Bashō as Bat: Wayfaring and Antistructure in the Journals of Matsuo Bashō
[In the following essay, Barnhill uses insights into social states and pilgrimage offered by the religion scholar Victor Turner to discuss Bashō's “outsiderhood” as exemplified in his travel writings. The critic contends that Bashō's particular idea of “wayfaring” is the product of a unique and complex religious vision that is rooted in Japanese literature and culture.]
The Japanese writer Matsuo Bashō (1644-94) is known in the West primarily as a haiku poet. But he was also a master of Japanese prose, both haibun (short pieces of poetic prose) and kikō (travel literature). It is in his prose, particularly his travel journals, that Bashō portrays a vision and a way of life that is profoundly religious.
Although it is clear that Bashō is religious, it is not easy to define the nature of that religiosity. He was certainly influenced by Buddhism, but to assume uncritically that he was a Buddhist is to risk masking the individuality of his vision and way of life. In fact, Bashō emphasizes the complexity of his religious orientation and contrasts it with conventional understandings of Buddhism. In doing so, he presents us with a religious stance, an orientation defined in part by its distinction from as well as its relation to the traditional norms of religious society.
If we are to understand Bashō's stance and its individuality, we need to examine closely those passages in his writings where he defines his particular orientation. One passage that suggests Bashō's understanding of his own religious stance comes at the beginning of the travel journal Kashima kikō (A visit to Kashima Shrine):
Cherishing the memory of a follower of the poetic spirit, I resolved to see the moon over the mountains of Kashima Shrine this autumn. I was accompanied by two men, a masterless samurai and a monk. The monk was dressed in robes black as a crow, with a bundle of sacred stoles around his neck and an image of the Buddha descending the mountain placed reverently in a portable shrine on his back. Off he strutted, thumping his staff, alone in the universe, no barriers between him and the Gateless Gate. I, however, am neither a monk nor a man of the world. I could be called a bat—in between a bird and a mouse.1
(NKBT 46:46)
In Bashō's characteristic delight in self-portraiture, he is introducing himself to us: he is a bat.2 Two contrasts dominate this passage. The first is between a lordless samurai about whom we are told very little, and a rather ostentatious Buddhist priest who appears almost in caricature. It is clear that these two figures represent a member of the secular mode of life (“a man of the world”) and a member of an established religious mode of life (“a monk”). The difference between these two ways of life is accentuated by the difference between the two figures: one is pompous, almost gaudy, and depicted in great detail; the other is humble in status and hardly described at all, which gives the impression that he is plain and unassuming. The two figures, like the modes of life they represent, are very different, yet they both are clearly recognizable as members of established cultural forms: the secular and the sacred as conventionally defined.
The second contrast is between Bashō and both of these figures, between his mode of life and the modes of the secular and the orthodox sacred. He is neither a priest nor an ordinary man: he lives outside, or between, these normal modes of life. He is neither the bird of a religious priest nor the mouse of a commoner.
This theme—being between the secular and sacred as they are conventionally defined—is found also in Bashō's first travel journal, Nozarashi kikō (The record of a weather-exposed skeleton):
I wear no sword on my hips but hang an alms wallet from my neck and dangle a rosary of eighteen beads in my hand. I resemble a priest, but the dust of the world is on me; I resemble a layperson, but my head is shaven. I am no priest, but here those with shaven heads are considered Buddhist friars and I was not allowed to go before the shrine.
(NKBT 46:37-38)
As does the previous passage, this one contrasts the secular (the sword-bearing samurai) and the sacred (the priest) as they are conventionally defined. Bashō is presented as both different from and similar to these two roles. His similarity to the priest is strongly emphasized: he carries an alms wallet and a rosary, his head is shaven, he is believed by others to be a Buddhist priest. Bashō clearly is presented as religious, yet he does not fit into either of the groups commonly recognized as the secular and the sacred.3
How do we talk about such a religious bat? The explicit betwixt and between theme in these passages recalls Victor Turner's studies of antistructure and liminality. In fact, Turner's discussions of antistructure and pilgrimage provide an initial vocabulary that helps specify Bashō's particular religious stance. We need, however, to add to that vocabulary by discussing a type of religious journey different from pilgrimage: wayfaring. Bashō's notion of wayfaring, discussed in terms of antistructure, helps to explain both his general religious orientation and his humorous yet serious distinction between the two winged creatures of religion, the bird and the bar.
TURNER AND ANTISTRUCTURE
Turner expanded Arnold van Gennep's classic study of rites of passage with the notions of structure and antistructure. For Turner, structure refers to “what Robert Merton has termed ‘the patterned arrangements of role-sets, status-sets and status-sequences’ consciously recognized and regularly operative in a given society” (Turner 1974:201). Structure “holds people apart, defines their differences, and constrains their actions” (Turner 1974:274). Antistructure, on the other hand, consists of states and processes that are “betwixt and between the normal, day-to-day cultural and social states and processes of getting and spending, preserving law and order, and registering structural status” (Turner 1979:94).
Turner identified four major forms of antistructure, but he spent nearly all of his research on one form, liminality, “a mid-point of transition in a status-sequence between two positions” (Turner 1974:237). The other three forms of antistructure—inferiority, marginality, and outsiderhood—do not necessarily share this transitional quality. They are not by definition processes that begin and end in structure; they may be permanent conditions outside of structure.
