The Narrow Road to the Deep North

As I left for this trip I grabbed a Penguin paperback from my bookshelf that I had been meaning to read: Bashō's The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and Other Travel Sketches with its memorable opening line: Days and months are the travellers of eternity.


In Bashō's day (17th century) the deep north meant northern Honshu, so I was a little disappointed. It wasn't until the Meiji Restoration that Hokkaido was settled by mainland Japanese. Until then it had been occupied by the indigenous people, the Ainu. The colonisation of Hokkaido was a disaster for them. They were forced into unpaid labour, their culture was supressed and their ethnic stock diluted by intermarriages and name changes. These days it isn't possible to tell if a Hokkaido person has Ainu ancestry, they look like any other Japanese.  But Ainu culture has made a comeback against a backdrop of worldwide recognition of indigenous cultures, and is still being practised, albeit often as tourist attractions.


But back to Bashō, who was one of the most famous haiku poets. I'm afraid I don't have the soul to appreciate haiku, or other poetry for that matter, so I think I will jettison this book where someone else might appreciate it more.


It would be impossible to retrieve the Japan of Bashō's day, with its difficult and dangerous travel, now that roads and rails crisscross Japan. But the desire to glimpse the infinite in the evanescent manifestations of nature is still with us and I suppose part of the reason why we travel.