A Haiku Journey (Paperback)

by Basho Matsuo (Author) "The passing days and months are eternal travellers in time..." (more)
Key Phrases: linked verse, bush clover, Fifth Moon, Mount Haguro, Moon Mountain (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"A delight in every respect." -- Times Literary Supplement

"Britton's presentation of Basho is a work limned with knowledge, feeling, and sympathy." -- Donald Richie

"Irresistible." -- Sunday Herald Advertiser

"The poet's masterpiece of prose and poetry." -- Oriental Art --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description
In the seventeenth century, the pilgrim-poet Basho undertook on foot a difficult and perilous journey to the remote northeastern provinces of Honshu, Japan's main island. Throughout the five-month journey, the master of haiku kept a record of his impressions in a prose-poetry dairy called Oku no Hosomichi, "The Narrow Road to the Far North." That dairy was to become one of the classics of Japanese literature.

In A Reader's Guide to Japanese Literature, J. Thomas Rimer writes of this classic:

"[The wry and human touch Basho brought to his haiku] ... may well serve to disguise for the casual reader the fact that Basho was a profoundly serious artist, whose work can be read and pondered for spiritual depths, however pleasant it may be to splash around in his shallows. Nowhere can these qualities be better seen than in his long poetic diary The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Oku no hosomichi), first published in 1702, eight years after his death. It is the longest and, in received opinion, the greatest of his travel accounts, although several of the others ... contain passages in prose and poetry of the highest accomplishment. Basho wrote the diary as a literary re-creation of an actual journey he made to the then remote reaches of northern Japan, a trip begun in 1689 and lasting for over two years. In this diary, which he kept reworking and revising until his death, he mixed fact, fiction, poetry, and prose to create the record of a journey that moves both geographically and spiritually, one strand mixing with the other on virtually every page. Read and reread with care, The Narrow Road to the Deep North can reveal more qualities still basic to Japanese cultural attitudes than perhaps any other work in the whole canon of classical literature. For once, the highest of reputations is truly deserved."

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Product Details

• Paperback: 124 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha America; Revised edition (September 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0870114239
• ISBN-13: 978-0870114236
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 4.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,313,146 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This translation is laughable!, November 18, 2003

By	Michael Bonar (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Haiku Journey: Bashos Narrow Road to a Far Province (Illustrated Japanese Classics) (Paperback)

This is the worst translation of Basho that I have ever seen. She makes all the haiku rhyme!!! Ugh! I suppose in Lady Bouchier's idle mind that's how poetry should appear.

Here's a quote: "Life itself is a journey; and as for those who spend their days upon the waters in ships and those who grow old leading horses, their very home is the open road."

Now compare that to Sam Hamill's translation: "A lifetime adrift in a boat, or in old age leading a tired horse into the years, every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home."

This book is embarrassing. Don't buy it.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't buy this one!, January 6, 2004

By	cauldhame (Melbourne Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Haiku Journey: Bashos Narrow Road to a Far Province (Illustrated Japanese Classics) (Paperback)

There are several different translations of Basho's Narrow Road extant and without doubt this is the worst generally available. Dorothy Britten's translations of both the text and verse cloy terribly, and betray her shallow understanding of the form. Her translations of some of Basho's best haiku rhyme, which should be enough to put anyone off.

If you want to buy a translation of this wonderful work, I recommend a different Kodansha publication -- the edition featuring Masayuki Miyata's breathtaking illustrations and Donald Keene's somewhat academic but still vastly superior translations. Don't buy this one!

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Can Haiku Be Translatable?, September 19, 2004

By	susumu-5 (Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Haiku Journey: Bashos Narrow Road to a Far Province (Illustrated Japanese Classics) (Paperback)

We can find Basho almost everywhere in Japan. My hometown is close to the Tokaido-highway and easy to find stone monuments with Basho's haiku inscribed in it.

Dorothy Britton did fine job in the mission-impossible task of
translating Basho haiku into palpable English. I am not well versed in poetry so I do not know how great her translation is with respect to literal viewpoint. She created the method by which peculiarly styled Japanese poem is converted into that of rhyme based western poem. Her English translation is easy to understand so it could be enjoyed by huge number of people not limited to those highly educated. As a Japanese who usually reads this essay in archaic Japanese of 17th century, her translation is instrumental in understanding what difficult Japanese words mean.

As far as Haiku translation goes English language has huge disadvantages.
1: Deletion of subject is difficult while in old Japanese it is really common.
2: Phonetically Japanese and English is so different. For example, in Japanese, common English words such as STRIKE is
pronounced SU-TO-RIE-KU. In Englsih one syllabled but in Japanese phonetics it requires four syllables.

So as syllable based translation. Basho's haiku will be translated rather explanatory than its original Japanese form.

In conclusion, I think she did a great job as a translator and her translation quite natural. No wonder Kodansha International adopted her translation for Japanese English learners.

Recommended for wide range of Japanese culture appreciators.