Inferiority designates not a low position within structure but the condition of being beneath, and therefore outside, structure. The untouchables in India are perhaps the clearest example (Turner 1974:234). Marginality refers to people who are “simultaneously members … of two or more groups whose social definitions and cultural norms are distinct from and often opposed to one another” (Turner 1974:233). Some examples Turner cites are migrant foreigners, second-generation Americans, and women in a changed, nontraditional role. He notes that “marginals, like liminars, are also betwixt and between, but unlike ritual liminars they have no cultural assurance of a final stable resolution of their ambiguity” (Turner 1974:233). Outsiderhood refers to “actions and relationships which do not flow from a recognized social status but originate outside of it” (Turner 1974:233). In effect, outsiderhood is any nontransitional antistructure that is neither marginality nor inferiority. Turner cites as examples shamans, prophets, monks, and gypsies.
In the analysis of religious journey, Turner's general approach is both a powerful tool and in need of clarification and development. Turner was primarily concerned with transitional rituals he termed liminal. In addition, at times he used the word “liminal” in a general, inclusive sense of antistructure instead of one of the four forms. This imbalance has lead to two results: marginality, inferiority, and outsiderhood—and the general notion of nontransitional, permanent antistructure—have largely been ignored, thus leaving the full nature of antistructure unanalyzed; and the notion of liminality has been identified with the broader concept of antistructure. Marginality, inferiority, and outsiderhood, however, remain distinct and important concepts in the analysis of religious phenomena. In particular, I suggest that Bashō's works exemplify outsiderhood, not liminality, although in his case outsiderhood takes on a complex form. To see this we need to discuss the nature of Bashō's journeys.
PILGRIMAGE AND WAYFARING
Pilgrimage has played a profoundly important role in Japanese religion, and there have been numerous studies of Japanese pilgrimage and its antistructural character (see, for example, Davis 1983-84; Foard 1982; and Matisoff 1979). This tradition helped reinforce the importance of travel in Japanese literature. Travel was an important poetic theme, and poetic accounts of journeys began as early as 935 with Ki no Tsurayuki's Tosa nikki (Tosa diary), which concerns a woman's return from an outlying province to the capital of Kyoto (McCullough 1985:263-91). The pilgrimage tradition undoubtedly also reinforced the tendency of poets, especially the religious poets of the medieval period (1185-1603), to make journeys a part of their way of life (Plutschow and Fukuda 1981). Before Bashō the poet who most clearly exemplified a life of religious journeying was Saigyō (1118-90), the poet Bashō most admired (LaFleur 1977, 1973).
Because of his frequent journeys, Bashō is often called one of the “pilgrim poets” of Japan. His journals present visits to holy sites; one could discuss at length how his journeys reflect qualities Turner cites as characteristic of pilgrimage: simplicity, equality, communitas, ordeal, intimacy with death. But even though Bashō's journeying is religious, it is not pilgrimage. It is instead a type of sacred journey never discussed by Turner: religious wayfaring. Like pilgrimage, wayfaring has been an important element in the Japanese tradition, and if we are to be precise in our interpretation of Japanese culture, we need to develop the distinction between these two types of sacred journey in some detail.
Pilgrimage has been defined as “a religious journey both temporary and long to a particular site or set of sites which are invested with sanctity by tradition” (Foard 1982:232). It is limited, then, both spatially and temporally. Turner has greatly amplified the notion in a typological study of its principal tendencies. He finds in pilgrimage a three-part structure that parallels the rites of passage of tribal societies: a separation from normal, structural life; a movement from the mundane center to the sacred periphery, which temporarily becomes central; and a reintegration into normal life (e.g., Turner 1979:153). The second stage—the actual journey—tends to manifest the characteristics of liminality and communitas that he observed in tribal rites of passage. As William LaFleur has noted, Turner's studies have
made it possible to see the phenomenon of pilgrimate from a new angle, to consider pilgrims not only in terms of where they are going but also in terms of what they have left behind. The pilgrimage has two geographical locations, “home” and the pilgrimage route; and it also has two contrasting social situations, the structured one which is left behind and the comparatively convivial, egalitarian, and unstructured one that comes into being along the way.
(LaFleur 1979:272)
Although the journeys described in Bashō's travel diaries have important similarities to pilgrimage as Turner has analyzed it, they also exhibit crucial differences. Some of these can be seen in the famous opening to his last travel journal, Oku no hosomichi (The narrow road to the deep north):
Months and days are the wayfarers of a hundred generations, the years too, going and coming, are wanderers. For those who drift life away on a boat, for those who meet age leading a horse by the mouth, each day is a journey, the journey itself home. Among ancients, too, many died on a journey. And so I too—for how many years—drawn by a cloud wisp wind, have been unable to stop thoughts of rambling. I roamed the coast, then last fall brushed cobwebs off the river hut. The year too gradually passed, and with sky of spring's rising mist came thoughts of crossing the Shirakawa barrier.
(NKBT 46:70)
The journey described here is not defined by any particular sacred site or sites, nor is there a limited and limiting time frame. Both temporally and spatially this journey has neither beginning nor end. It is everywhere and always.
