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- makura 草枕 pillow -
kusamakura, kusa makura 草枕 pillows stuffed with grass
They were used by the very poor who could not afford anything better.
It is also a metaphor for a person traveling a lot and being on the road most of the time.
Kusamakura is also the name of a haiku group and magazine in Japan
and the title of a novel by Natsume Soseki.
. WKD : makura 枕 （まくら) pillow .
source : tcc.cocolog-nifty.com
the pillow of Matsuo Basho まくら兼道具入れ
with a box to keep various small things
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秋来にけり耳を訪ねて枕の風
aki ki ni keri mimi o tazunete makura no kaze
autumn has come -
the wind has come to visit
my ear at the pillow
Written in 延宝5年, Basho age 34
This hokku is in the style of the Danrin school, with a personification of the autumn wind.
There is also a waka by Fujiwara no Toshiyuki 藤原敏行
秋来ぬと目にはさやかに見えねども
風の音にぞ驚かれぬる
aki kinu to me ni wa sayaka ni miene domo
kaze no oto nizo odorokaenuru
Autumn has come
Without realizing clearly
With eyes, however,
The sound of wind
Surprises us.
MORE about jiamari counting
. Matsuo Basho 松尾芭蕉 - Archives of the WKD .
. kaze no oto 風の音 the sound of wind - .
. Fujiwara no Toshiyuki 藤原敏行 - Ogura Hyakunin Isshu Poems 小倉百人一首.
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いざともに穂麦喰はん草枕
. iza tomo ni homugi kurawan kusa makura .
(summer) ears of barley. Well, together! grass pillow
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草枕犬も時雨るるか夜の声
草枕犬も時雨ゝかよるのこゑ
草枕犬も時雨るか夜の声 - kusamakura
kusamakura inu mo shigururu ka yoru no koe
grass for my pillow:
is the dog too being rained on?
night's voice
Tr. Barnhill
Written in Atsuta, Basho age 41.
Basho is staying at a lodge on a cold night, listening to the sounds of a night of rain and a dog far away. During the Edo period, most dogs were not kept as pets and had to fight for their own survival.
Basho himself had no home of his own and had to travel on and on and on.
. Nozarashi Kiko 野ざらし紀行 .
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草枕まことの華見しても来よ
. kusamakura makoto no hanami shite mo koyo .
for his disciple Yasomura Rotsuu 八十村路通 Rotsu
薬飲むさらでも霜の枕かな
. kusuri nomu sarademo shimo no makura kana .
shimo no makura , frost on my pillow, is another expression for the pillow of a traveler, like the "kusamakura" grass pillow.
餅を夢に折り結ふ歯朶の草枕
. mochi o yume ni ori musubu shida no kusamakura .
I dream of rice cakes
蚤虱 馬の 尿 する枕もと
. nomi shirami uma no bari suru makuramoto .
fleas and lice and a horse pissing near my pillow
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白髪抜く枕の下やきりぎりす
shiraga nuku makura no shita ya kirigirisu
white hair
has fallen under my pillow -
crickets
Written in the 8th lunar month in 1690 元禄3年8月 , Basho age 47
From the 7th to the 9th month, Basho stayed at 無名庵 Mumyo-an at temple 義仲寺 Gichu-Ji.
Written at a haikai meeting for the full autumn moon with his discpiples from Omi.
Crickets are a kigo for autumn, and Basho has also come into the autumn of his life, when more white hair shows up on the pillow in the morning.
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薬欄にいづれの花を草枕
. yakuran ni izure no hana o kusamakura .
no season. medicine garden. which flower for my pillow?
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quote
Kusamakura (草枕 lit. "grass pillow")
is a Japanese novel published in 1906 by Natsume Sōseki. It tells the story of an artist who retreats to the mountains where he stays at a remote, almost deserted hotel. There he becomes intrigued by the mysterious hostess, O-Nami, who reminds him of John Millais' painting Ophelia.
Ostensibly looking for subjects to paint, the artist makes only a few sketches, and instead he writes poetry. His poetry is interspersed in the text, which itself is composed of scenes from the artist's reclusive life and his essay-like meditations on art and the artist's position in society. In his musings, the artist quotes and mentions a variety of Japanese, Chinese and European painters, poets and novelists. For example, he discusses the difference between painting and poetry as argued in Lessing's Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry. Other writers and poets mentioned include Wang Wei, Tao Yuanming, Bashō, Lawrence Sterne (Tristam Shandy), Oscar Wilde (The Critic as Artist) and Henrik Ibsen.
The twelfth chapter contains an apology of the death of Sōseki's student, Misao Fujimura, who committed suicide by drowning. Calling his death heroic, the narrator asserts that "that youth gave his life - the life which should not be surrendered - for all that is implicit in the one word 'poetry'".
Kusa Makura literally means The Grass Pillow, and is the standard phrase used in Japanese poetry to signify a journey. Since a literal translation of this title would give none of the connotations of the original to English readers, I thought it better to take a phrase from the body of the text which I believe expresses the point of the book.
Alan Turney
A new English translation of the book by Meredith McKinney was published in 2008 under the original title Kusamakura.
Explaining her choice of the title in an introduction, McKinney notes the connotation of The Grass Pillow in Japanese as a term for travel, "redolent of the kind of poetic journey epitomized by Bashō's Narrow Road to the Deep North".
© More in the WIKIPEDIA !
Soseki set out to write a “haiku-novel” and Kusamakura does bear many resemblances to Basho’s haiku travel book,
The Narrow Road to the Deep North; but it is less a novel than a treatise on “aesthetic living”, which in the context of this book is akin to a path to enlightenment.
source : goodreads.com/review
. WKD - Natsume Soseki 夏目漱石 .
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kusamakura
. WKD : makura 枕 （まくら) pillow .
. Cultural Keywords used by Basho .
. - KIGO used by Matsuo Basho 松尾芭蕉 - .
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