Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) was a writer of seventeenth-century Japan who is still renowned as the most famous haiku poet of all time (Poem Analysis, 2022). He is especially known for his famous poem “Old Pond,” which will be explored later in this essay, as well as his travel diaries (i.e., “travel sketches”), of which the most famous is The Narrow Road to the Deep North. These travel sketches were written in what is known as haibun, a prosimetric combination of prose and haiku, where the haiku is often leveraged for varying rhetorical purposes, including (but not limited to) emotional insight (interiority), imagery, and ellipses; more than anything, though, the haikus’ rhetorical implications were very Zen in their nature—they served as arrows pointed at direct experience, like fingers pointing at the moon. This paper will explore the rhetorical implications of Matsuo Bashō’s poetry, focusing on how it is deeply influenced by, entwined with, and aimed at the philosophy of the Zen Buddhist tradition.

Like any writer or artist, it is impossible to explore and analyze the literature of Bashō without looking at his literature within the sociocultural context out of which he, and his literature, arose. Thus, a brief explanation of Bashō, his history, and seventeenth-century Japan is in order.

Bashō was born into the Edo period of Japan. Bashō’s early life is not clearly defined, but it is generally agreed upon that he was born to a samurai father, and may have become one himself early in his life. All tales, however, point to his travels beginning right after the death of his lord, Yoshitada, in 1666. When Bashō initially began his poetry career, he had not yet adopted the practices of Zen Buddhism. Even still, the standards of literature of that era were already deeply entangled with Zen Buddhist philosophy, for Buddhism in some form had been active in Japan since at least 552 CE (Vose, 2022). And so, in varying degrees, it can be hypothesized that all of Bashō’s work was influenced by the philosophy and values of the Zen tradition.

Zen Buddhism is a sect of Mahayana Buddhism that began its transformation in China when Bodhidharma began teaching there around the fifth and sixth centuries (Vose, 2022). This transformation—due to a variety of factors such as Confucian values of family and existing religious and meditation practices—came to yield a new type of Buddhism, what is now called Chan Buddhism in China. This Buddhism, over the next few hundred years, made its way into Japan, where it is called “Zen Buddhism.” As the names entail (Chan and Zen translate to “meditation”), this new Buddhism put an extra emphasis on meditation.1

Zen Buddhism sought to bring about satori, which is essentially a microcosmic version of nirvana, an enlightenment within this lifetime. Zen Buddhists saw meditation as an opportunity for satori to come about them. Satori was not seen as something that could be manifested or “willed” into existence through any means, but instead something that would arrive spontaneously. And so, meditation—along with other techniques like the use of kōans, tricks, scare tactics, and more—were seen simply as methods to put a practitioner into the ideal conditions for satori to arrive. Zen emphasized the necessity to receive this insight through direct experience, as opposed to philosophizing—arguing that no amount of talking about a thing would allow a practitioner to actually understand and experience the thing itself. As the Zen sect says, this is to mistake a finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself.

Much in the same way, haiku (and other antecedent forms, such as waka and renga2) often points the reader to images of the physical, sensory world. A magnificent example of this is demonstrated in a translation of Bashō’s poem “Old Pond”:

Old pond
Frog jumps in
Water’s sound
—Translation by Robert Hass

This poem, often titled “The Old Pond,” contains no analysis, no elaboration, no extrapolation. Instead, it simply “paints” an image of a concrete, tangible scene, as experienced through the senses (“sound”). Note that there are no abstractions in the poem, such as “love,” “awakening,” “faith,” etc. The poem only directs the reader to the sensory experience directly before the poet.