One can define wayfaring such as Bashō's as a mode of life that is constituted principally by a religious journey or journeys.4 It has an indefinite, unbounded quality, both spatially and temporally, whereas a pilgrimage is always a journey to a particular site or area and is defined by that place (e.g., a pilgrimage to Ise). Wayfaring may include journeys to specific places, even traditional pilgrimage sites, but it is not defined by them.
The temporal aspect of wayfaring is also unbounded: wayfaring has no defined end. This aspect reflects not only on the physical act of the journey but also on the general mode of life of the journeyer. I could, for instance, be a professor and spend several weeks of each summer walking through the Appalachian Mountains without an itinerary or destination or a predetermined time of return. But that would not be wayfaring—it would be wandering.5 If I wanted to become a true wayfarer, I would need to make wandering my primary and enduring mode of life: one cannot be both a full-time professor and a wayfarer. Unlike pilgrimage, wayfaring is not a temporary break from one's normal life; it is one's normal life, and thus temporally unbounded.
This distinction between wayfaring and pilgrimage is reflected in their respective structures. As we have seen, pilgrimage has two geographic locations: home and the pilgrimage route; it consists of three stages: separation, liminality, and reintegration. In contrast, wayfaring has one location: the journey. There is no home to go back to. Similarly, wayfaring consists not of three stages but of one, which corresponds to the second stage of the pilgrimage process. Thus, properly speaking, it is not a stage at all but a state.
Despite their similarities, pilgrimage and wayfaring are of different logical categories. Pilgrimage is a ritual whereas wayfaring is a mode of life. Wayfaring is opposed not to pilgrimage but to other enduring modes of life such as householder, cenobite, and anchorite. Pilgrimage, however, is not a mode of life but a temporary condition within a mode of life. Pilgrims can be householders, even though they are temporarily separated from home and released from their structural roles and responsibilities.
Wayfaring is not liminal in the strict sense of the term. Instead, it is an example of outsiderhood: it is a permanent (or at least indefinite) separation from structure that does not have the structural inferiority of what Turner calls lowermost status or the simultaneous membership in two or more structures characteristic of marginality.6 Pilgrimage, then, is liminal while wayfaring is external.7
WAYFARING IN BASHō'S LITERARY WORKS
Perhaps the most direct and concise statement of the wayfaring character of Bashō's journeys is found near the beginning of his third journal, Oi no kobumi (The record of a travel-worn satchel):
Tabibito to
waga na yobaremu
hatsushigure
Traveler
will be my name;
first winter rain
(NKBT 46:52)
Traveling is not a transient break from normal life; it is normal life. The final image of the poem emphasizes the universal nature of Bashō's self-definition as well as its cost: he is departing on a long journey as winter rains begin; he is a traveler at all times and in all conditions.
In the opening of his first journal, Nozarashi kikō (The records of a weather-exposed skeleton), Bashō presents another compact statement of wayfaring: “I set out on a journey of a thousand leagues, packing no provisions. I leaned on the staff of an ancient who, it is said, entered into nothingness under the midnight moon” (NKBT 46:36). “Thousand leagues” is a symbolic number suggesting unbounded immensity. The journey is not defined by a particular site or sites but by its very indefiniteness. Unbounded in space and time, it becomes his mode of life. What is sanctified by tradition is not the sites visited or the rituals performed but the wayfaring itself and the experiences achieved.8
The notion of packing no provisions suggests not only the austerity of the travels but also the indefiniteness of the distance. The statement gains power from its allusion to the opening story of the Chuang Tzu, which centers on a huge bird P'eng, said to be able to fly ninety thousand li. The cicada and the dove scoff at this idea: they can barely make it to the next tree. The narrator, however, gives a rather biting retort:
If you go off to the green woods nearby, you can take along food for three meals and come back with your stomach as full as ever. If you are going a hundred li, you must grind your grain the night before; and if you are going a thousand li, you must start getting the provisions together three months in advance. What do these creatures understand?
(trans. in Watson 1968:30)
Bashō understands. Like the bird P'eng he is going on an immense journey. It is not a short trip within one's normal living area, the only kind the cicada and dove can comprehend, but an unbounded journey cut off from home. Packing provisions implies a home base from which one leaves temporarily. Going without such provisions, however, suggests a radical severing from one's preceding life and dwelling: the road itself is home. To the dove and cicada, such a life, such a world, is unimaginable.
The opening passages from three of Bashō's journals thus strongly suggest that wayfaring is central to his way of life. But two questions need to be addressed. First, does the notion of the religious journey change from his earlier to his later journals, or is the notion of endless wayfaring found throughout his travel diaries? Second, what are the distinctive features of Bashō's wayfaring ideal?
It is common to suppose that Oku no bosomichi presents a different ideal from the earlier journals. Hori Nobuo, for example, claims that there is a change in Bashō's journeys from angya (usually translated as “pilgrimage”) to hyōhaku (translated as “wayfaring” or “wandering,” although such translations lack the specific definition I have given above). He cites a decrease in the use of the former term and an increase in the use of the latter from the first to the last journal (Hori 1970:349-50).
This change, however, does not necessarily indicate a shift from pilgrimage to wayfaring as I use the terms. The change from angya to hyōhaku could indicate, for instance, a gradual recognition that the ideal he continues to embody does, in fact, differ from the conventional notion of pilgrimage. It also could indicate a shift in emotional tone from a more serious term to one that suggests free-floating (hyō means “to float”). In any event, this change was only a relative one, for Bashō uses angya in his later works as well, including Oku no bosomichi (NKBT 46:76).
