Bashō

Visual writing is embedded in haiku poetry, communicating something more than is expressed with words alone. It requires the reader to engage with the images, bringing prior knowledge to the poem to make meaning. This YouTube video represents one individual’s suggestion for pairing Japanese artwork with Bashō’s poetry. Beginning with a map of Bashō’s Trail and including twenty-three images and ten poems representing the poet’s journey through the Northeast, the video demonstrates that the strength of haiku lies in the images evoked in simple poetic lines.

Beginning with a map, the collage of images and poems takes the viewer on a journey. A painting with a sliver of moon with red maple leaves on tree branches suggests it is autumn, and the image of an old man with a bamboo walking stick represents Bashō as he starts his journey. Along the way he meets common people such as merchants with wares to sell, and travelers like himself. The first haiku appears after a painting of a woman combing her hair: “Wrapping rice dumplings in bamboo leaves / With one hand she fingers / The hair over her forehead” (Bashō). Juxtaposition of the painting and poem implies meaning, and viewers are asked to make the connections between the picture and words. Tarallo writes: “between all images and words exists a potentially meaningful relationship… What may amplify this relationship is when the visual qualities of word and image are harmonized. The unity of their visual qualities and their conceptual magnetism create a fertile poetic message” (453). The video maker is suggesting a connection between the painting and the poem, asking viewers to make these connections as well, and to imagine the woman in the painting as the woman in Bashō’s poem.

The journey continues with a montage of nature paintings depicting rivers, trees, mountains, and villagers. According to Ueda, “a haiku poet does not use nature images to express his emotion; he lets natural objects express their feelings” (427). Bashō’s poems recall history while expressing the inevitable cycle of life and death. The video maker’s selection of poems and images work together, hiking the countryside in the fall of both the year and the poet’s life. Towards the end of the video both images and words address old age directly: “this autumn - / old age I feel / In the birds, the clouds” (Bashō). The haiku is sandwiched between wintery pictures of snowy mountains, and an old man crossing a bridge, with the full moon between the trees. Pairing the images and poems in this way, harmonizing the qualities of words and images, shares the video maker’s vision of the strong images suggested in Bashō’s deceptively simple lines. The maker takes viewers on a journey through Japanese poetry and art, imagining the connections between the two.

Works Cited

“Matsuo Bashō.” YouTube, uploaded by RaulSantiagoSebazco, 9 April 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXvzgR3A9_I

Tarallo, Donald. “The Poetic Dimension: Reading Words and Reading Images.” Design Principles & Practice: An International Journal, vol. 5, no. 6, June 2011, pp. 451–458. doi:10.18848/1833-1874/CGP/v05i06/38241.

Ueda, Makoto. “Bashō and the Poetics of ‘Haiku.’” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 21, no. 4, 1963, pp. 423–431. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/427098. Accessed 8 June 2020.