Abstract
Landscape is an essential component of haikai (comic linked verse) imagination. The pivotal significance of the famous places (meisho) in haikai verses and the emphasis on geographical imagination in haikai prose (haibun) all demonstrate the importance of landscape in haikai composition. This chapter explores how the renowned haikai master Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) uses the Daoist classic Zhuangzi to reinvent the poetic significance of landscape in his travel journals. It shows that Bashō’s geographical imagination is shaped not simply by the material qualities of space, but more importantly by conceptions based on broader cultural, aesthetic, and philosophical frameworks, particularly the aesthetic of shōyōyū (C. xiaoyaoyou, carefree wandering), which is highlighted by the Zhuangzi and reiterated in Chinese poetic tradition.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
For a fuller discussion of the use of the Zhuangzi by earlier haikai schools, see Hirota Jirō, Bashō no geijutsu—Sono tenkai to haikei (Tokyo: Yūseidō, 1968), 192–237; and
Peipei Qiu, Bashō and the Dao: The Zhuangzi and the Transformation of Haikai (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), 13–40.
Komiya Toyotaka, comp., Kōhon Bashō zenshū (hereafter KBZ) (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1962–1969), VI, 53. Complete translations of this kikōbun can be found in Donald Keene, “Bashō’s Journey of 1684,” Asia Major no. 7 (November 1959);
Nobuyuki Yuasa, “The Record of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton,” in Bashō: The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Harmondsworth: Penguin Press, 1966), 51–64;
Dorothy Britton, A Haiku Journey, Bashō’s Narrow Road to a Far Province (Tokyo and New York: Kōdansha International, 1974); and
Helen McCullough, “The Narrow Road of the Interior,” Classical Japanese Prose, An Anthology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 513–522. My translation owes much to earlier translations. (Editor’s note: we have, for convenience of students and teachers, cross-referenced allusions to Bashō’s kikōbun (and haibun when possible) with translations in
David Landis Barnhill’s Bashō’s Journey: The Literary Prose of Matsuo Bashō [Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005], 13–22; abbreviated as Bashō’s Journey.)
Burton Watson, “Free and Easy Wandering,” in The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (hereafter CWC), chapter 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), rpf.
Lin Xiyi, Zhuangzi Juanzhai kouyi (hereafter ZJK); (1629 Kyoto edition), reproduced in Nagasawa Kikuya, comp., Wakokubon shoshi taisei, XI, XII (Tokyo: Kyūko Shoin, 1976), 1/4a and b/p. 413; Watson, CWC, 30.
Complete translations of the work can be found in Nobuyuki Yuasa, “The Record of a Travel-worn Satchel,” in Bashō: The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979), 71–90;
Eleanor Kerkham, “Notes from the Traveler’s Satchel,” The Tea Leaves 2 (autumn 1965): 26–46; and Barnhill, Bashō’s Journey, 29–43.
Nieda Tadashi suggests that Fūrabō might be a comic twist of the word fūrai, which means “being blown here by winds.” See Nieda, Bashō ni eikyōshita kanshibun (Tokyo: Kyōkiku shuppan sentâ, 1976), 3–7.
Regarding the meaning and derivation of Bashō’s zōka, Japanese scholars have different opinions. While some note its roots in Chinese sources, especially in the Daoist classics, others interpret it as an autonomous expression that refers to “nature” in general. See Nose Asaji, Bashō kōza, VI (Tokyo: Sanseidō, 1943), 34;
Nonomura Katsuhide, “Bashō to Sōji to Sōgaku,” Renga haikai kenkyū 15.11 (1957): 33–39;
Konishi Jin’ichi, “Bashō to gūgensetsu,” Nihon gakushiin kiyō 18.3 (November 1960), 151–158; Hirota, Bashō no geijitsu, 372–444; and Imoto Nōichi, Bashō kōza, I (Tokyo: Sōgensha, 1953), 204. For a discussion in English on this subject, see
Peipei Qiu, Bashō and the Dao: The Zhuangzi and the Transformation of Haikai (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), 81–82.
Watanabe Tamotsu, annot., Saigyō Sankashū zen chūshaku (Tokyo: Kazama Shobō, 1971), 48; cf. translations by
William R. LaFleur, Mirror for the Moon: A Selection of Poems by Saigyō (1118–1190) (New York: New Directions Books, 1978), 6, and Burton Watson, trans., Saigyō: Poems of a Mountain Home (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 39.
For a brief summary and translation of comments on the poem by Japanese scholars, see Makoto Ueda, Bashō and His Interpreters, Selected Hokku with Commentary (Standford, CA: Standford University Press, 1991), 123–124.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2006 Eleanor Kerkham
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Qiu, P. (2006). Reinventing the Landscape: The Zhuangzi and the Geographical Imagination of Bashō. In: Kerkham, E. (eds) Matsuo Bashō’s Poetic Spaces. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230601871_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230601871_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-53388-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-60187-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)