In order to determine the continuity and change in Bashō's notion of the religious journey, we need to examine not individual terms but key passages in the journals that precede Oku no bosomichi. I cannot take up all the passages that refer to traveling, but a discussion of several, including some that seem to diverge from the notion of wayfaring, will help clarify the continuity of Bashō's ideal.
Near the opening of his first journal, Nozarashi kikō, for instance, Bashō explicitly names Edo (now Tokyo) as his kokyō, “hometown” or “native place,” and the journal, in fact, ends with his return to Edo. From this we might conclude that the journey described is a temporary break from life in Edo rather than the beginning of a life of wayfaring.
A closer look, however, reveals a predominance of wayfaring imagery. The opening statement concerning a journey of a thousand leagues is followed by an image of dying by the roadside:
nozarashi o
kokoro ni kaze no
shimu mi kana
Bleached bones
on my mind, the wind pierces
my body to the heart.
(NKBT 46:36)
As he sets out, he sees in his mind the bitter implication of the ideal that he had just proclaimed: even an endless journey can end—in death on the road.9 This poem is immediately followed by the one that refers to Edo as his hometown:
aki to tose
kaette Edo o
sasu kokyo
Autumn, ten years:
now it's Edo,
the old home.
(NKBT 46:36)
Bashō looks to the past and what he is leaving, rather than to the future and its conclusion. He was born in or around Ueno in Iga Province, but he had lived the past decade in Edo. It is important for him to name this new “old home.” As he departs on his unbounded journey he wants to name what he is separating himself from: a settled life in the thriving metropolis of Japan's new culture.
The Japanese term for retiring from life and entering the Buddhist order is shukke, literally, “depart from the home.” Shukke marks a break from one's household life and entrance into the life of a professional religious. Bashō is making the same kind of break here, although he is setting out to live not as a monk in the monastery but as a wayfarer on the road. He once left his life in his native village for the life of a rising poet in the city. Now he is leaving his second “old home” to enter the life of wayfaring.
The opening image of accepting death by the roadside as inevitable fate is almost immediately repeated in the famous passage of the abandoned baby. Soon after his departure from Edo, Bashō finds a baby left by the roadside. He laments the baby's circumstances, writes a mournful poem, and asks how it could have ended this way. He concludes that “this simply is from heaven, and you can only grieve over your fate” (NKBT 46:37). To the puzzlement of many commentators, he leaves the baby there to die. In fact, the baby manifests the very condition that he has set out to attain: life as a journey on the edge of death, with resignation to whatever fate brings (see Barnhill 1986).
The image of death on the journey comes up once again in Nozarashi kikō, but in a surprising way. Well into his journey but also well before its end, Bashō states: “That night I stayed over in Ogaki, with Bokuin my host. When I departed on this journey from Musashi Plain, I left with thoughts of bleached bones in a field.” Then he writes:
shini mo senu
tabine no hate yo
aki no kure
Not yet dead:
the journey's end—
autumn evening
(NKBT 46:40)
This poem seems to reverse the image, and the point, of the opening passage of the journal. But a closer look suggests that Bashō is actually refining, not reversing, his notion of death on the road. Donald Keene has stated that “Bashō may have felt that the most difficult part of the journey was over; otherwise hate is hard to understand” (Keene 1959:139 n.5). Hate would be hard to understand if Bashō considered the end of the journey to be a return to where he started. But if the “end” of the journey, in the sense of a goal, is simply to be on the road, the use of hate here is quite easy to understand. Death by the roadside will, in fact, come to the wayfarer, but until that time, the tabine no hate is to continue on the journey, staying at inns and the homes of friends. Bashō here completes the notion of journey's “end”: it is the continuing on the road as well as the dying beside it.
Nozarashi kikō concludes with Bashō back at his hut in Edo. Nobuyuki Yuasa translates the final prose passage as follows: “I reached home at long last towards the end of April” (Yuasa 1966:64). This translation follows the conventional interpretation—Bashō as a temporary wanderer, glad to be back home—more than it does the text. The text reads simply:
The end of April, I returned to my hut, and while resting from the pains of the journey,
natsugoromo
imada shirami o
totitsukazu
Summer clothes:
still some lice
yet to pick
(NKBT 46:44)
The journal ends with return and a cessation of the travel, yet there is neither a declaration of being “home” nor gladness for journey's end. Indeed, the final image suggests that the journey does, in a very mundane way, linger with him.
The fact that the journal ends with a return to his hut does, however, undercut the theme of endless journey that pervades most of the text. In his two other major journals, Oi no kobumi and Oku no hosomichi, Bashō presents a more unqualified image of wayfaring, and he never again ends a journal with a return. Oi no kobumi, as we have seen, opens with an explicit declaration of his self-identity as a wayfarer: “traveler will be my name.” Later in the journal he and a companion he met on the journey write on their hats: “two fellow wayfarers with no abode in heaven and earth” (“Kenkon mujū dōgyō ninin”; NKBT 46:58). This idea is repeated later when he states that “forsaking all fixed abodes, I had no desires for things to own” (“Sumiki o sarite, kibutsu no negai nashi”; NKBT 46:61; “Sumiki o sarite” literally means “leave the nest”).
