On the Narrow Road to the Deep North

by Lesley Downer

But above all I wanted to walk along with Basho, see Japan through his eyes.

Basho’s purpose, I was beginning to realise, was a poetic one. While I wanted to see Ezo country, the farmers and peasants of the far north, Basho was visiting places which had inspired poets in the past. Many poets had written about these places, but few actually visited them; and Basho’s aim was to revive his poetic spirit by seeing the places themselves. ‘Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought’, he wrote. And the stories and legends surrounding Yoshitsune had always been a particular inspiration.

‘Mountains crumble, rivers change their course, new roads replace old, stones are buried and vanish into the earth and old trees yield to saplings. Time passes, one era replaces the next, and we cannot be certain that anything of them will remain. But here before my eyes was a monument which without a doubt had stood for a thousand years, through which I could see into the hearts of the men of old. This, I thought, makes travel worthwhile and is one of the joys of being alive, and forgetting the pains of the journey, I wept for joy.’

That was one or the things I was looking for too, some feeling of ‘seeing into the hearts of the men of old’.

There is little of the past left in Japan … And what there is is often so carefully preserved that there is no life left in it.