Ogata's Bashô Handbook and Barnhill's Version

1. I'm looking at a useful book I got on my most recent trip to Japan, Ogata's Bashô Handbook 芭蕉ハンドブック (Sanseidô, 2002, 2008). Here's its list of Bashô's journals, travel and otherwise:

Nozarashi kikô 野ざらし紀行 Bleached bones in a field travel journal
Kashima no ki かしまの記 Kashima record
Oi no kobumi　笈の小文 Rucksack journal
Sarashina nikki　更級日記 Sarashina journal
Oku no hosomichi　奥の細道 Narrow road to the interior
Saga nikki 嵯峨日記 Saga journal

There are also 6 other haibun 俳文 (haikai prose works), including Genjû-an no ki 幻住庵の記 (Record of the "Unreal Dwelling" Studio).

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2. The travel journals are all translated in a recent book by David Landis Barnhill, Bashô's Journey (SUNY Press, 2005). This is an excellent collection and the translations are of very high quality. It's directed more at people who are coming at the topic as "haiku," and Barnhill includes an introduction that situates the travel journals in the context that would be familiar to readers of American poetry. So it doesn't address a lot of the issues that a Japanese classical literature geek finds interesting.

But that's okay. Maybe I'll "write what I want to read" myself, as Alice Walker attributes to Toni Morrison.