Early in Oi no kobumi Bashō does refer to what seems to be a limited period. Because his friends help him get ready for departure, he states that “I didn't have to put any effort into the three months' preparations” (“Kano sangetsu no kate o atsumuru ni chikara o irezu”; NKBT 46:53). But the reference to three months' provisions actually suggests a limitless journey rather than a limited one. As he did in the opening of Nozarashi kikō, Bashō is referring to the phrase in the Chuang Tzu that states that a journey of a thousand leagues usually calls for three months' provisions. Once again Bashō is suggesting the notion of an immense journey. And indeed the journal ends while he is still on the road.
More passages could be analyzed, but the answer to the first question seems clear. Although Bashō's wayfaring ideal may be more thoroughly and consistently developed in Oku no hosomichi, the earlier journals are also primarily characterized by this ideal. The change in his journals is not a shift from one mode of religious journey to another but simply a growth in sophistication and uniformity of expression.
The second question concerns the specific nature of Bashō's own wayfaring ideal. Perhaps the two most interesting and important aspects are its double character and its noncompletion. The doubled character is seen most explicitly in the famous opening of Oku no hosomichi, cited above. The endless journey is not merely a personal mode of life; it is also the fundamental nature of all life all of the time. The passage expresses Bashō's attempt to fuse the two notions of endless journey. All people—and all things—are on a journey that ends only with death, but a person also can choose to realize that condition, to live intimately with it. Bashō's wayfaring is an attempt to embody physically and reflect symbolically the primary character of existence.
The structure of the passage mirrors the doubled structure of the endless journey. The first two sentences refer to the fundamental, universal condition of life. “And so I too …” refers to the physical act of traveling. But in the sentence beginning “Many ancients, too …” the notion of journey has a double function, much like a kakekotoba (pivot word) in a Japanese poem. Thus, the sentence is ironic. If journey is the essential, inescapable condition of human life, then everyone dies on a journey. But the ancients, and Bashō, sought to embody and reflect that condition, thus joining the symbolic and physical aspects of the journey.
Bashō's journals reflect an intense concern with death, and his doubled notion of the journey is intimately related to it. In the opening to Oku no hosomichi, his awareness of the journeylike character of life emphasizes the inevitability of death: the journey will end only with death. In a passage from Sarashina kikō (A visit to Sarashina village), the experience of traveling the backroads of Japan reveals the imminence of death. Bashō and his companions are making a steep climb to the village of Sarashina with Bashō on horseback. Out of pity for a monk who is burdened with an extremely heavy load, his companions pile the monk's bundles onto the horse. Bashō is left on top of these bundles, teetering on an uncertain mount as the mountain path narrows:
Overhead high mountains and strange peaks hung in layers. On my left a great river flowed; below was a precipice that seemed to drop a thousand feet. There was not a single piece of level ground, and I was terrified to be in the saddle. The feat simply would not leave.
(NKBT 46:66)
Bashō decides the situation is too much for him and dismounts. A servant, however, has no such fears and promptly takes his place.
We passed through Kakehashi and Nezame, then Sarugababa and Tachitoge of the “Forty-eight Turnings.” The trail wound around as if on a pathway to the clouds. Even on foot I was dizzy and shaken, my legs trembling, yet the servant showed no signs of fear and kept dozing on top of the horse. Many times I thought he surely would fall; I was terrified as I looked up from behind. Gazing upon the sentient beings of this transitory world, the Lord Buddha must feel the same. When we reflect upon the unremitting swiftness of change, we can see why it is said: “the whirlpool of Awa is free of wind and waves.”
(NKBT 46:66-67)
The reference to the whirlpool of Awa derives from a popular Buddhist poem: “Compared to our journey through this world, the whirlpool of Awa is free of wind and waves” (trans. in Keene 1971:129). Life is turbulent, change is inexorable and swift, and we are all like the servant, riding precariously on the edge of death.
Bashō's wayfaring not only reflects but also exposes him to the basic fabric of existence—and thus to the shared human condition. The unbounded journey that ends only with—and that always is close to—death is the essential bond between a horse guide and the ancients, the passing days and Bashō's passing life. In Turner's terminology, wayfaring as a symbol expresses “an essential and generic human bond” the foundation of communitas (“a relational quality of full unmediated communication, even communion”; Turner 1979:150). It expresses what is prior to structure: the boatman, horse guide, and poet are all—primarily—wayfarers. Structure may divide them into roles and statuses, but their fundamental unity remains. Where others may see only structural rules and roles, Bashō sees the underlying communitas of life.
Related to the doubled, symbolic nature of Bashō's wayfaring is another aspect: noncompletion. A pilgrimage climaxes in the visit to the sacred site, and it is completed by a return to home and structure. Wayfaring, however, is open-ended: there is neither climax nor completion.
In Bashō's writings, noncompletion is a developed and important theme. Certain passages and poems present imperfection and noncompletion as an essential part of his religious mode.
“Tomorrow I will become a cypress!” an old tree in a valley once said. Yesterday has passed as a dream; tomorrow has not yet come. Instead of just enjoying a cask of wine in my life, I keep saying “tomorrow, tomorrow,” securing the reproof of the sages.
