Paper short abstract:

In describing his journey through northern Japan, Bashō manipulates the temporal conventions in Japanese poetics. His geographically and socially liminal wanderings also upset temporal sequence, allowing him to set forth a contemplative perspective on the conditioned nature of our existence.

Paper long abstract:

Bashō's Oku no hosomichi is renowned for its virtuoso display of Japanese poetic conventions, the product not only of his professional knowledge but also of his drive to manipulate those conventions in order to convey a powerful message about what it means to be human in a conditioned world whose true nature is cognized only when we free ourselves from the fetters of worldly habit.

I will focus on temporality and the poetic techniques that Bashō uses to discombobulate our habituated sense of time and sequence. Yet time is inextricably interwoven with space. The central activity of this work - moving through a liminal world that is set against mundane society - is the perfect vehicle for the poet to explore the Buddhist-inspired ideas and practices that lie at the core of Bashō's vision. He explores temporal liminality to complement the more obvious geographic, social and political liminality.

As the poet and his companion move away from their everyday world into the disruptive space of the Oku, temporal sequence also becomes upset. The progress of the seasons shifts in accordance with the travellers' movement along the highways and by-ways. This is accomplished not only by the more obvious devices of anticipation, such as donning the white unohana at the gateway to Oku (looking backwards to the ancients, forwards to winter, old age, and the full awakening that comes only on death). There are also indications that the poet's inner life oscillates between different temporal scales: the cicada's blind and frantic life, the ancient mosses and timeless absorbency of Ryūshakuji's crags, all encompassed by the implicit human incarnation that alone offers the liberating perspective.

Direct indications of Bashō's indebtedness to Buddhist doctrine and practice are not to be found in his work, certainly none of a confessional or apologetic nature. But the temporal shifts that help to inform the Oku no hosomichi, are an integral part of a very Buddhist meditation. The collapsing of conventional temporality indicates the poet's inner time, which breaks through habituation and provides a key to the lightness that sees this life as an awakened life.