Being one of the most famous haikus of all time, this poem has a litany of translations.3 For example, Yuasa argues that haiku is better translated into English in four sections or lines, and so he translates the poem as:

Breaking the silence
Of an ancient pond,
A frog jumped into water—
A deep resonance.
—Yuasa, 1966

My personal preference in this circumstance is Hass’s translation, because I believe its simplicity lends itself to Zen philosophy, acknowledging the limits of words by using so few of them.4 Further, I appreciate the lack of explicit, causal connection between the frog jumping in the water and the water sounding in Hass’s translation. Yuasa’s translation begins with a progressive absolute phrase, “Breaking the silence,” modifying “A frog jumped into water,” which implies a cause-and-effect relationship between the frog jumping into the pond and the sound of the water. Hass’s translation, on the other hand, has the sound of water on a separate line, with no interpretation of the cause-and-effect written by the narrator. Although most of us could assume the sound of the water was caused by the frog jumping in, drawing this conclusion within the poem itself strays from the Zen philosophy of direct experience without analyzing, philosophizing, judging, naming, or determining. To assume where the sound of the water has come from is to stray away from the direct experience of the sound itself, it could be seen, and so Hass’s translation points more toward this direct experience. I, however, am not a translator and do not understand the intricacies of the Japanese language (nor know how to read it at all), and so I cannot with any confidence make strong hypotheses about which translation more closely mimics Bashō’s intention. In either case, though, this poem begins to demonstrate the connection between haiku and Zen, which begins to tell the story of Bashō’s rhetoric.

Bashō’s “Zen intentions” while writing “The Old Pond” are further illustrated in his disciple’s description of the composition process:

This poem was written by our master [Bashō] on a spring day. He was sitting in his riverside house in Edo, bending his ears to the soft cooing of a pigeon in the quiet rain. There was a mild wind in the air, and one or two petals of cherry blossom were falling gently to the ground. It was the kind of day you often have in late March—so perfect that you want it to last for ever. Now and then in the garden was heard the sound of frogs jumping into the water. Our master was deeply immersed in meditation, but finally he came out with the second half of the poem,

A frog jumped into water—
A deep resonance.
(qtd. in Yuasa, 1966, p. 32)

Given that Bashō was “deeply immersed in meditation” just before he came up with the second half of the poem, this narrative of the disciple clearly depicts the “Zen” nature of the poem. It arose out of a state of consciousness within zazen—sitting meditation—and the contemplative, simple nature of the poem clearly mirrors this state of consciousness. The disciple even went on to say that “It is only he who has dug deep into the mystery of the universe that can choose a phrase like this” (Yuasa, 1966, p. 32), referring to the first half of the poem, which was actually written after the second half of the poem. The disciple’s mention of Bashō having “dug deep into the mystery of the universe” can be seen as an allusion to someone who has, at least once, experienced kenshō or satori.

Although Bashō does often write haikus that—much like Zen kōans—point the reader to direct experience, he also leverages the poems for other purposes in his haibun. In many instances, the haiku functions in the narrative in a very similar way that a photograph might serve a narrative in modern prose. The classic idiom says “a picture paints a thousand words,” and any multimedia composer would agree with this sentiment. Today, many authors utilize images to complement, juxtapose, and enrich the text. In a similar manner, Bashō uses haikus to “paint a picture” for the reader, capturing the breadth of an experience that might actually be less effective if it was explicitly explained in the form of prose. For example, in The Records of a Weather-exposed Skeleton, while viewing the Shrine of Ise at night, a haiku is dropped into the middle of two paragraphs with no setup or introduction:

As I stood there, lending my ears to the roar of the pine trees upon the distant mountains, I felt moved deep in the bottom of my heart.

In the utter darkness
Of a moonless night,
A powerful wind embraces
The ancient cedar trees.

I do not wear a single piece of metal on my belt, nor do I carry anything but a sack on my shoulder… (qtd. in Yuasa, 1966, p. 54)

As we can see, the poem is practically “dropped” into the middle of the piece, and it is not introduced before nor analyzed or explained afterward.5 Instead, it stands as an “image,” a glimpse into the eye of the narrator at that moment in time. Had Bashō been able to expose and develop film, I’m sure he would have added photography to his belt of narrative tools. Although Bashō does not always juxtapose his haiku in such a stark manner, it certainly has a powerful knack for submerging the reader into his experience.

There are also times where Bashō utilizes the haiku as a form of narrative ellipses, or acceleration of time. For example, in The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Bashō combines a collection of haiku poems with only short introductory phrases between them to narrate a section of his journeys:

… I attended the memorial service held for him by his brother.

Move, if you can hear,
Silent mound of my friend.
My wails and the answering
Roar of autumn wind.

A visit to a certain hermitage:

On a cool autumn day,
Let us peel with our hands
Cucumbers and mad-apples
For our simple dinner.