Sabishisa ya
hana no atari no
asunarō(10)
Loneliness:
among the blossoms
an asunarō
(NKBT 46:154)
The asunarō is an unusual tree that looks like a cypress whose wood is highly prized. It is not, however, what it appears to be. Literally, asunarō means “tomorrow I will become,” and the context implies “tomorrow I will become a cypress.” Because the asunarō seems to be what it is not, it falls short of what one might expect it to achieve. Standing among the beautiful blossoms, itself without any bright color or fruition, the asunarō evokes a sense of incompletion and loneliness.
Bashō's identification with the theme of noncompletion is explicit: he is incomplete, like the asunarō. Because the tree is old, it seems likely that completion will never come; its nature is to be unfinished. This is Bashō's nature as well.
The theme of noncompletion is seen in two of Bashō's poems:
Natsu kite mo
tada hitotsu ha no
hito ha kana
Summer comes:
just one leaf
on the one-leaf fern
(NKBT 45:121)
In summer, everything grows in full verdancy, and a plant that bears just one leaf stands out as incomplete. Bashō strongly emphasizes this disparity with the repetition of hito (one) and the use of tada (only). The dissimilarity between the fern and the rest of the scene evokes a sense of aloneness, also emphasized by the word hitotsu. It is a complex theme. Compared to others, the one-leaf fern appears incomplete, but because its true nature is to have only one leaf its “incompleteness” is true to that nature.
The theme of incompleteness is also embodied in this poem, and again a sense of loneliness is evoked.
Kochō ni mo
narade aki furu
na mushi kana
Autumn comes
without it becoming a butterfly;
the rape worm
(NKBT 45:191)
Autumn has come, leaves have become colorfully tinted, and beautiful butterflies have emerged from their cocoons. Yet the rape worm comes to no obvious transformation. Because it is different, it stands alone in a scene of bright beauty. But again, this noncompletion is not a temporary condition or the result of failure. It is the animal's true nature.
The nation of noncompletion is tied to Bashō's doubled notion of wayfaring. All things are wayfarers and each day is a journey. Life as a whole is a journey that is never complete but is simply stopped by death. One is always on the road: there is no climax or completion to life's journey.11
Bashō presents his notion of noncompletion in a complex, almost paradoxical way: the idea of an enduring condition is combined with a strongly transitional quality. Imperfection is neither a temporary state ending in perfection nor a state marked by stasis or stagnation. The rape worm, one-leaf fern, and asunarō always remain as they are, incomplete compared to what is traditionally prized. As images of perpetual transition, they also strongly suggest development.
This aspect of Bashō's orientation reflects an important quality Turner associates with liminality. Liminars are neophytes, “entities in transition” (Turner 1969:103). Bashō presents himself as a kind of neophyte, not yet fully developed. But for him this state is not liminal, part of a temporary ritual process. It is an essential part of his permanent condition.
Bashō's antistructure, then, combines the permanence of outsiderhood with the transitional quality of liminality. Moreover, the permanence of this betwixt and between status, which Turner usually associates with liminality, recalls his notion of marginality. A marginal, as we have seen, is a simultaneous member of two or more groups whose norms may be opposed to each other. In the first two passages cited in this article, and in other passages as well, Bashō presents himself not only as “betwixt and between” but also as “both and.” Thus, the bat has the qualities of both a bird and a mouse. Bashō's antistructure joins the transitional quality of liminality and the multiple but partial membership of marginality to the fundamentally exterior quality of wayfaring.
THE BAT AND THE BIRD
The nature of Bashō's wayfaring—the antistructual character, the doubled nature, the quality of noncompletion—helps explain a number of passages in his works. In his encounter with the Shinto shrinekeeper, Bashō is aware of himself as neither a layperson nor a member of an orthodox religious group, and the ambiguity of his identity is emphasized by the fact that the shrinekeeper mistakes him for a Buddhist priest. The shrinekeeper (like some anthropologists Turner criticizes) knows only structure: for him one must be either a layperson or a priest, and because Bashō is clearly religious but not Shinto, he must be a Buddhist monk.
The encounter is an excellent example of structure's effects. Structure, Turner says, is “all that holds people apart, defines their differences, and constrains their actions” (Turner 1974:274). The shrinekeeper's response certainly holds apart, defines (however incorrectly), and constrains.
Bashō presents himself as an antithesis to this kind of structural attitude. Instead of relating to people on the basis of their separate and separating roles, he considers all people fellow wayfarers on a journey that is ever close to, and only ends with, death. As the shrinekeeper passage suggests, Bashō's particular antistructural orientation consists of two primary qualities: he is clothed in religious robes and covered with dust—he is religious and incomplete. For him the two go hand in hand.
It is interesting to compare this self-portrait with the description of another man dressed in monk's robes, this one an actual Buddhist priest who obviously is not concerned about imperfection (see the opening quotation above). This bird of sectatian Buddhism, more like a cock than a crow, struts and thumps, displaying his self-satisfaction and pride. Confident of spiritual success, he carries its image on his back: a statue of the Buddha descending the mountain after enlightenment.
Because of this self-exaltation, he walks ahead of others and seems to be “traveling alone.”12 There is little communitas in him, no leveling, stripping, or communion. He is the very antithesis of these qualities, comfortably above and beyond the others and covered not with dust but with images of his superiority and distinction.
