Haiku Travels
Iga-Ueno (Mie Prefecture)
hometown -
I weep at my navel string
year end
furusato ya | heso no o ni naku | toshi no kure
ふるさとや 臍の緒に泣く 年の暮
Basho
[Ueno Castle]
The above hokku was written in 1688, during Basho's second long journey to Western Japan. On
November 29, 1687 Basho left his hermitage in Edo for the tour described in his Knapsack Notebook. After that trip, he twice visits his family in Ueno. First he spends New Year
of 1688 with them, arriving at the end of January 1688 (in our calendar, so before the lunar New Year). After a visit to the Ise Shrines, he returns to Ueno on March 19 to take
part in the 33rd anniversary of his father's death.
A "navel string" (heso no o) is the umbilical cord which in Basho's time was kept as a memento. When a baby was born, the parents would set aside the umbilical cord and store it away with a record of the date of birth. For Basho, the umbilical cord is a metaphor for his blood relation to his parents. When he accidentally finds it during his visit home (perhaps during the cleaning at the end of the year), he tearfully recollects all the years of indebtedness to his parents, especially to his mother.
[The walls of Ueno Castle]
many many things
they call to mind
these cherry blossoms
samazama no | koto omoidasu | sakura kana
Also during his return to his hometown in 1688, Basho was invited to a cherry blossom viewing party at the villa of Todo Yoshinaga (haikai name: Tangan), the lord of Ueno Castle at that time, and the son of Sengin under whom Basho had served in his youth. "Everything was as it used to be," Basho writes in his head note.
Seeing the cherry blossoms at the place where Basho, now 44 years old, had served in his youth, stirs up all kinds of thoughts in the poet's mind. The cherry tree is blooming as in the old days and perhaps Tangan resembled his father Sengin, who had been in his early twenties when Basho knew him. Basho saw his own youth and remembered how he used to wrote hokku with Sengin under the blossoms.
This year his disciples in Iga-Ueno built a hermitage for him (one of five) and Basho named it "Minomushi-an" through the following haiku:
come and listen
to the voice of the bagworm
in my hermitage
minomushi no | ne wo kiki ni koyo | kusa no io
A "bagworm" is a sort of moth, which certainly doesn't chirp or make any other sounds, but Sei Shonagon had written in her Pillow Book (written around the year 1000) that the bagworm chirps "chichi yo, chichi yo", or "father, father." Basho here makes a humorous use of classical literature.
[Minomushi-an in Iga-Ueno]
Basho returned to Ueno at the end of
his Oku no Hosomichi trip. He arrived in November 1689 and stayed for
the rest of the year. On April 10 1690 he was again in Ueno
for blossom viewing, and also in 1691 he continues to use Ueno
as base for trips to neighboring areas.
In 1690 Basho was in Iga-Ueno at cherry blossom time. During a kasen held at a blossom viewing party at the residence of Ogawa Fubaku, a samurai from Iga, on April 10 he wrote:
under the tree
soup and vinegared fish salad
with cherry blossoms
ki no moto ni | shiru mo namasu mo | sakura kana
The above is said to be a good example of Basho's "karumi," lightness.
In December of the year before that, Basho had also been in his hometown, where he wrote another "light" haiku. This haiku was written on December 12 at the house of Tomoda Kakuzaemon, another Iga samurai who dabbled in haiku:
come, children,
let's run about
in the hail
iza kodomo | hashiri arikan | tamaarare
Basho was apparently in a happy mood, as if he had returned to his own childhood.
[Basho, lonely on a pedestal in his hometown]
In 1694 Basho makes his last
journey, leaving Edo on June 3. On June 20 he arrives in Ueno; then,
after a visit to Kyoto, he returns the end of August to Ueno and stays a few
months - local students had built a cottage for him at the back of his
brother's house.
That Basho felt the passage of time is demonstrated by a haiku written on September 25, 1694, at the house of the Iga merchant Katano Bosui:
the village has grown old
not a single house without
persimmon trees
sato furite | kaki no ki motanu | ie mo nashi
And a final haiku, written on October 23, 1694, just before Basho's scheduled departure from Iga-Ueno:
departing autumn
their hands opened wide
chestnut burs
yuki aki ya | te wo hirogetaru | kuri no iga
The opened chestnut burs on the tree look like opened hand palms, as if trying to stop the departing autumn - or to stop Basho from leaving. He would next go to Osaka, where he would fall ill and die on November 28.
Basho spots in Iga-Ueno:
Ueno Castle was built in 1585 by Tsutsui Sadatsugu, on the site of a temple which had been torched by Oda Nobunaga, who broke the medieval power of the large monasteries. In 1608 Todo Takatora was sent by Tokugawa Ieyasu to this strategically important town. He was to build a massive castle, but the five-story donjon was flattened by a typhoon before its completion. In the meantime, the threat to the Tokugawa regime had been diminished thanks to the victory over the Toyotomi forces and the donjon was never rebuilt.
As the castle never had a donjon, the present three-story tower possesses no historical significance. It was built in 1935 by a local tycoon turned politician, Kawasaki Koji, to boost the greatness of Iga-Ueno. Although it is not historically correct, one thing must be admitted: the castle tower was built from wood and not from concrete.
The first two stories act as a small museum, showing the usual suits of armor, swords, helmets, palanquins, scrolls, lacquer boxes and other daimyo possessions. The variety of helmets and 'face protectors' is quite interesting, as are the suits of armor sitting gloomily in their glass cases. The top floor affords a good view of the town and surroundings, a fertile plain encircled by mountains on all sides. The shikishi set into the ceiling of this top floor were painted or calligraphied by famous poets and painters of the day, such as Domoto Insho (a falcon in flight). After leaving the castle, walk around (momentarily leaving the park) to have a good look at the great castle ramparts. Only part of the thirty meter high fortifications still stands, but these are at least as Basho saw them.
9:00-17:00. Cl. Dec. 29 - 31. Tel. 0595-21-3148
Minomushi-an, or the Bagworm Hermitage, stands a 15 min. walk from Iga-Ueno-shi station. It is the only surviving of five such hermitages belonging to Basho's disciples in Iga-Ueno. The present hut was established by Hattori Doho (1657-1730) and named after a poem Basho sent the owner after the completion of the hut in 1688 (see above). If is a beautifully rustic place under dense trees and Basho is supposed to have stayed here when he visited Iga-Ueno in later life. After the master's death, Doho compiled Basho's sayings in this hut.
¥300. 8:30-17:00. Cl. Mon., day after public holiday, Dec. 29 - Jan. 3. Tel. 0595-23-8921.
Translations and Studies of Basho:
Basho's Haiku, 2 vols, by Toshiharu Oseko (1990 & 1996, Maruzen); Basho and his Interpreters, Selected Hokku with Commentary, by Makoto Ueda (1992, Stanford U.P.); Traces of Dreams, Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho, by Haruo Shirane (1998, Stanford U.P.); Basho's Narrow Road, by Hiroaki Sato (1996, Stone Bridge Press); Basho's Journey, The Literary Prose of Matsuo Basho, by David Landis Bamhill (2005, State University of New York).
Photos in this post are my own work.