitada together with some acquaintances composed a hyakuin, or one-hundred-verse renku.
In 1666, Yoshitada's sudden death brought Bashō's peaceful life as a servant to an end. No records of this time remain, but it is believed that Bashō gave up any possibility of samurai status and left home.
Biographers have proposed various reasons and destinations, including the possibility of an affair between Bashō and a Shinto miko named Jutei, which is unlikely to be true.
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Bashō's own references to this time are vague; he recalled that at one time I coveted an official post with a tenure of land, and that there was a time when I was fascinated with the ways of homosexual love: there is no indication whether he was referring to real obsessions or fictional ones.
He was uncertain whether to become a full-time poet; by his own account, the alternatives battled in my mind and made my life restless. His indecision may have been influenced by the then still relatively low status of renga and haikai no renga as more social activities than serious artistic endeavors.
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| Matsuo Bashō |
In any case, his poems continued to be published in anthologies in 1667, 1669, and 1671, and he published a compilation of work by himself and other authors of the Teitoku school, The Seashell Game, in 1672. In about the spring of that year he moved to Edo, to further his study of poetry.
On his return to Edo in the winter of 1691, Bashō lived in his third bashō hut, again provided by his disciples. This time, he was not alone: he took in a nephew and his female friend, Jutei, who were both recovering from illness. He had a great many visitors.
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Bashō continued to be uneasy. He wrote to a friend that disturbed by others, I have no peace of mind. He made a living from teaching and appearances at haikai parties until late August 1693, when he shut the gate to his bashō hut and refused to see anybody for a month.
Finally, he relented after adopting the principle of karumi or lightness, a semi-Buddhist philosophy of greeting the mundane world rather than separating himself from it. Bashō left Edo for the last time in the summer of 1694, spending time in Ueno and Kyoto before his arrival in Osaka. He became sick with a stomach illness and died peacefully, surrounded by his disciples.
More information: Poem Hunter
Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
Matsuo Basho
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