The monk is clearly an embodiment of structure: he literally carries it with him. It pervades his movements—his thumping and strutting—as well as his appearance. In contrast, Bashō places himself outside—and between—this structural mode and that of the layman. He takes on the “statusless status” (and also the role of critic of structure) that Turner saw in the shamans of Saora.
In extreme cases, such as the acceptance of the shaman's vocation among the Saora of Middle India … [the rite of passage] may result in the transformation of what is essentially a liminal or extrastructural phase into a permanent condition of sacred “outsiderhood.” The shaman or prophet assumes a statusless status external to the secular social structure, which gives him the right to criticize all structure-bound personae in terms of a moral order binding on all.
(Turner 1969:116-17)
For the sacred outsider Bashō, structure is not merely secular social structure but structural religion as well, exemplified by the priest and the Shinto shrinekeeper.13 The moral order binding on all is the fundamental unity of all things as wayfarers. Whatever their status may be, all people are on a journey that is never consummated but is merely cut short by death. Bashō sees completion and perfection neither in himself nor in any other person: his world simply does ot include it except as pretense, the object of irony and humor.
For Bashō noncompletion is universal and fundamental. All of us are rape worms, one-leaf ferns, and asunarō. All of us are wayfarers. We can, however, choose to reflect and embody these essential aspects of life by living as a wayfarer and recognizing the universally shared incompleteness of the spiritual journey. To do so is to exist outside the structural forms of the secular and sacred yet to partake of the imperfection of the one and the religious seriousness of the other. To do so, in other words, is to be a bat.
CONCLUSION
Bashō's ideal of wayfaring and antistructure is a product of a complex religious vision. The specific character of that vision is unique, yet it is also a development of certain traditional concerns and trends in Japanese religion and literature. Locating Bashō in his tradition cannot be done fully here, but it is appropriate to conclude by at least suggesting one aspect of Bashō's continuity with his tradition: his rejection of dualities. Such an abbreviated contextualizing of Bashō can also suggest something about the reason he developed his ideal of wayfaring and his batlike religious stance.
Clearly the practice of traveling the countryside was common in the religious and literary traditions of Japan. But that practice raises important questions for those who take it seriously. Is the primary and ideal form of religious traveling that of pilgrimage, in which the journey is directed toward and defined by a particular, holy place? Is it wandering, which, like pilgrimage, is a temporary break from one's primary lifestyle but, unlike pilgrimage, is not limited to a particular place of reverence? Or is it wayfating, in which one's basic life mode becomes that of traveling, in which one's “old home” is left and the journey is itself home?
Such questions become more acute when the traveler is a significant religious thinker, as Bashō certainly was. Bashō's ideal of wayfaring and his antistructural religious posture are not only his answer to the question of the ideal nature of religious journeying; they also constitute his resolution of two conventional dichotomies: practice and goal, and imperfection and perfection. Like others before him, Bashō undercuts the duality of process and goal. In the conventional understanding of Buddhism these two aspects of religious life function as dichotomies: a person practices to attain the goal, which constitutes the end of practice. But the tradition William LaFleur has called “dialectical Buddhism” (LaFleur 1983) has tended to reject the duality of such a view. The Zen master Dōgen (1200-1253), for example, is famous for his doctrine of the unity of practice and attainment (Abe 1985). Bashō's notion that the journey itself is home is a part of this unifying tradition, and the exact relation between his view and the views developed by others in the Japanese religious tradition remains an intriguing area for research.
A related dichotomy, between imperfection and perfection, also has been undercut in Japanese religion. Again, a comparative review of the tradition of joining perfection and imperfection would yield interesting results. On the one hand, the Buddhist doctrine of hongaku, “original enlightenment,” suggests that although we experience life as imperfect, we—and life—are in fact perfect. This doctrine—that in some sense imperfection is an illusion—is developed with particular subtlety by Dōgen. Others, however, have suggested that the dichotomy dissolves because in some sense imperfection is never-ending, and “perfection” consists in a complete recognition of and engagement in that imperfection. In the Amidist tradition Shinran (1173-1262) developed the Pure Land notion that we are so deeply entrenched in our weaknesses that we can never become enlightened. The ideal is to “give up” fully, to abandon completely—perfectly—any notion of achieving perfection by jiriki (self-power) (Bloom 1965). In the Zen tradition Suzuki Shōsan (1579-1655) espoused a doctrine of complete absorption in an attitude of ceaseless discipline of a flawed spirit, to the point of rejecting an experience that seemed clearly to be enlightenment (King 1986: esp. 4).
It is important to realize that such undercutting of dualities is not confined to Buddhism. The Shinto scholar Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801) presented another complex ideal of imperfection. For him the highest religious state is one that manifests clearly the emotional weakness of human nature. Anyone who appears without such weakness is being religiously dishonest (Barnhill 1988). An examination of the place of Bashō's ideal of noncompletion in the Japanese tradition of fusing imperfection and perfection would illuminate the extent and limits of his uniqueness.