A poem composed on the road:

Red, red is the sun,
Heartlessly indifferent to time,
The wind knows, however,
The promise of early chill.

At the place called Dwarfed Pine:

Dwarfed pine is indeed
A gentle name, and gently
The wind brushes through
Bush-clovers and pampas.

I went to the Tada Shrine situated in the vicinity… (qtd. in Yuasa, 1966).

The preceding paragraph to this collection of poems says that Bashō entered Kanazawa on July 15, yet the poems allude explicitly (“autumn”) and implicitly (“promise of early chill”) to autumn, which in the Northern Hemisphere would be between August and October. Here, we see the passing of months over the course of just a few poems. Further, the paragraphs before and after the poems imply that Bashō has traveled from Kanazawa to the Tada Shrine, which are some 300 kilometers apart, and which would be some time if traveling on foot or even by carriage. In any case, we see an acceleration of the narrative through these four haikus.

In any case, Bashō’s use of haiku—both individually and in the context of haibun—can be seen as having implications deeply rooted in Zen philosophy, as it attempts to convey direct experience as accurately as possible, much in the same way as the practices that Zen Buddhists implement while striving to reach satori.

There is an expression among writers that goes something along the lines of: “The poet knows more than anyone the impossibility of conveying an experience or emotion through language, but despite this most poets will pursue this until the day they die.” Bashō likely dealt with this dilemma often, especially as a Zen Buddhist who recognized the limitations of language in communicating direct experience and satori.

Although this paper does not extensively cover the many ways that Bashō’s rhetoric was a reflection of the Zen Buddhist philosophy and tradition, we can clearly see the ways he uses language—specifically haiku—as a versatile and effective literary tool, and as an insight into the Zen Buddhist tradition, practice, and culture of his time. Before and after Bashō had explicitly adopted Zen into his own life, his poetry communicated many of the principles, especially those of direct experience. In many ways, Bashō’s work was a finger pointed at the moon.

Notes

  1. Although there may be salient differences between Chan and Zen Buddhism, these are outside the scope of this paper.
  2. Renga is a poem with a 7-7 // 5-7-5 syllabic structure. These poems seem to antecede haiku both in form (for they, too, include the 5-7-5 syllabic structure), as well as in content and tone. As Yatsuo puts it, these renga and other forms were likely the “earliest germ” of haiku.
  3. In Japanese, haiku is traditionally written in a single stanza of three sections, containing a 5-7-5 syllable structure. Some translators believe the section count and/or syllable structure ought to remain consistent when translating to English, whereas other translators argue that the English language lends itself to a different pattern (Yuasa, 1966).
  4. I should acknowledge, however, that I do very much appreciate Yuasa’s insight into translation of haiku into English. Yuasa mentions that haiku is based on Japanese colloquialism, and thus argues that the most suitable translation into English’s “natural conversational rhythm” is in four lines as opposed to in three. He also notes that he is translating through the lens of a poet, not through the lens of a scholar, which also influences his translation (Yuasa, 1966, pp. 48–49).
  5. Yet even still, we should acknowledge that it is not random. There is a clear pragmatic relevance, which we see with the thematic overlap of the sound of the wind in the pine trees, which is described in both the prose and the poem.

References

Bashō, M. (1966). The narrow road to the deep north and other travel sketches. (N. Yuasa, Trans.) Penguin Classics. (Original work published ca. 1667)

Nagatomo, S. (2020). Japanese Zen Buddhist philosophy. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-zen/

Poem Analysis. (2022). The Old Pond by Matsuo Bashō. https://poemanalysis.com/haiku/the-old-pond/

Strong, S. (2015). Buddhisms: An introduction. Oneworld Publications.

The Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica. (2022). Bashō: Japanese poet. The Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Basho-Japanese-poet

Vose, S. M. (2022). Buddhism in Japan and Japanese Buddhism. [Classroom lecture]. The University of Colorado Denver.

Washburn. (2002). Matsuo Basho. https://www.washburn.edu/reference/bridge24/Basho.html

This essay was originally written for Dr. Steven M. Vose’s Asian Philosophies and Religions course at the University of Colorado Denver in December 2022.