Cluster Three:
Leaving Edo for the North

"The days and months are wanderers of a hundred generations, the years that come and go are also travellers. Those who spend their lives floating on a boat, or people who get old leading a horse by the bit, spend day after day traveling and inhabit travel. There are also a great number of ancients who died while travelling. I, too, from a certain year have been enticed by the wind like a single cloud and could not stop the desire to wander..."

Thus begins the Narrow Road to the Deep North, Basho's famous travelogue of his long journey to places associated with poetry (utamakura) in northern Japan. Basho sounds a melancholy note of the impermanence of life, that will echo through the whole work. Basho traveled a lot and saw himself as a life-long pilgrim. Most of his trips were made to the Kansai where he had been born: to his native place Iga-Ueno, and to Kyoto, Osaka and the Otsu area, or places in-between, as Nagoya. The trip to the North was Basho's longest journey, 1,985 kilometers in all, and the prospect of dying on the road (like the "ancients" Basho mentions: the poets Saigyo and Sogi) not unrealistic. Setting out on this (perhaps last) pilgrimage Basho wanted to cut all ties with the world. He therefore sold his cottage on the Sumida river bank and presumably also gave away the few possessions he had with before setting out from Edo.

It is spring and Basho feels like setting out on a new pilgrimage. Since his last journey, he has barely had the time to "sweep the cobwebs from his broken hut," but when he sees the spring mist rising over the fields he wants to be on the road again. He feels restless, it is impossible to stay idly home. So the poet mends his torn trousers, ties a new strap to his hat, and applies moxa to his legs to strengthen them. Then he sells his house and for the final days in Edo, moves in with his disciple and patron Sanpu. Basho was happy to cut himself loose from this last tie, as he was a devout Buddhist who regarded a fixed dwelling as a worldly attachment.

There was also a practical factor involved in selling the cottage: it was a chance to raise some money for the long journey. Basho sold the house to a certain Hiraemon, who in contrast to the poet, had a family with children. The above haiku is the first one in Oku no Hosomichi and has been inscribed on a haiku stone that fittingly stands in the grounds of the Basho Museum. Basho hung the poem on one of the wooden pillars of his hut.

He notes with humor that the new occupants are very different from the hermit-poet: a family with children. Hina dolls are dolls for the Hina Festival, celebrated on March 3, when dolls representing an emperor, empress and their court are arranged on a red-carpeted, terraced stand for the youngest girl in the family. Basho left on his long trip on March 27 of the lunar calendar, just a few weeks after the festival.

On that day in the end of March, Basho was seen off by friends and pupils. As was customary, they accompanied him part of the way, by boat from Fukagawa to the north shore of the Sumida River, next to the Senju Ohashi Bridge.

I follow Basho and his disciples by subway and train from the Basho Museum in Fukagawa to Senju, which takes some figuring out as I have to change trains two times on the 35 minute trip. I take the Oedo line to Ueno-Okachimachi, then walk 5 minutes to Okachimachi on the JR Keihin-Tohoku line for the ride to Nippori. From Nippori I take the Keisei line to Senju-Ohashi station, from which it is a short walk to the bridge, which stands nowadays in a not very attractive neigborhood. But that suits the melancholy farewell mood of the poem all the better.

I find two haiku stones, one in a small park at the river bank that is dominated by a public toilet, the other in the grounds of the Susano-o Shrine. This one also carries an interesting portrait of Basho and was apparently put up by haiku fans from the Edo-period.

In the haiku Basho expresses the feelings of that moment of leave-taking. Springtime is over, bird's cries sound mournful and even the eyes of fishes seem wet with tears. Basho was to start a hazardous journey and did not know whether he would ever return to Edo. This gave great poignancy to the farewell from his circle.

In the Edo period Senju was one of Tokyo's four juku or post stations. Established in 1625, here the Nikko Kaido, the highway to the North started. Over this road shogunal processions travelled to the ancestral Tokugawa shrines in Nikko. Today, Senju is part of Tokyo's downtown, full of small workshops struggling for survival, a visibly less prosperous area than other parts of the metropolis.

Senju Ohashi Bridge spans the river at the spot where Basho set forth on his journey. The first bridge was built at this strategic spot in 1594, making it the oldest bridge spanning the Sumida River. Now there is a iron bridge from the early modern age. A continuous stream of heavy traffic - trucks, pickups, buses - thunders over the sturdy structure. Alongside it, an elevated expressway also crosses the river, adding to the cabal. From the middle of the bridge, I peer down at the river. The stench of oil assails my nose, the water is murky.

The fishes eyes are still full of tears, now not for the farewell of a poet, but from the chemicals that have killed their river.