politics

Bashō no yōna violates Basho’s rule, which is to never speak of politics. A conversation full of sound and fury, where nothing really changes.

In poetry
there is no place
for politics

In Japan
the LDP is slipping
but not yet fallen

In America
Trump says
America is back

Where am I going
With this?
Nowhere

How Dao!

What can one say about politics? People have their minds made up and so they rarely listen. Why we can’t get along is an enduring question that has no answer. How Dao.

Matsuo Basho spoke not of politics. The closest he comes is in the following haiku where he implies that both the Tokugawa Shogun and the Dutch Capitain must pay homage to the spirits on sacred Mt. Tsukuba. Mount Tsukuba was the home of the Shinto gods It is located northeast of Tokyo, Edo which, in Basho’s day, was the seat of political power.

In the following haiku we have a play on words. “Kabitan” or “Kapitan” refers to the captain of the Dutch ships that arrive at trading post on Dejima Island in Nagasaki. In Basho’s time, each year on the first day of March, the Dutch captain “crawled” or made his way in a long procession beating gifts to the Shogun at his castle in Edo near Mt. Tsukuba. Tsukubaru (つくばる) is also an old poetic form meaning to crawl. To “obsequiously come” if one wants to pontificate. Submissive is clearer. Ah, but the shogun too makes his homage to Mt. Tsukuba.

Basho was 35 when this was written. He too had come to Edo a few years earlier, seeking fame if not fortune.

the Dutch Captain,
must come to Mt. Tsukuba
each Spring

the Dutch Captain
comes crawling (to the Shogun)
in Spring

甲比丹も. つくばはせけり . 君が春
kapitan mo . tsukuba wa sekeri . kimi ga haru

— Tosei (Matsuo Basho), Spring 1678