Temple Bells Die Out (Author Biography)

Author Biography

Little information exists about Bashō's early life. The son of a low-ranking samurai, Bashō is generally believed to have been born in 1644 in the Iga province of Japan. Bashō became a page to, and formed a close friendship with, Todo Yoshitada, a young samurai two years his elder. Yoshitada shared Bashō's intense interest in haikai, a form of long poem from which haiku derives. Intending to become a samurai himself, Bashō acquired the samurai name Munefusa, but he abandoned his training when Yoshitada died unexpectedly in 1666. Scholars believe both grief over his friend's death and apprehension about a new, less amicable master led Bashō to abandon his career as a samurai. Some also include an unhappy love affair as a factor that hastened his departure, although others consider this theory a fabrication of Bashō's early biographers. What Bashō did during the next several years is unknown, but he is believed to have lived for some time in Kyoto, which was then the capital of Japan, studying philosophy and poetry. Bashō's poetry was published in at least four anthologies between 1667 and 1671. He moved to Edo (present-day Tokyo) in 1672 and began to write under the pseudonym Tosei. His reputation as a haiku master steadily increased in Edo, and he began to attract a large following of disciples, who supplied him with a small hut in which he could write and teach. A banana tree, exotic to Japan, was planted in front of the hut and pleased the poet so much that he took for his writing name "Bashō," the Japanese word for "banana plant."

After about eight years, Bashō increasingly felt a sense of purposelessness and spiritual disquiet after achieving artistic and material success. Consequently, he began the study of Zen Buddhist meditation and embraced an ascetic lifestyle. Seeking an exercise in spiritual and artistic discipline, in 1684, Bashō undertook a pilgrimage on foot across the Japanese countryside. Although this journey proved to be physically trying for him, for the remainder of his life, Bashō continued to make pilgrimages, visiting religious and secular sites, disseminating his ideas on haiku to fellow poets, and often begging alms for subsistence. His accounts and haiku recollections of these travels, especially The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches, are considered his most accomplished and lasting literary works. When he was not on a journey, Bashō secluded himself in remote huts in the wilderness, until 1691 when he returned to Edo. Finding himself again besieged by followers, Bashō struggled with a spiritual conflict between his religious desire to transcend worldly affairs and his poetic avocation, which focused attention upon himself. Bashō left Japan in 1693 to escape this conflict, but he returned the following year to begin a series of travels along the country's Pacific coast. That spring, his health forced Basho to stop in Osaka, where he died of a stomach ailment in the summer of 1694.