Back Roads to Far Towns: Basho's Oku-No-Hosomichi (Ecco Travels) (Paperback)

~ Basho Matsuo (Author), Hayakawa Ikutada (Illustrator), Kamaike Susumu (Translator), Cid Corman (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

One spring morning in 1689, Basho, arguably the greatest of all Japanese poets, set forth on foot, accompanied by his friend and disciple Sora, from his hermitage in Edo (old Tokyo) on one final journey--a pilgrimage that eventually took him nearly 1,500 miles. Now, more than 300 years later--via beautifully spare prose sprinkled with haiku and graceful translation--this book provides the account of Basho's arduous trek. 16 illustrations.

Language Notes

Text: English
Original Language: Japanese

Product Details

• Paperback: 173 pages
• Publisher: Ecco Press (May 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0880014679
• ISBN-13: 978-0880014670
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,415,842 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Only version that delivers the goods., November 4, 1999

By	William J. Higginson (Santa Fe, NM USA) - See all my reviews

There are perhaps half a dozen English versions of this, Basho's most famous "travel journal"--the Oku no hosomichi--currently available. If you have not read this version, you may justifiably wonder how this could be considered one of the two pillars of Japanese literature (with The Tale of Genji).

Translating the haiku in this work is devilishly difficult. I don't believe that Corman has delivered the goods 100% of the time, but his are still the best versions available, overall.

In the meantime, Corman is the only one who has managed to create in English prose something that remotely resembles the prose of the Japanese text. Basho did NOT write ordinary Japanese prose, so any translation into English that sounds like something you might hear on commercial radio or TV, or reads like a current novel by you-name-it, is woefully inadequate.

Corman's version has been slighted by others, claiming that it "sounds like Corman's own poems" (it does not) or it's written "as if Jack Kerouac went on the journey". (This last is amazing, as I cannot think of a style more distant from Kerouac in contemporary American English.)

Rather, Corman has tried to let the unique toughness and terseness of Basho's language cross the translation barrier.

This translation is closer to Basho than any other I've seen, and I've read probably just about every English translation of it ever published in an edition of 500 or more--and the original.

Kudos to Robert Hass for seeing it back into print!

1 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Can you help me?, April 23, 2002

By	maianh (VietNamess) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Back Roads to Far Towns: Basho's Oku-No-Hosomichi (Paperback)

I want to know about Sabi in Oku no hoshomichi. But i cant'n reat about it anywhere. Can you help me?