should I take it in my hand
it would melt in my hot tears -
frost of autumn
te ni toraba kien | namida zo atsuki | aki no shimo
手にとらば消んなみだぞ あつき秋の霜
Basho
[Haiseiden, Iga-Ueno]
Basho's place of birth, Iga-Ueno, boasts many monuments celebrating its most famous citizen. Although there were long absences as well, Basho loved his home town and the family of his older brother and sisters still living there. After his move to Edo, he visited at least eight times and often used the town during longer stays as a base for trips in the vicinity. We will make a tour through the city and the haiku Basho wrote here in two parts.
Basho was born in Ueno in the old province of Iga (modern Mie Pref.) in the year 1644. The day and month of his birth are unknown. His name as a child was Kinsaku; he had an older brother Hanzaemon and four sisters. His father, Matsuo Yozaemon, was probably a landed farmer who was allowed some of the privileges of a samurai, such as having a family name. About his mother we only know that her parents had emigrated from Iyo Province (now Ehime prefecture). The family status was respectable, but not particularly high.
In 1656, when Basho is 13, his father dies. Within the next several years (the precise date is not known) Basho enters the service of Todo Yoshikiyo, a relative of the feudal lord ruling the province. As no record of his service survives, his official rank may have been low and his duties minor. But he soon joined the circle of Yoshikiyo's son, Yoshitada, who was two years Basho's senior and who wrote haikai as a pastime under the pseudonym Sengin.
One of the earliest surviving documents referring to Basho, shows that he, under the haikai name Sobo, participated in a haikai gathering headed by Sengin on December 19, 1665. Sengin's haikai teacher, Kitamura Kigin (1624-1705), sent a verse to the gathering. Kigin belonged to the Teimon school of haikai, the most influential one at the time, which aimed at an elegant, witty style with wordplay and allusions to classical court culture. This was the type of haikai Basho learned when he began writing himself.
On May 28, 1666, Basho's young master Todo Yoshitada died suddenly; he was only 25. It is not clear what Basho did during the next six years, from 1666 to 1671. Although he left the service of the Todo family, Basho probably continued to live in Ueno, occasionally visiting Kyoto and other cities nearby. In haiku written at this time, he refers to himself as "Sobo of Ueno in Iga Province." We have a sprinkling left of haiku written in those years, which appeared in haiku anthologies compiled by reputed masters.
On February 23, 1672, Basho dedicated a poetry contest book
Kai Oi ("Shell
Matching") to the Ueno Tenjingu shrine near his
parents' house (see below for Basho's haiku). The book, probably handwritten by Basho himself, paired 60 hokku composed by 36 local poets. Basho served as referee and passed judgement on all 30 matches. The dedication of
Kai Oi may have been Basho's way of bidding farewell to his native town. In the spring of 1672 Basho moved to Edo to become a professional haikai master, taking students and correcting their verses for a fee.
[Basho-o Seika (the house where Basho was born)]
Basho's mother had died in 1683, but at that time he didn't have the financial means for the long journey to Ueno. But the next year Basho traveled to the Kansai area on a long trip (later described in his Journal of Bleached Bones in a Field), and he visited his family on October 16, staying a few days. He had been away for eight years. At that time, the haiku at the top of this article was written. Basho also wrote a long explanatory note: 'At the beginning of the Ninth Month I came back home. Nothing of my late mother remained there anymore. All had changed from what I remembered. My older brother, now with white hair in his side-locks and wrinkles around his eyebrows, could only say: "How lucky we are to meet alive again." Then he opened a keepsake bag and and said to me: "Pay your respects to mother's white hair. They say the legendary Urashima's hair turned white the instant he opened the souvenir box he had brought back from the dragon palace. Now your eyebrows look a little white, too." We wept together for some time.' (quoted from Basho and His Interpreters, p. 112)
"Urashima" refers to a famous legend, in which a young man visits the Dragon Lady's palace under the sea. After many years he finally returns to his old village, and finding nothing he can remember, he disobeys the lady's order and opens a jewel box she has given him. Instantly, he turns into an old man.
Basho says that he can not take the white hair in his hand, because if he were to do so, his hot tears would melt it away like autumn frost.
[Ueno Tenjingu shrine]
The first haiku by Basho that has been preserved for us, was written on February 7, 1663. It is a bantering poem in the Teimon school style:
was it spring that arrived
or the year that went away?
still December 29 today!
haru ya koshi | toshi ya yukiken | kotsugomori
In the lunar calendar, February 7 (in our calendar) was the 29th of the 12th month (also known as Second Last Day, kotsugomori). Normally, spring would start on the lunar New Year's Day, but in rare cases, the first day of spring (also called Risshun) arrived one or more days earlier. In other words, the beginning of spring sometimes fell within the old year, and that inspired Basho to this witty, but also rather rhetorical verse. Also in style with the Teimon school is that he is in fact parodying a well-known waka which opens the Kokinshu:
