Confrontation, Friction, or Assimilation: Bashō's Self and Other

What feeling does "a moving cloud" provoke? For Bashō, it fills him with "a strong desire to wander" (97). The most important imagery characterizing the temptation of traveling, it is derived from a confrontation between a small subject (the human) and a "large object". Their differences in altitude, volume, and kinetic energy elicit fear and awe; the distance mystifies the force contained within the object as inaccessible, unpredictable, and otherworldly. Despite the cloud's formidable presence, what stands out to readers is a deep resonance between the subject and the object: the impulse to move, and specifically, to wander.

With imagery that shows at once confrontation and unity, Bashō introduces his philosophy that contributes to his aesthetic uniqueness: the unity, instead of segregation, of the self and the Other. Here "the Other" refers to three things: nature, creatures, and the universal rule of time that subjugates both with mortality. The essay teases out similar subject-object juxtapositions from the first five pages of The Narrow Road to the Deep North and classifies them with the subject's reaction — to succumb, to recognize, and to embrace. It argues that all juxtapositions are different renderings of a central motif: the bilateral permeation between the self and the Other, and concludes with how Bashō's philosophy contributes to his haiku aesthetics.

Bashō believes that one's eventual fate is to disperse and join the Other, as he visualizes the interaction between the self and the Other as a small unit traversing a vast surface, gradually sinking into it, and eventually becoming one with it. In "those who steer a boat across the sea, or drive a horse over the earth till they succumb to the weight of years, spend every minute of their lives traveling" (97), the human subjects are envisioned as the size of a small grain upon a vast expanse, conducting horizontal movements as a mission of their lives. Time is materialized, given weight, to work vertically downward on these people. Eventually, vertical movements forcibly cease the horizontal motion, the "grain" on the surface is "pressed into" it, and humans "succumb" — a word connoting unwillingness and resistance — to death. One possible reaction to the integration, as the example suggests, is to comply with the rule of time with reluctance, and one may instinctively explain this reluctance to the yearning for immortality.

Other examples of the same motif, however, emphasize a conscious recognition of the subject toward mortality and the rule of time. When Bashō departed, the thought of the three thousand miles before him filled his heart with grief, for he knows that "departing like this on a long journey in the second year of Genroku," he "should only accumulate more frosty hairs" as he approaches the colder regions (98–99). "Three thousand miles" and "frosty hairs" denote respectively formidable distance and time, reflecting the subject's self-awareness of its own limited physical mobility and short life. Describing the effect of aging on his body, Bashō gives the interesting impression that he is "trading" young body parts proportionately — as "as" indicates — to traverse the physical expanse. As time progresses and he travels, parts of him disappear to sustain the journey. The idea suggests that the self disintegrates, adding to the Other. The fact that Bashō writes the poem shows a recognition of the integration.

When Bashō focuses on physicality, Sora's haiku, "Rid of my hair, / I came to Mount Kurokami, / On the day we put on / Clean summer clothes" (100–101), emphasizes "time." Bashō juxtaposes the connotation of black hair in the mountain's name with his loss of hair, as if his youth nourishes the evergreen nature in the way it nurtures his traveling. The oxymoron that the mountain is "brilliantly white" shows surprising synchronization between the traveler and nature, both are subject to the weathering of time. The second half of Sora's poem, moreover, expresses a delightful welcome of a luscious season. The phrase "on the day" frames a single, short-time unit but also accentuates its arrival, suggesting freshness and temporality. The emphatic status of the second half of a haiku empowers it to dissolve, with a single click, the prolonged trudge and grief described in Bashō's and the first half of Sora's poem. The practice of changing clothes and getting ready for the season is propelled by, and thus shows, the expectation of summer and lighthearted content, which looks forward to the future not in despair but with longing. While the first half of the haiku shows how one's life is irretrievable, the second half develops the idea that one is also situated within an everlasting succession of many different lives. Sora's poem is conscious of not only his gradual integration but also the presence of the incessant cycle of life.

