Back Roads to Far Towns: Basho's Travel Journal

Back Roads to Far Towns: Basho's Travel Journal by Basho, Matsuo. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780934834650.

Basho (1644-1694), the most famous Haiku poet of Japan, recorded his many travels around Japan in his journals. Cid Cormans translation of Bashos most mature journal details the most arduous part of a nine-month journey he took with his friend and disciple, Sora, through the backlands north of the capital, west to the Japan Sea, and back toward Kyoto. More than a record of the journey, the journal is a poetic sequence that has become a center of the Japanese mind/heart. Detailed notes provide the reader with information that enriches the text, which has been illuminated with sumi-e by noted Japanese artist Hide Oshiro.