''Kashima Kikō'' (), variously translated as ''Kashima Journal'' or ''A Visit to Kashima Shrine'' is a '' haibun''

travel journal The genre of travel literature encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs. One early travel memoirist in Western literature was Pausanias, a Greek geographer of the 2nd century CE. In the early modern period ...

by the

Japanese poet Japanese poetry is poetry typical of Japan, or written, spoken, or chanted in the Japanese language, which includes Old Japanese, Early Middle Japanese, Late Middle Japanese, and Modern Japanese, as well as poetry in Japan which was written in th ...

Matsuo Bashō born then was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative '' haikai no renga'' form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as the greatest ma ...

, covering his short journey to

Kashima Shrine is a Shinto shrine located in Kashima, Ibaraki in the northern Kantō region of Japan. It is dedicated to , one of the patron deities of martial arts. Various dōjō of ''kenjutsu'' and ''kendō'' often display a hanging scroll emblazoned with ...

in the

Kantō region The is a geographical area of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. In a common definition, the region includes the Greater Tokyo Area and encompasses seven prefectures: Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Saitama, Tokyo, Chiba and Kanagawa. Slight ...

. According to write-translator David Landis Barnhill, the ''Kashima Kikō'' is "most significant for the amusing but complex self-image near the beginning" where Bashō compares his companions to a bird and a mouse before calling himself a mixture of both: a bat. It was written as a tribute to Bashō's Zen master, Buchhō, and so it contains direct references to

enlightenment Enlightenment or enlighten may refer to: Age of Enlightenment * Age of Enlightenment, period in Western intellectual history from the late 17th to late 18th century, centered in France but also encompassing (alphabetically by country or culture): ...

and the

Gateless Gate ''The Gateless Barrier'' (Mandarin: 無門關 ''Wúménguān''; Japanese: 無門関 ''Mumonkan''), sometimes translated as ''The Gateless Gate'', is a collection of 48 Chan (Zen) koans compiled in the early 13th century by the Chinese Zen master ...

. The work mostly does not integrate poems into the prose and, instead, presents all the prose in the first half before ending with a series of '' hokku'' written by Bashō and his friends.

Summary

Written in October of 1687 ( Edo era), the work covers a 45-year old Bashō's journey to

to see the harvest moon. The journal is inspired by a poem from Teishitsu of

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

, imagining the exiled

Ariwara no Yukihira was a Japanese Heian period courtier and bureaucrat, who held a number of positions over the course of his life. At one time or another, he was governor of the provinces of Harima, Bizen, Shinano, and Bitchū. He also served as , , and inspec ...

viewing the moon. Traveling with a monk and the ex-samurai, Sora (who later accompanied Bashō on most of his ''

Oku no Hosomichi ''Oku no Hosomichi'' (, originally ), translated as ''The Narrow Road to the Deep North'' and ''The Narrow Road to the Interior'', is a major work of ''haibun'' by the Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō, considered one of the major texts of Japanese l ...

'' journey), Bashō and company board a boat, hire a horse, and pause to view

Mount Tsukuba is an mountain located at the northern-end of Tsukuba, Japan. It is one of the most famous mountains in Japan, particularly well known for its double peaks, and . Many people climb the so-called "purple mountain" every year for the panorami ...

. After lodging in a fisherman's hut, the trio embark to Kashima but are met with incessant rain. Spending the night at an old priest's home, Bashō wakes at the flush of dawn and rouses the others to see the moon breaking through the storm clouds.

English translations

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References

{{Japanese poetry Edo-period works Japanese poetry collections Travel books Articles containing Japanese poems Haiku