Cluster Ten:
Nara Temples and Haiku

Basho was born in the castle town of Iga-Ueno, in the Kansai area, but at a young age settled in Edo. He made several trips back to western Japan and then also often visited the Nara area or Yamatoji as it is called in Japanese. In 1684 he visited Yoshino and the next year he observed the Water Drawing Ceremony in Todaiji and an outside Noh performance (Takigi-Noh) in Kofukuji. He also visited Horyuji. These visits have been described in Nogarashi Kiko, 'The Record of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton.' In 1868 he was again in the Kansai, and this time he wrote Oi no Kobumi, 'The Record of a Travel-Worn Satchel,' about his peregrinations. In Yamatoji, he went to Hase, Tonomine, Yoshino, Katsuragi, Nara, Ishinogami, Miwa, Yagi and Taima. Next he was back in 1689 for the famous Wakamiya Festival of the Kasuga Shrine. In 1691 he again saw the outside Noh performance at Kofukuji. In 1694, finally, he spent one night in Nara on the way to Osaka.

Here is a selection of haiku Basho wrote inspired by the temples and shrines of Nara: about the many Buddha statues in the ancient town, the crying deer of the Kasuga Shrine, the Water Drawing Ceremony in Todaiji and an old pine tree at Taimadera temple. Most moving of all is the haiku he wrote about the blind Ganjin, the founder of Toshodaiji. One haiku below is not by Basho, but by Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902), who established haiku as a genre of modern poetry. Shiki writes about a strange sensory experience he had at Horyuji.

Shonenji is a tiny Jodo sect temple standing in the southwest corner of the block that forms the old Nara town. It is almost not part of that old town anymore, standing within hearing distance of a busy road and encircled by small, ugly apartments. The laundry of the inhabitants, hanging from their balconies, almost wholly covers the grounds of Shonenji. One would expect Buddhist banners and pennants here, but instead finds T-shirts and underwear fluttering in the wind.

The temple was founded by Chogen (1121-1206), the Todaiji priest who was responsible for the rebuilding of the temple after it had been destroyed in the Genpei War in 1180. It must therefore date from the 12th or early 13th c.; the only reminder of those days is a statue of Shandao (one of the founders of Jodo or Pure Land Buddhism) brought back from China by Chonen and now still in the temple. It is not normally on view.

In fact, one only comes to this temple to see the famous Basho haiku, inscribed on a stone in front of the small temple hall. Basho was in Nara on the ninth day of the ninth month, 1694, the day the Choyo no Sekku or Chrysanthemum Festival was celebrated. He wrote this haiku while taking a rest in Shonenji and one imagines that the temple grounds were filled with chrysanthemums rather than pants and shirts. The haiku stone is old: it was put up in 1793, to commemorate that already one century had passed since the demise of the haiku master. The haiku wonderfully catches the atmosphere of Japan's ancient capital.

Omizutori, 'water-drawing,' is a central rite of the Shunie (literally, 'rite observed in February') held at the Nigatsudo Hall of Todaiji Temple in Nara. The entire shunie lasts from March 1 to 14 (that is, in the modern calendar), and the omizutori proper takes place late at night on March 12. The rite begins with the waving of huge blazing torches from the hall's veranda, in fact whole trees set afire, sprinkling sparks over the crowd below. Next, the monks draw water from a nearby well and offer it to the image of the Eleven-Headed Kannon, the central Bodhisattva of the Nigatsudo Hall, who is a 'secret' statue. The rite symbolizes the arrival of spring and was first held in 752.

It is a most impressive ceremony and the monks who wave the torches come running down the verandah of the Nigatsudo on their wooden clogs, giving off a particular staccato rattle. This sound struck Basho and he aptly combines it with the icy cold which in March is still in the air in Nara, especially late at night.

When Basho visited Todaiji, the temple was still under repair after the destruction wrought by the civil wars of the sixteenth century. The Great Buddha statue was only finally completed in 1692, after the visit by Basho described above, and the statue sat for years in the open like the Great Buddha in Kamakura. The new Buddha Hall (which is the present one) was finally finished in 1708, and Basho did not live to see this. He grieved for the Buddha in its sad state, for at that time even the head had not been restored yet. Basho saw only the rump of the statue, slowly being covered by the first snow of the year, and he wrote:

first snow!
when will the temple building start
for the Great Buddha?

hatsu yuki ya | itsu Daibutsu no | hashira date

Nara's deer are considered the messengers of the main deity of the Kasuga Shrine, Takemigatsuchi, who came riding a deer all the way from Kashima in present-day Ibaraki Prefecture to Nara. At the same time, they remind of the Deer Park in Benares, where the Buddha gave his first sermon. They therefore have both a Shinto and Buddhist meaning and admirably fit the religious multiplex of Kofukuji Temple and Kasuga Taisha shrine which originally stood here. There are about 1,000 of them and they have always been a protected species. In the past, people who killed one of these animals received the death sentence by being buried alive; now offenders are punished in a somewhat lighter manner. It seems, unfortunately, that this protection has rather spoiled the deer, who have lost their natural meekness and have become positively aggressive. They have been observed to snatch and consume handbags of innocent visitors.

