Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North

The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Oku no hosomichi) is a travel diary by the haiku master Matsuo Basho, published in Kyoto in 1702, eight years after his death. It describes a journey that Basho made in 1689 with his disciple Sora, setting out from Edo (Tokyo) and traveling through the northern provinces on foot, about 2,400 kilometers over five months. It is written in a style called haibun, which mixes tight prose with haiku, and it opens with the line that the months and days are travelers of eternity.

Basho was a samurai-born poet who had raised haiku from a game to a serious art, influenced by Zen Buddhism and the classics such as the Tale of Genji and Chinese poetry. Under the peace of the Tokugawa shogunate, travel on the main roads was easier and a culture of pilgrimage and poetic place-names grew. He went to see places made famous by earlier poets, and he often found only ruins or empty fields, which he used to speak of impermanence. At Hiraizumi, site of a destroyed warrior stronghold, he writes that summer grasses are all that remains of warriors' dreams. The book is regarded as one of the high points of Japanese literature and helped make haiku known worldwide.