A Wider Narrow Road: Headed North with Matsue Basho

?As we turn the corners of the narrow road to the deep north, we may soar with exhilaration, or we may fall flat on our faces?? -Matsue Basho

My thumb hung above the road like a halo, like the last leaf on an apple bough in autumn, reflecting the headlights of passing cars.

I was standing on Japan 232, that drifting highway which runs along Hokkaido?s western coast, stretching up Japan?s north island, her great backcountry, to the northernmost point of this ?Land of the Gods.? My tired rucksack and ?otsue,? bamboo staff, were leaned just so against cedar telephone pole, bathed in the crimson hues of one star?s plunge into the Sea of Japan. My toes were snug inside the ?tabis? I?d purchased in Tokyo, those two-toed slipper-shoes worn by the ninja of old and laborer of the modern day. On my head was the conical straw hat, the ?kasa,? of monk and rice farmer, and I held a cardboard sign ? my license, my very identity here ? baring the Japanese glyph, known as kanji, that I could not read. In thick black ink of many strokes, it said simply, ?North.?

As another sleek and shimmering car slid past into the lurking darkness, as the gulls? sorrowed cry grew soft in the now violet mist, I could not help but think of another faux-monk, another journey to Japan?s deep north.

Basho, of course, walked. In the spring of 1689, when the poet set out from Edo (modern day Tokyo), he didn?t have much choice. Headed for what was then Buddhism?s northernmost reach in Hiraizumi, old Matsue visited shrines and hermitages, waterfalls and battlegrounds, continuing the development of haiku verse from a comical parlor game to a means of communion with essential reality. He slept in the barnyards of local inns, sought out places of isolation, and came to represent the ideal of 'fuga.' According to the poet, one who comprehends ?fuga? will ?follow nature and befriend the four seasons? in whatever they think, they think the moon.? At 46 years old, Basho?s northbound saunter ended up traversing over 2400 kilometers in 156 days.

Matsue likened himself to a bat. Unordained yet donning the Zen monastic robes, his life embodied neither the mouse of worldly desire, the ground-level hustle-and-bustle of the working world, nor the bird of lofty religious ambition. With an interest in Zen philosophy and aesthetics, and a reverence for the stark realities of day-to-day life, the bat flew free. If the wandering bat known as Basho were to make the same trip today, chronicling the call of the cuckoo, the perfect silence of stones in the evening, he might well end up on a freeway access ramp.

I too was headed for the northern extent of Buddhism in Japan. And while my ?otsue,? ?tabis,? and ?kasa? didn?t make for an overly convincing monk-disguise alongside tattered Carhartts and ?Phish Tour ?98? t-shirt, I also felt something of a bat. With no job and no real economic ambition, a propensity towards poetry and mountain heights, and the aching knees of a recently completed 70-hour Zen meditation intensive, I was far removed from the rat-race so prevalent in Japan?s urban centers. In a world where not a single ?salary man? makes use of his sick days or allotted vacation for fear of dishonor to his company, where ?karoshi? (death by overwork) is an increasing problem, I certainly didn?t feel like no mouse. I?d spent the last six months living in monasteries throughout Central and Eastern Asia, cooking and harvesting, meditating in snow and caves and below the threat of a beating by the ?kiosaku? (?stick of awakening?). Yet I had no plans for ordination, and often felt adrift in the heights of these religious realms, the conduct and ceremony, disconnected with the mountains that always seemed so close. So I stuck out my thumb and pushed northward, visiting places of quietude, of those made famous by battles and bards, and I watched for the waning crescent that would soon reflect in roadside surf.

A short lift among fish heads in the cab of a bouncing pickup left me beneath a streetlight in Tomamae, still over 100km from my destination. The night air was damp and cold, and a steady breeze blew in from the Siberian wild-lands across the sea. A vending machine, affront the ubiquitous Japanese convenience store (or ?convenie?) across the street, bid an automated good morning to no one. With over 6 million vending machines in Tokyo alone, one for every two people, the vacant ?ohio gozaimasu? that issued from the built-in speaker was hardly a curiosity any longer.

The simple elegance of old Matsue?s flow through Honshu was captured in his most highly regarded work, ?Oku no Hosomoichi,? or ?The Narrow Road to the Deep North.? This slim volume, a mixture of simple prose known as ?haibun? and a number of poems, is perhaps haiku verse at its most essential ? an embodiment of ?sunyata? (emptiness), a glimpse of ?tathata? (suchness or ?the thing itself?), and a transcendence of subject-object separation. This oneness with reality, its impermanence and lack of definitive substance, finds expression in Zen thought and practice. Other Japanese arts, and those few with the ability to elevate their craft to realms approaching the spiritual, likewise encountered these tenants of Zen. Sesshu in ink painting, Rikyu in tea ceremony, Saigyo in ?waka? (traditional song), Sogi in ?renga? (linked verse) ? all, like Basho, were able to contact the Self that is one with the universe. Through haiku, Matsue touched nature itself, avoiding such dualistic perceptions as ?good versus bad,? ?the poet versus the object of poetry.? Basho instructed his disciples to ?learn from a pine things about the pine, and from a bamboo things about the bamboo.?