The "kaleidoscope" or intricacy of the succession of lives, weaved by vanishing, single-direction motions, is central to the poem Bashō hung at his old house: "Behind this door / Now buried in deep grass, / A different generation will celebrate / The Festival of Dolls" (98). The poem contrasts Bashō and the imagined new residents by physical movements and the direction they see in time. "Leaving behind" his old house and the prospect of comfortable declining years, Bashō envisions a different generation "residing in"; as he dwells upon his coming disappearance, Bashō's characters celebrate a festival that prays for the continued health and happiness of female children.¹

What's even more interesting is Bashō's position when writing it. Although he performs a role in the scene — the leaving "unit" — he "prophetically witnesses" the whole play and timeline. Moreover, he doesn't let this transcending position single him out but joins the motion without hesitation. The poet is at once in and out of the poem, as he is of the subjugating rule of mortality. The poem graphically depicts how people, as little weaving, moving dots, appear and vanish in time; it conforms to the motif of integration and of single subjects surfacing and dissolving upon a surface. Just as Sora sees double visions of his short life and the succession of lives, Bashō recognizes his mortality and transience in contrast to the vast scope of time and successions.

The creatures Bashō describes share such short lives, which are destined to return and assimilate into the broad Other, the world they live in. In the poem, "The passing spring, / Birds mourn, / Fishes weep / With tearful eyes" (98), tears immediately join the water, and the chirps of birds will disperse in the air, just as breaths disperse when readers utter "the passing spring." The hissing sounds /s/ and /ing/, along with /p/ which also features air expulsion, resemble sighing, bringing the impression of loss. The interruption in /ssing-s/ enables the air to shortly return to the mouth, at which emerges a small breathing cycle. What is also cyclic is how hissing and sighing sounds /s/ and /ing/ are interspersed with /p/ and /pa/. Furthermore, the "s" in "birds" is followed by a prolonged, consistent vowel /-ourn/, which parallels how the ungrammatical "es" in "fishes" — resembling the structure of "birds" — is succeeded by another prolonged, unchanging vowel /-ee-/. The mini blast at "p" in "weep" is a small release that echoes the sighing acoustics in the first line.

Bashō identifies with nature (the mountain) and creatures (fish and birds) and embraces mortality by proactively dispersing himself, branching out to join the Other. His writing suggests no sign of a physical or psychological interior removed from the external world. The only paragraph solely devoted to time at home, the second opening paragraph on page 97 bristles with mentions of seven sites: the coast, River Sumida, the field, the road, the barrier-gate of Shirakawa, "every corner" of roadside images, the islands of Matsushima. Most interestingly, if "every corner" refers to "every corner of what he sees," the indoor interior is overlaid with the "ghost images" of the Other; considering it to be more corporeal, meaning that "every part of my body misses roadside images," Bashō's somatic interior becomes a substrate for the Other to grow on and from. The latter echoes Sora's idea that his life nourishes that of nature. Regarding psychological preoccupation, we also see that only the time he travels weighs in his mind: in the second opening paragraph, he only recognizes his imagined time of traveling with affirmative phrases "I want…in due time (97)" while fast-forwarding the interval between trips with negations — "it was only toward," "I barely had time to," and "no sooner than."

As the external world "erodes in," he also turns himself "inside-out" (97). "Inside-out" often describes a shape with two surfaces, respectively acquiesced as the inner and outer ones. Now the inner surface becomes the outer, what had been embraced by this shape is now dispersed outward, and every corner of the inner surface is in seamless contact with the outer space. If shape symbolizes the human soul, the process implicates how Bashō completely forgets, or more literally, loses, what in Cartesian terms is "the self." The self joins the Other, sharing itself with nature, contemporary, and ancient beings. With the "dispersed interior" and inside-out motion, Bashō implies a process of permeation from both directions. It's mutual penetration and mutual disappearance. The subject and the object become one.

Bashō's haiku shocks me with its consistency, an achievement of "naturality" that defies searches for craftiness and intention. The haiku's humble scope promises loyalty to a single moment of a single object, and he never objectifies a scenery or situation as vehicles on which to enforce his subjectivities. As he identifies with the smallest unit of time and space in the vast world, embracing his mortality, he identifies with fish, blossoms, and leaves that are currently fresh and green but will disappear with the summer. He hears birds, wind, and splashings of waterfalls that sound differently in each moment, as if hearing himself, with effortless omniscience. The recognition of his own mortality dyes his writing with sorrow; self-identification with the race of all mortals makes pity his central theme. In Bashō, the writer and the written are inseparable, and there is no subjugation but peace of mind for one who finds his home.