Today I'm reading Ogata Tsutomu's 尾形仂 Nozarashi kikô hyôshaku [Bashô's Bleached bones in a field travel journal], critical edition 野ざらし紀行評釈 Kadokawa sôsho 角川叢書 1998. Spare and elegant, writing by the erudite Ogata is incredibly rewarding to read.
Nozarashi kikô, Ogata tells us, is like all of Bashô's other travel journals in that Bashô wrote it probably without a serious intention to publish it during his lifetime. (The other four are Kashima môde [Kashima pilgrimage], Oi no kobumi [Rucksack notebook], Sarashina kikô [Sarashina travel journal] and Oku no hosomichi [Narrow road to the interior]). The last of these, in fact, is the only one to which Bashô himself actually gave a title. We might well wonder what we are to think of it then, especially given the fact that the last draft of the piece is illustrated with Bashô's own paintings.
Bashô undertook the journey that was to be the basis for this travel journal in 1684, when he was 41 years old. His residence in Fukagawa had burned down with the rest of the neighborhood the year before; his mother had died that year also. This was around the same time that he was getting over the influence of the Danrin school (regarded as vulgar by later commentators) and developing the kanshibunchô 漢詩文調 (Chinese literature-influenced) style that would characterize his collection Minashiguri (Empty chestnuts.) While on this journey he worked on the anthology Fuyu no hi (Winter days); in the process of putting together Nozarashi kikô, he seems to have been developing his waka-like sensibility and the "mad" style that would characterize the verse of his last years. Especially outstanding in this sense are
道のべの木槿は馬に食はれけり
michinobe no mukuge wa uma ni kuwarekeri
mallow by the roadside
eaten by
my horse
山路来て何やらゆかしすみれ草
yamaji kite naniyara yukashi sumirekusa
traveling on a mountain trail:
oh, how pretty!
violets
辛崎の松は花より朧にて
Karasaki no matsu wa hana yori oboro nite
Karasaki pines
subtler in the haze than
cherry blossoms
As these examples show, this text offers a lot of insight into the way that Bashô combined the sensibilities of both Chinese and Japanese poetic models.
Nozarashi k. seems to be divided into two parts--the beginning, through to his visit to Ôgaki. This first part has a pretty even balance between prose and verse, and it has a lot of phrasing borrowed from Chinese and unconventional syllable patterns in the verse. The second half is largely hokku, hokku which are quite laid-back, in the manner of the "mad" style (風狂).
Unlike Sora's diary of the Narrow road to the interior journey, there's no parallel text that gives us an alternate account of the events of Nozarashi kikô. but it's pretty safe to assume that it's been heavily fictionalized. Ogata says that the dramatic break from the Ôgaki section onward is emblematic of Bashô's break from his earlier poetic style and moving into a new, more personal/original one. So perhaps we can see it as an exploration of this pioneering new style.
The questions of why Nozarashi kikô, which was not intended to be published would be the right place to do this, and also why did Bashô's final draft be so carefully illustrated, Ogata tells us, will be addressed as he takes us through his commentary on the text itself.
That's the nice thing about Ogata -- he's not afraid to take on pictures when he comments on texts. So, perhaps in my next post I can end some of the suspense? I don't know -- I'm looking forward to reading more.
