Basho's "Narrow Road" Manuscript Discovered
Except for the old pond/frog haiku, Basho (1644-94) is best known for his account of a five-month journey to the north called Oku no Hosomichi. At the latest count there are nine English translations, of which the one from Stone Bridge, Basho's Narrow Road, by Hiroaki Sato, is among the newest. It is certainly the most closely annotated to illuminate one important purpose of the trip: composition of group verse, renga.
News from Japan at the end of November: Basho's handwritten manuscript has been discovered and its authenticity confirmed!
The manuscript was found six years ago in the possession of a dealer of old books in Osaka, but the Basho scholar Sakurai Takejiro had to spend half a dozen years to authenticate it before announcing "a 99% certainty"-- because, obviously, the writer in question is the most famous haiku poet of all time and because such a literary find doesn't surface often.
As was the norm in those handwriting days, Basho pasted patches of paper to indicate corrections and revisions. To analyze what's underneath, NHK helped with its state-of-the-art image-analyzer.
The question: Will this find require extensive revisions in existing translations? Not really. First, errors made by the copyist Basho chose are evidently few and minor. Second, translators (except perhaps Hiroaki Sato) tend to take great liberties. Just compare the six translations of the opening paragraph that Sato cites in his Introduction . . . Still, the discovery, with Basho's orthographic idiosyncrasies (to wit, the way he wrote the Chinese character for "death"; see photo) and all, is fascinating!
Much of the greatness of this work has been illuminated by Hiroaki Sato in his copious annotations to Oku no Hosomichi. Interested readers can see an example of Sato's work by going directly to the page for Basho's Narrow Road.
BASHO'S NARROW ROAD: SPRING AND AUTUMN PASSAGES
Two Works by Matsuo Basho
Translated and Annotated by Hiroaki Sato
192 pages, 15 illustrations, map, ISBN 1-880656-20-5, $15.00
