through the mouthway of a door
points a piercing voice"
Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉, 1644 – November 28, 1694) was a Japanese poet of the Edo period. During his lifetime, he was known for his work on a collaborative form of comic poetry called hakai no renga (俳諧の連歌), or "renku" (連句) for short. Today, he is considered one of the masters of haiku [then called "hokku" (発句), the starting verse of renku].
He was born Matsuo Kinsaku in 1644, near Ueno, in Iga Province. The Matsuo family was of samurai descent, and his father was probably a musokunin (無足人), a class of landowning peasants granted certain privileges of samurai. In his late teens, Kinsaku took the name "Chūemon Munefusa" and became the servant of Tōdō Yoshitada. He shared Yoshitada's love for hakai no renga, and they wrote together under haigō (俳号), a type of Pen Name used for haikai; Munefusa's was Sōbō (宗房), which was simply the on'yomi (Sino-Japanese reading) of his name while Yoshitada's was "Sengin". In 1662, the first extant poem of Munefusa was published, and two years later, he published his first hokku in the anthology called Sayono-nakayama Shū. In 1665, Munefusa and Yoshitada collaborated with a group of poets in writing a hyakuin (百韻), or one-hundred-verse hakai.
Yoshitada was born with a delicate constitution and died in 1666 at the age of 25. Munefusa, shocked by Yoshitada's death, asked for permission to resign from his service. His request was denied, and Munefusa fled to Kyōto. He soon began to focus more exclusively on poetry, and his poems continued to be published in anthologies in 1667, 1669, and 1671. In 1672, Munefusa published a compilation of poems he and other poets wrote, called Kai Ōi (貝おほひ), or The Seashell Game. In about the spring of that year, he moved to Edo to further study his poetry, and he hoped to gain income as a teacher and critic.
Munefusa's early years in Edo were not easy; for four years, he had to supplement his income through a waterworks department to earn a living. Even so, he managed to have established a reputation in Edo's poetic circles. In 1675, Nishiyama Sōin, a poet and founder of the Danrin school of haikai, visited Edo and invited Munefusa to compose poetry with him. With that, Munefusa changed his haigō to Tōsei.
By 1680, Tōsei had gained twenty disciples of his own, and one of the anthologies they published was Tōsei-montei Dokugin-Nijukasen (桃青門弟独吟二十歌仙), or The Best Poems of Tōsei's Twenty Disciples. At that winter, Tōsei resorted to a more reclusive life by moving across the River Sumida to Fukagawa. His disciples built him a hut there and planted in the yard a Japanese banana tree, or a bashō (芭蕉). This hut became known as Bashō-an (芭蕉庵), or the bashō hut, and it gave Tōsei both a permanent home and a new haigō, "Bashō".
Despite his success, Bashō was very lonely, so he turned to Zen under the guidance of his teacher Butchō; Chinese Daoism and Zen became major influences in the poetry of Bashō. In the winter of 1682, there was a fire in Tenna, the Tenna no Taikai, that burned the Bashō-an, and Bashō managed to escape, but this affected him greatly, along with the death of his mother early in 1683, whose funeral he could not attend. Bashō was invited stay by his sometime student Takayama Biji to spend time in the Yamura domain in Kai Province, returning to Edo to oversee the publication of Minashiguri (虚栗), or Shriveled Chestnuts, and he even moved into a new Bashō-an in Fukagawa, financed by the charity of his students, disciples, and other benefactors.
This, however, did little to lift Bashō's spirits, as he developed an "inclination for displaced life". In September 1684, Bashō set out and began a series of travels, this one to his hometown of Iga, also visiting Kyoto, Ōtsu, and Atsuta Shrine along the way. This journey ended up providing the material that would result in Nozarashi Kikō (野ざらし紀行), or The Journey of Weather-Exposed Bones (1684), and it was through travel that Bashō found the solace he long sought. His poetry also became less introspective and more about what he observed. During a visit to Nagoya, Bashō published Fuyo no Hi (冬の日), or Winter Days, the first major anthology of the Shōmon, or the "Bashō School". This also marked a development of his own style; when several poets came up to Bashō for advice, he advised them to disregard the Edo style and even his own Shriveled Chestnuts, saying: "Anthologies like Minashiguri contain many verses that are not worth discussing".
For the next ten years of his life, Bashō's life followed this pattern: extensive journeys, renga gatherings and visits with local poets, periods of recovery from the exertions of travel, the composition and revision of poems, collation of material for his travel journals, supervision of publications, both his own and of the Bashō School. In 1685, Bashō returned to Edo, happily resuming his job as a teacher of poetry in his Bashō-an, though he privately made plans for another journey. He even published Haru no Hi (春の日), Spring Days in 1686, which became the source of one of his most famous poems: "An olden pond now / A songfrog springs off into / the sound of water" (furuike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto). That same spring, in April, this poem led to a series of other poems, producing a collection that would later be published as Kawazu Awase (蛙合) The Frog Contest. Bashō never married, but he once wrote "there was a time when I was fascinated with the ways of homosexual love". In fact, he was involved in homosexual affairs, some of which were with several of his disciples, all his life.
Bashō's planning for another long journey culminated on May 16, 1689, when he left Edo on a journey to Kisagata, then down along the western coast of Japan. This travel became the basis for Oku no Hosomichi (奥の細道), The Narrow Road to the Interior. When he reached Ōgaki, Gifu Prefecture, Bashō completed the log; editing it until he finalized it in 1694; it would be published posthumously in 1702.
When Bashō returned to Edo in 1691, a nearly three-year-long absence, he was so disaffected by the changed poetic scene in Edo that he considered ending his career as a poet altogether. In addition, he saw that other people had settled in his hut. As it was undesirable to evict them, a third Bashō-an, provided by his followers, was built for him.
In 1693, his nephew, Tōin, was deathly sick with tuberculosis and moved into Bashō's hut, and Bashō supported Jutei, Tōin's wife, and her three children, one of whom, Jirōbei, moved into the Bashō-an too, to help care for Tōin. Tōin eventually succumbed to his illness at the end of April, and a heartbroken Bashō closed his hut to visitors for a month to mourn.
In February 1694, Bashō's health, which had never been good to begin with, took a turn for the worse, and he wrote: "I feel like my end is drawing near". He prepared a westward journey to visit friends and relatives in Iga one last time, while also healing rifts with his followers in Nagoya and settling a dispute between disciples in Osaka. His bad health delayed the departure, but he made the most of his time in Edo, attending haikai gatherings, keen to talk of karumi and encourage new poetic talent. He eventually left Edo for the last time on June, leaving his Bashō-an in the care of Jutei and her two daughters; Jirōbei traveled with him.
The last few months of Bashō's life were filled with activity; he even managed to publish Betsuzashiki (別座鋪) The Detached Room and Sumidawara (炭俵) A Sack of Charcoal, to critical acclaim. In the meantime, he managed to reach Iga at the end of June, visited the Ōtsu area, and stayed again at Rakushi-sha, where he received students and friends, and attended haikai gatherings in Kyoto, Iga, and Osaka; he only missed one haikai gathering because he was too sick to attend, but even then, he sent his hokku to the host.
On November 25, 1694, Bashō lay on his deathbed, having developed a stomach illness from exerting himself too much in his last weeks, but he composed one last poem: "On a journey stricken / Dreams a-wandering around / stalks and stubble-fields" (tabi ni yande / yume wa kareno o / kakemeguru); he died peacefully three days later, surrounded by his disciples.