At night the deer are gathered in an enclosure lying to the side of the path leading to the Kasuga Shrine. A trumpet signal calls them together. To prevent them from getting into fights in rut time, their antlers are cut every year from the middle of October to early November. This is done in a special ceremony on Sundays and holidays in that period and attracts many spectators.

On the 8th day of the 9th month in 1694 (so just before his visit to Shonenji) Basho, accompanied by three disciples, took an evening walk near Sarusawa pond and heard the melancholy call of the deer in the distance. Autumn is rut time, when the deer let their cry resound through the forest. These cries in fact vary from a short presence cry, to a long and sad languishing cry (as in the haiku), a defiance cry on a high note, a pursuit cry (when the buck runs behind the doe) and triumph cry. To hear the languishing, melancholy cry in the forest, while around you the shadows are falling, can impart a feeling of deep loneliness, especially when you are a traveler.

Nara's deer inspired Basho also to other haiku, for example when he came across a baby deer born on the very day the Buddha's Birthday was celebrated (April 8 in the modern calendar, the Kanbutsu Festival, also called Flower Festival):

happening to be born
on Buddha's birthday
a baby deer!

kanbutsu no | hi ni umare-au | ka no ko kana

Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) wrote this haiku in the autumn of 1895 and gave it the title 'Stopping at a Teashop at Horyuji Temple.' It is deservedly one of his most famous poems. Horyuji, of course, is one of Japan's oldest and grandest temples, a great treasury of 7th c. art. It possesses the oldest wooden buildings in the world.

Shiki's treatment of this solemn establishment is almost jocular and certainly very modern. Buddhism is ultimately concerned with causes and results, actions and their resulting karma. The ideal Buddhist situation is not to have any conscious actions and stop the Wheel of Karma that leads to countless rebirths and thus suffering. What then is the link between setting one's teeth in a persimmon and the resulting boom of Horyuji's temple bell?

Basho loved Chinese literature and one of his favorite books was the Zhuangzi, the Taoist anthology from the 3rd c. BCE. There is a Zhuangzi story about a pine tree large enough to cover 1,000 head of cattle. This tree had in fact lived so long that it served no practical purpose anymore. About the present pine tree, reputedly also 1,000 years old, Basho remarks in the foreword to the haiku that it is very fortunate the tree has escaped the penalty of being cut down with an ax. This is of course thanks to the Buddha's protection - that is what he refers to with 'Law,' which is the Teaching of the Buddha.

The tree, by the way, seems to have fallen victim to the axe after Basho's visit, because the present insignificant weed certainly does not have a trunk 'to hold a bull.' The haiku was meant as a complimentary greeting to the great temple, where this tree could live so long, while many generations of priests had passed away, their lives as brief as the morning glory. The long-lived tree symbolizes Taimadera, a temple that has kept the Light of the Law burning through the ages.

On one of his visits to Nara, Basho also came to Toshodaiji where he saw the dry-lacquer portrait statue made of the temple's founder, the Chinese monk Ganjin. Ganjin had reached Japan only after many tribulations and gone blind because of his hardships. Still, he was determined to make the dangerous sea voyage to bring the correct Buddhist precepts and rules for monastic life to Japan. After working in Todaiji, at the end of his life he retired to Toshodaiji, his private temple and a school for training monks in the Vinaya.

The statue shows him seated in deep meditation, peaceful but also powerful. Thanks to the soft dry-lacquer used, and the natural paint that has still not faded, it makes a very realistic impression. It was reputedly made a few days before his death, after his chief disciple had had the ominous dream of seeing the roof of the temple collapse. Ganjin died on the 6th day of the 5th lunar month 763, aged 76. He passed away calmly and quietly, seated upright and facing west.

The slightly swollen eyes of the statue seem to hint at Ganjin's blindness. The closed eyes, with the eyelashes painted on, attract the viewer's attention to the face. It is a moving statue that manages to capture the essence of Ganjin. Basho must have harbored the same sentiment. The tears ('dew') are rather Basho's own tears, on meeting the blind monk, who almost lost his life when bringing the Buddhist Precepts to Japan.

Wiping the eyes with green leaves is also a compassionate gesture towards the monk who can not see the green, young leaves of the new spring. In this way, he can feel their soft new life and smell their freshness... Indeed, the Ganjin statue almost seems alive. Facing him, one can not help but being filled with great respect and affection.