Cluster Five:
Bonito and Barley

I have already once taken leave from Basho when he left Edo to travel to the North, now I join his disciples in saying goodbye to him when he sets out on the Tokaido, on the opposite side of the city, for his native place Iga-Ueno in the Kansai. At the same time we have two haiku stones about food here, standing in Totsuka and Kawasaki, both post stations on the Eastern Highway. The bonito in the first poem has just taken leave from Kamakura where it was caught and which it left while still alive; Basho in the second poem clutches barley stalks for support during the farewell from his disciples when setting out on what will be his final pilgrimage.

It seems a bit cynical that the only haiku Basho wrote about the ancient capital Kamakura, is about food and not its beautiful temples. But Kamakura was also a good fishing ground for bonito, and the people of Edo awaited the first catch of the season just as eagerly as the Dutch look forward to the first herring.

Bonito (katsuo) is still a popular fish on the Japanese menu today. Kamakura does not have a fishing harbor anymore and the largest amount of bonito now is caught by fishers from Shizuoka prefecture, such as from the fishing port of Yaizu. Bonito visit Japan every year traveling in the warm current of the Kuroshio or Black Tide that sweeps along the Pacific Coast of Japan. The fishing season is March to June and the fish is in season until the summer.

Perhaps Basho saw a transport of bonito headed for Edo when he traveled down the Tokaido. In the post town of Totsuka the Tokaido came closest to Kamakura and that is where the haiku stone stands, in the grounds of the the Tomizuka Hachimangu shrine (on the way there one also passes a monument commemorating the founding of Totsuka as a post town in 1604). We have no information about the date or circumstances under which this haiku was actually written.

That the first bonito was a popular subject of poetry is demonstrated by another haiku, written by Sodo (1642-1716):

green leaves in the eyes
cuckoo in the hills
the first bonito

Basho wrote this haiku on June 3 1694 (May 11 in the old calendar) when he set out from Edo an a journey to his hometown. In those days, the area of Kawasaki (now a grimy industrial conglomerate) was covered with barley fields, that stretched as far as the eye could see. The barley ears waved in the light breeze from the sea. Among these fields, Basho took leave from the Edo disciples who had accompanied him out of the city, past the post town of Kawasaki that lies about 13 kilometers south of Shinagawa. They sat down in a teahouse and while eating some dango, the disciples wrote not surprisingly, about the barley surrounding them.

Seeing off the master till Kawasaki:

freshly cut
the fragrance of barley
in the post town

At the same occasion:

barley fields
although we leave them
we are still among barley

With the same intent:

wind from the bay
gathering cicadas
at the time of farewell

The haiku stone stands along the old Tokaido about 100 meters from Hatcho-Nawate station on the Keihin-Kyuko line. The surroundings are rather dreary: ugly housing, a dilapidated shed, a busy railroad with the red Keihin-Kyuko trains flashing by every few minutes, and on the other side of the tracks a car dealer and behind that a smokestack. There is no trace of barley anymore, and it is even impossible to imagine that there ever were fields with golden grain here. If one looks up to feel the wind of the bay, all that meets the eye are electricity wires crisscrossing the sky in arcane patterns.

The hokku can be read in two veins. The one is tragic. Basho is old and sick, the leave-taking makes him feel so weak that he staggers and has to seek the support of wheat ears, forgetting that they will not be of much use. We have the hindsight that this was Basho's last journey - he died that autumn in Osaka, while still traveling. So the tragic reading is a bit suspect.

The other reading is playful. The disciples have been versifying about the endless barley fields and the fragrance of the grain. In China, people would pluck a willow branch when saying farewell (a custom Basho knew very well from his readings in Chinese poetry), but Basho echoes the barley introduced by his disciples. The barley stands in profusion around them, but is a rather comical (or boorish) substitute for an elegant willow branch. Herein lies the haikai or karumi (lightness) of the hokku. Tragedy was still some way off.