Pines were swaying in the shadowed seaside abyss of Tomamae, yet I could discern their delicate needles only in the glow of vending machine luminescence. On the side of a road in Hokkaido where not a car passes, in a fishing village that did not appear on either of my two maps, leaning on my ?otsue? with a cardboard sign I could not read, only one question came to mind: What things about a vending machine can I learn from the vending machine?

A small white van, seeming to belong to some future epoch, hummed to a stop before the ?convenie? across the road. ?Ohio gozaimasu!? echoed through the night in automated cheer, while I deflected my cardboard kanji against the headlights cutting a hole in the darkness. I shuffled my ?tabis,? straightened my ?kasa,? and sighed with great distinction. A small man, in business suit and necktie, slurped down a ?Picari Sweat? sports drink, returned to his cyber-van, and began to glide out of the store?s parking lot. He paused his futuristic auto, perhaps weighing the fear of ?gaijin? (literally, ?outside person?) that seems to so saturate the Japanese character. A moment later, and the van pulled up beside my tired rucksack. Beeps and buzzes emanated from somewhere before me, locks disengaged, and a sleek door stood ajar.

The verse that exuded from Munefusa, the man who would take on the moniker ?Basho,? ?banana tree,? after his hermitage of the same name, is seeped in those sentiments the Japanese label ?wabishii? and ?sabishii.? These largely untranslatable terms point towards a certain essence of poverty and solitude, a starkness in existence, an energy of simplicity, lonesomeness, and quiet contentment. These notions and the feelings they evoke are found in all Zen-related arts, from rock gardens to flower arrangements, but seem most readily captured in haiku poetry. In portraying the call of cicada and cricket, the phases of the moon and the changing seasons, falling snow and falling leaves, plum and cherry blossoms, mountains and mist, haiku attains a sentiment buried deep within us. In his wanderings, in his reverence for mountain hermitages and the ever-changing nature of the world, Basho came to live the ideals of ?wabi-sabi,? inseparable from the poems to which he gave birth. In 17 syllables, Basho?s verse communicates the solitude of the crane or the simplicity of a snowy river, and allows the reader to likewise experience the fundamental energy of things-as-they-are, of this world of dew.

I followed the neon glow of headlights as it spilled across the wide and empty highway and out onto a troubled sea. I could make out the worn features of my driver in the din of the dashboard computer screen, which now comes standard on all Japanese domestic autos. He wore his black necktie loose around a frail neck, though the topmost button of his starched shirt remained tightly fastened. Various brands of ?energy drinks? were scattered across the floor and console, and he sucked down another (this one containing nicotine) before triple-checking the GPS map-guide in the dashboard. We were both headed for Rishiri-to, a lonely outcrop of an island off Hokkaido?s north coast, where my driver would find some downtime from the used-car business, and I?d encounter the Buddhist temple at the end of the road. So we hummed down the smooth highway, the sound of sea mixing with the vibrations of digital progress, a dashboard computer pointing the way to the deep north.

For months in this ?Land of the Gods,? I?d asked anyone with adequate English skills for a translation of ?sabishii.? In response, I?d received everything from ?essential energy? to the ?the spirit of tea,? from ?gentle sadness? to ?being alone and hurting but glad.? More often then not, among young Japanese who spoke good English, I received something of an aloof frustration after my inquiry, and the admonition that ?sabi? was simply something I could not understand. There seemed to be some confusion between ?gaijins??? inadequacy in expressing such deep sentiment in their native tongue, and a given ability to experience the sentiment itself. For while the creators of the Japanese language were sensitive enough to have given verbal expression to something so delicate, so gentle and pure, they did not create the feeling this word articulates. ?Wabi-sabi? is not bound to the vernacular, let alone geographic distinctions of language. Words, of course, are not the thing itself to which they make reference. Old Matsue knew this well. As in Zen, which largely believes in saying by not-saying, the 17-syllabul restriction of haiku allows for minimal barriers in pursuit of essential reality. Insofar as words are commentary and conceptualization, rather than the thing itself, haiku does away with needless addition. The old Zen idiom concerning words as ?fingers pointing to the moon? finds resonance in the starkness of the haiku form.

The lights of Wakkanai, the last port city on mainland Hokkaido, appeared in the distance. As we careened up the wide highway, I glimpsed the rusted wreckage of Korean flight 007, shot down by Soviets in 1983. Twisted metal slept amidst the foaming surf, waves collided with cliff sides, the sound of cyber-van and the hiss of salty air slid through tinted windows. A horsefly met the windshield in a display of reality, and my driver sipped on another ?Picari Sweat.? The wind smelled of sea and spaciousness, and I sighed to think of the weeks that had passed since I?d held a fluent conversation in English. My driver seemed weary yet tense, too much caffeinated-nicotine perhaps, his bloodshot eyes a mirror of my own. Horsefly remnants dissolved in a thickening mist. The lights of Wakkanai blurred, the dashboard computer screen stuttered and went black. Rain fell through the night.

?Eego de sabishii wa donna ima desu ka?? the old familiar question slipped out in broken Japanese. The answer, from a used-car salesman somewhere on a wide highway in the north, came in soft but deliberate English. Water fell from the sky; I thought of a crescent above the clouds.

?Just this,? he replied.