Basho's Influence on Buson: The Haiku Aesthetic
In this scroll painted by Yosa Buson, Matsuo Bashō and his disciple Sora depart from the familiar in order to discover something new. However, the reason why Bashō’s “travel gods” enticed him to travel to Michinoku, or the North Country, was due to the fact that the poets Sōgi and Saigyō had traveled to those areas centuries before (Britton 12). In a way, Buson was also on such a journey of his own when he painted these haiga of Bashō’s mixed poetry and haibun, or haiku prose travel journal. Even though Buson realized that not only was his style different than Bashō’s, but that his poetry would never be as masterful (Ueda, The Path v), he painted multiple haiga versions of Bashō’s Oku no Hosomichi in both screen and handscroll versions. This was thus a journey of Buson’s own into the thought and experiences of his poetic mentor, while he sought his own expression. The heart of bunjinga itself was also a conglomeration between the old and new, as the scholar sought to express his personal feelings by using motifs and themes from ancient Chinese literature and poetry (Mason 361).
Basho's route of his May to October trip to the Northern Provinces.He started in Edo (modern-day Tokyo).

Thus, the artistic endeavors of both Bashō and Buson were united by their juxtaposition of reverence for the old and discovery of the new. They were also united by the haiku aesthetic, which is also made up of disparate, and even contradicting elements. Nature and human response are balanced, and so is Zen-like simplicity with deep, profound meaning that must be gleaned from this simplicity. Both men successfully utilized this haiku aesthetic in both poetry and painting, resulting in the beauty of the Oku no Hosomichi scroll.

To understand the elusive haiku aesthetic, one must first understand the structure of a haiku poem itself. A haiku poem in the times of both men was called “hokku,” or “opening verse,” as the haiku poetic form grew out of the waka poetic form. The waka poem was comprised of an opening triplet and a closing couplet (Ueda, Basho 1). As more and more people became educated in the Edo Period, poetry parties in which every guest added on to the poem started by the host came into vogue (Britton 16). The host would start with the hokku, the most important part of a waka (Ueda, Basho 1). Later, Bashō developed hokku into its own poetic form, and due to its derivation from the longer waka form, the haiku was written and evaluated as a fragment of thought in which part of the author’s intention was yet to be written (Miner 41).

Thus, haiku conforms to the uniquely Japanese aesthetics of wabi and sabi, or beauty in simplicity and austerity. Haiku, like other disciplines integrated into these aesthetics, is also deeply concerned with nature (Shirane 2). For instance, every poem had to have a seasonal nature reference (Britton 18). However, nature in itself is not the only focus of such poetic endeavors. In an attempt to define one of the key characteristics of Japanese art, the twentieth-century scholar Yashiro Yukio observed that in “the time of the snows, of the moon, of the blossoms—then more than ever we think of our comrades” (Kawabata par. 12). Thus, when the haiku poet was in communion with nature, he or she would think of their ties with humanity as well as their ties to the natural environment. The sorrow evident in Bashō’s departure scene conveys this idea well. With the haiku “Loath to let spring go/ Birds cry, and even fishes’/ Eyes are wet with tears” (Matsuo 30), Bashō connected his human sadness at the possibility that he might not see his comrades again with the sadness of nature at the inevitability of the changing of the seasons. Buson also connects his human forms in the departure scene of the scroll with nature, as he uses the dramatic white space in between the two groupings. In using this natural form in illustrating Bashō’s forlornness at leaving, Buson masterfully translated the poetic aesthetic into visual form.
This haiga, also by Yosa Buson depicts a brief encounter with some traveling prostitutes from Niigata at Ichiburi. While this is a famous passage from the poetic journal, it is problematic, as it was probably fabricated by Bashō. (This event does not appear in Bashō's travelling companion Sora's journal).
 
When the journal of Bashō’s traveling companion Sora was published again in the 1940s, the readers of Oku no Hosomichi were shocked to find that Bashō’s journal often sacrificed fact for poetic quality. Sora’s journal remained true to the factual journey, while Bashō on the other hand had arranged certain elements out of order, and even fabricated some accounts (Carter 2). However, as these events happened in Basho’s mind, they could be written about, and like a Zen koan, the journal often doesn’t make factual sense, even though it points to a different reality. Buson’s visual counterpart to Bashō’s use of poetic liberty is a certain degree of abstraction, emphasizing feeling over form. While the forms are all discernable as human forms, Buson utilized the haiku aesthetic of simplicity and unfinishedness to ethereally suggest the presence of human figures instead of presenting the human form in detail, as he does in his non-haiga paintings.
Note the difference in detail between Buson's portrait of Bashō on the left with another portion of the Oku no Hosomichi scroll
Thirdly, both Bashō and Buson utilize the Daoist concept of yin and yang that the Japanese adopted into their own belief system. In Bashō’s account of his travels in Oku no Hosomichi, he juxtaposed the first part of his journey, which takes place on the “front” side of Japan with the second half. Halfway through his journey, Bashō crossed from the Pacific Ocean side of Japan to the Japan Sea side. Bashō juxtaposes the poetic portrayal of places on the different sides of Japan. For instance, Matsushima is compared to “a beautiful woman who powders an already beautiful face,” whereas Kisagata on the Japan Sea side is portrayed as a woman with a mysterious, dark personality (Shirane 218). Furthermore, Bashō’s poetry was composed of a mixture of classical Japanese, Chinese loanwords, and vernacular Japanese (Ueda, Basho 3). Likewise, Buson’s artistic style was a mixture of Chinese motifs and brushwork, “the free and lyrical recording of the natural world as he saw it,” and the spontaneity of haiku. (Mason 333). He also contrasted the yang element of the figures with the yin element of the open blank space to create and ethereal, emotional scene.
While Buson’s haiga, such as this scroll depicting the departure scene of Oku no Hosomichi were executed in materials different from his poetic idol Bashō, both men used the aesthetic of haiku to shape their way of working. Bringing together disparate concepts related to nature, reality, and place, the two artists created masterworks in their respective genres.
Bashō also painted haiga, such as this image of a melon blossom.

Bibliography

Britton, Dorothy. Introduction. A Haiku Journey: Bashō’s Narrow Road to a Far Province. By Bashō Matsuo. Trans. Dorothy Britton. Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd., 1988.

Carter, Steven D. “ Basho and the Mastery of Poetic Space in Oku no hosomichi” Journal of the American Oriental Society. 120.2 (2000): 190-198.

Kawabata, Yasunari. “Japan the Beautiful and Myself.” Nobel Lecture, Stockholm. 12 Dec. 1968.

Mason, Penelope. History of Japanese Art. 2 nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005.

Matsuo, Bashō. A Haiku Journey: Bashō’s Narrow Road to a Far Province. Trans. Dorothy Britton. Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd., 1988.

Miner, Earl. Japanese Poetic Diaries. Berkeley, CA, University of California University Press, 1969.

Shirane, Haruo. Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Bashō. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.

Ueda, Makoto. Basho and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992.

---. The Path of Flowering Thorn: The Life and Poetry of Yosa Buson. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.

The Oku no Hosomichi scroll departure scene on page one is from:

Cahill, James. Scholar Painters of the Nanga School. New York: The Asia Society Inc., 1972.

The map of Bashō’s journey is from Dorothy Britton’s book. All other images from Art Stor.

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