Bashō's resolution of these dichotomies yields a powerful religious vision. For Bashō the wayfarer both literally and figuratively travels a never-ending road, a spiritual path that never brings a real sense of perfection. The wayfarer's only goal is to practice wayfaring in a fully authentic way. In the imagery of Bashō's journals, the goal is not to conclude the journey at a particular destination but to cross yet another barrier and live on the edge of death (see Barnhill 1986:339). Like a rape worm, a one-leaf fern, or an asunarō, he is continually incomplete but just as continually on the way, the only perfection being a full acceptance of unending incompleteness.
Notes
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The follower of the poetic spirit is Yasuhara Teishitsu (1610-73). The Gateless Gate refers to the Wu-men-kuan (Mumonkan in Japanese), a collection of koans named after the Chinese monk Wu-men (literally, “no-gate”; 1183-1260), who edited the collection. His poem in the preface to this work reads:
The great path has no gates
Thousands of roads enter it.
When one passes through this gateless gate
He walks freely between heaven and earth.(Trans. in Reps n.d.:88)
The term translated here as “freely” also means “alone.”
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Because so much of Bashō's prose is written in the first person, it is easy to confuse the author of the works with the persona in them. It is important, however, to distinguish the two Bashōs. The texts are not objective autobiography (if such a thing is possible) but literature. The persona Bashō is a literary construct and in that sense “fictional.” Except where I am obviously referring to the author, the term “Bashō” in this article refers to the persona in the text.
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There is a long and important tradition in Japan of being both religious and outside the conventional, sectarian religious groups. Mezaki 1975a, for example, discusses the distinction between shukke and tonsei: shukke refers to a life within a monastic establishment whereas tonsei refers to a religious life unattached to monastic regime. A historical study of Bashō would locate him among what Mezaki calls suki no tonseisha: “aesthetic recluses.” In this essay, however, I am concerned not with Bashō's place within that tradition but with his singularity and the unique way he portrays himself in the travel journals.
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Foard 1982:232 notes the distinction between pilgrimage and religious wayfaring but he does not discuss the notion of wayfaring. I adopt his use of the term “wayfaring” as a form of religious travel distinct from pilgrimage, but I give it my own definition.
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The Japanese term most relevant to this discussion is hyōhaku. There have been several studies of the tradition of hyōhaku in Japan, including the hyōhaku of Bashō, which tend to conceive of the term as a journey without itinerary or destination. Although Bashō's journeys do have a significant degree of indefiniteness about their itinerary and destination, Bashō usually had specific sites he expected to see along the way, which at least loosely defined his itinerary. Wayfaring is indefinite not because it lacks a preconceived itinerary but because it lacks a climax at a particular site (as in pilgrimage) and a “fixed abode” to return to (as in wandering). For a collection of essays on Bashō's itinerant lifestyle, see Imoto 1970; for a general treatment of hyōhaku, see Mezaki 1975b.
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By designating this typological paradigm, I am not implying that historical instances of wayfaring cannot share some of the qualities of marginality or inferiority. In fact, I will argue that Bashō's outsiderhood has certain qualities of marginality and even liminality.
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Turner used the terms liminal, inferior, and marginal as adjectival forms of liminality, inferiority, and marginality. The only adjectival equivalent to outsiderhood he seems to have used is “external” (Turner 1969:116-17).
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The “ancient” referred to in the passage is generally considered to be the Ch'an Buddhist monk Kuang-wen (1189-1263). This passage also refers to the first chapter of the Chuang Tzu, “Free and Easy Wandering.” By referring to two figures of different religions and widely different historical periods, Bashō places himself in the general tradition of religious wayfaring in East Asia.
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Umebara Takeshi has noted that resignation to the inevitability of his death is central to Bashō's religious vision and poetic creativity, and it is present in his first journal as well as his last. See Umebara 1970:305.
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The asunarō is Thujopsis dolobrata, false Hiba cedar. The cypress, or hinoki, is Chamaecyparis obtusa. Toshihiko and Toyo Izursu initially brought to my attention this haibun and the two following poems; see Izutsu and Izutsu 1973. They argue, however, that these poems and the haibun suggest stagnancy, contentment, and complacency in Bashō. I suggest the opposite: perpetually incomplete transformation. If Bashō were complacent he would not keep saying “tomorrow, tomorrow” in the haibun.
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Bashō's theme of impermanence and his devotion to haikai no renga also suggest the idea of change that never climaxes or culminates. Gary Ebersole notes, “When one realizes that mujō is the natural state of things, a new world opens up. That is to say, when pushed to its logical conclusion one finds no primordial ‘being’ but shizen, nature or natural mujō or continuous becoming” (Ebersole 1981:561). It is also relevant that the source of Bashō's nom de plume, the bashō (plantain) tree, does not flower in central Japan.
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The word in both Bashō's passage and Wu-men's is doppo, which means both “walk alone” (the literal meaning of the characters) and “to be unsurpassed,” “the greatest.”
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Silber (1985:esp. 253) notes that monasticism has an ambiguous relationship to the notion of antistructure. Although it tends to involve withdrawal and some egalitarian aspects, it also tends to produce a highly institutionalized structure. As a result, monasticism is best seen not as antistructure but as alternative structure. In the episodes with the Shinto shrinekeeper and the crowlike Buddhist monk, Bashō seems to be exposing and quietly condemning the presumptions and distinctions of monastic structure.
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Bashō's Ghost
Introduction to Bashō and his Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary