Matsuo Bashō, Backroads to Far Towns, translated by Cid Corman (White Pine Press, 2004)
I recently read Backroads to Far Towns, Bashō’s travel journal. . . a summer’s journey he undertook with his friend and disciple Sora in 1689. From the introduction by Cid Corman:
The journey was one both had looked forward to and realized would be difficult and even dangerous. And, indeed, one might not return. It was to be more a pilgrimage—and in the garb of pilgrims they went—than a case of wandering scholarship: a sight not uncommon even in modern Japan, visiting from temple to temple, seeing old acquaintances, places famed in history or poetry or legend, touchstones for the life lived, the dying to come and what life continues.
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