Reading Bashō: The Complete Haiku feels like stepping into a landscape both distant and familiar, where a butterfly’s shadow or the fragrance of flowers carried by the wind become a bridge across centuries. This softcover bilingual edition gathers every known poem by Japan’s most celebrated haiku master, accompanied by an illuminating introduction by translator Andrew Fitzsimmons.
As Fitzsimmons points out in his insightful introduction, Japanese haiku was not a solitary pursuit but a communal art: many of Bashō’s verses were composed as greetings, farewells, or tokens of friendship. Even his name, Bashō (banana plant), was based on a gift from a friend.
We discovered this collection while studying Japanese and preparing for a stay in Japan. Having long admired the Tang poets of China, we were struck by how Bashō’s brief poems like “A lone butterfly / aflutter over a field / over its shadow” connect us, across language and time, through the delicate noticing of the natural world.
About the Author:
Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) is Japan’s greatest and most famous poet. Born into the Samurai class in a town not far from Kyoto, Japan, he later moved to Edo, modern Tokyo, where he studied Chinese poetry, Taoism, and Zen Buddhism and cultivated a community of friends and admirers that helped to establish haiku as the dominate form of poetic expression in Japan.
About the Translator and Editor:
Andrew Fitzsimons is the author of The Sea of Disappointment: Thomas Kinsella’s Pursuit of the Real and a Professor of English Language and Cultures at Gakushuin University, Tokyo.
Publisher: University of California Press, 2022
Format: Softcover, bilingual edition (Japanese-English), 472 pages
Dimensions: 5 in x 7.5 in ( 13 cm x 19 cm)
Condition: New
Reading Bashō: The Complete Haiku feels like stepping into a landscape both distant and familiar, where a butterfly’s shadow or the fragrance of flowers carried by the wind become a bridge across centuries. This softcover bilingual edition gathers every known poem by Japan’s most celebrated haiku master, accompanied by an illuminating introduction by translator Andrew Fitzsimmons.
As Fitzsimmons points out in his insightful introduction, Japanese haiku was not a solitary pursuit but a communal art: many of Bashō’s verses were composed as greetings, farewells, or tokens of friendship. Even his name, Bashō (banana plant), was based on a gift from a friend.
We discovered this collection while studying Japanese and preparing for a stay in Japan. Having long admired the Tang poets of China, we were struck by how Bashō’s brief poems like “A lone butterfly / aflutter over a field / over its shadow” connect us, across language and time, through the delicate noticing of the natural world.
About the Author:
Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) is Japan’s greatest and most famous poet. Born into the Samurai class in a town not far from Kyoto, Japan, he later moved to Edo, modern Tokyo, where he studied Chinese poetry, Taoism, and Zen Buddhism and cultivated a community of friends and admirers that helped to establish haiku as the dominate form of poetic expression in Japan.
About the Translator and Editor:
Andrew Fitzsimons is the author of The Sea of Disappointment: Thomas Kinsella’s Pursuit of the Real and a Professor of English Language and Cultures at Gakushuin University, Tokyo.
Publisher: University of California Press, 2022
Format: Softcover, bilingual edition (Japanese-English), 472 pages
Dimensions: 5 in x 7.5 in ( 13 cm x 19 cm)
Condition: New
