The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Bashō's account of a journey on foot through northern Japan in 1689, in prose and haiku.
In 1689 Bashō set out on foot for the far north of Honshu, a journey of some 1,500 miles, and wrote it up in alternating prose and haiku. The form he used, haibun, makes the prose and the poems do different work, and the book is read as both a travel account and the summit of Japanese poetry.
Recommended by 1 Person
Edmund de Waal
You don’t get the density of the language, because when you read haiku [in Japanese] you also see the Japanese characters – which are dense with visual meaning as well as with literal meaning. But it’s still worth it. You don’t have to learn Japanese to enjoy Basho. They are wonderful poems.
Interview · May 2012
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