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人も見ぬ春や鏡のうらの梅 hito mo minu haru ya kagami no ura no ume Bashō - On the back of the mirror, A spring unseen, A flowering plum-tree

人も見ぬ春や鏡のうらの梅 (hito mo minu haru ya kagami no ura no ume), a spring no one sees, the plum on the mirror's back, is Bashō's. It is his New Year verse for 1692, printed that summer in his lifetime. This study follows its date, its readers from the Edo commentators on, and its English renderings.

Japanese Scroll of Bashō - On the back of the mirror, A spring unseen, A flowering plum-tree (hito mo minu haru ya kagami no ura no ume) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Bashō - On the back of the mirror, A spring unseen, A flowering plum-tree人も見ぬ春や鏡のうらの梅hito mo minu haru ya kagami no ura no ume

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

人も見ぬ春や鏡のうらの梅, a spring no one sees, the plum on the back of the mirror, is Bashō's New Year verse for 1692, printed that year, in his lifetime, at the head of the spring verses in Shayō 車庸's anthology 己が光 (Onoga hikari); a letter Bashō wrote in the second month of 1692 speaks of his New Year verse as one he had for once taken trouble over. Chōmu 蝶夢's collection of 1774 filed it under 1693, and Henderson followed that date in 1958. From the Edo commentators on, readers have taken the plum no one sees for a good that goes unseen and, after Kagami Shikō 各務支考, for Bashō's own wish to withdraw from the world; others found in it the plum by his hut, a riddle, and a scent. Blyth translated it in 1952 and again, in other words, in 1966.

Overview

The text. The scroll carries 人も見ぬ春や鏡のうらの梅, and every witness has this wording; the writing splits only in the kana. The 1692 print writes the verse in a cursive hand, signed 翁, the old master [1]. 鏡 is kanji in every witness, かゝみ in the 1909 芭蕉句選; うら is kana in the old prints and 裏 in Shikō's note as Sekisui quotes it and in Reichhold's Japanese; 見ぬ is kanji in most witnesses and みぬ in the 1935 typeset. One reading would have changed the poem and does not: the 1774 Chōmu collection scans as 夢のうら, the back of a dream, and the leaf shows 鏡 in a cursive hand; the 夢 was the scanner's. Another reading is noise: Shiki's 1889 copy scans as すや for 春や, and the leaf remains unsettled. No witness varies a word. The meter is five, seven, five: ひ・と・も・み・ぬ, は・る・や・か・が・み・の, う・ら・の・う・め.

The sense. The verse has been read as a figure since the Edo commentaries, and more than one figure. 素堂 Yamaguchi Sodō, as the 古今抄 reports him, heard in it the waka of 源俊頼 that begins うかりける人を初瀬の: 感情は咏嘆の吟聲にこそ, its feeling is the voice of a sigh [2]. Shikō himself, in a note on the letter in which Bashō said he had taken trouble over this year's New Year verse, recalled hearing that at the New Year of 1692 Bashō had sighed to put out to sea on a raft and hidden his traces at Fukagawa, and concluded 是は決して鏡の梅なる可し, this can only be the mirror's plum [2]. 師走嚢 read it as the virtue no one knows; the 1783 compiler dressed it in the I Ching and made the unseen back the place of rest; the Edo manual set it at the head of its eight styles. Aida Gozan in 1784, as Ueda gives him, took it more plainly: the plum blooming unnoticed by Bashō's hut, like a design on the back of a mirror [3]. Ishiko Sekisui 石河積翠 at the end of the eighteenth century set it beside Kenkō's waka 有りとだに人に知られぬ身の程や, a life of which no one even knows that it exists, and beside Bashō's own 世の人の見付けぬ花や軒の栗, a flower the world's people do not find: the chestnut by the eaves [2]. The Meiji and later readers kept both layers: Naitō Meisetsu 内藤鳴雪 heard a recluse enjoying a retirement the world does not notice, Ōta Mizuho 太田水穂 sympathy and envy for the hidden plum, Ebara Taizō 潁原退蔵 Bashō's attraction to inconspicuous beauty [3]; Hattori Kōseki 服部畊石 in 1932 read it as a figure for whatever does not stand on the world's surface and so draws no one's notice [4]. Ogino Kiyoshi 荻野清 in 1948 read the letter's I took a little trouble as the verse showing, through the mirror's plum, Bashō's wish to hide and live apart, and set the closing of his gate in the autumn of the following year [5]. Shirane in 1998 gave it two layers at once: as a 歳旦吟, a New Year's verse, it celebrates the new year with the plum that blooms in the first month, and as a verse written when, he says, Bashō had shut himself off even from his disciples, the plum hidden behind the mirror is his own wish for retreat [6]. Henderson in 1958 read the object and declined to drag in Shinto [7]; Reichhold in 2008 read a riddle, since one cannot see spring in a mirror and this one has plum blossoms behind it [8]; Kern in 2018 asked which is truer to life, and suggested that spring here is best sensed by the plum's scent [9].

The words. 人も見ぬ春 is a spring that no one at all sees, the も making it not even people. 鏡のうら is the back of a mirror: a bronze mirror's reverse carried its cast design, plum among the commonest, and the page says this and it is right. 梅 is the plum, the first flower, and here the spring on the side no one turns over. The Edo readers made the object a figure. 師走嚢: 我身の徳を見知る人もなきは畢竟鏡のうらに梅の花なと鋳付たるはあれと … うらに有梅は見る人もなきことく世にしられぬもの, that no one knows one's own virtue is, in the end, like the plum cast on the back of a mirror: the plum on the back has no one to see it, a thing unknown to the world [10]. The 1783 第一義集 sets the other readings aside, 此句さま〳〵説ありといへども。皆もて穏当ならず, this verse has various explanations, none of them sound, and reads it through the I Ching's hexagram 艮, 艮其背不獲其身、行其庭不見其人, stopping at the back, one does not get the body; walking the courtyard, one does not see the person, and Teishi 程子 on stopping where one should: 鏡の面にうつる物は誰も見るべし。見れどもそれと気をつけざれば, what shows on the face of the mirror everyone sees, and seeing it no one attends to it; the back is the place to stop [11]. A reading Sekisui quotes from 說叢 hears the verse in two breaths, 人も見ぬ春や, then 鏡のうらの梅, and takes it as written on seeing the plum cast on a mirror's back [2]. As words the line says: A spring no one sees: the plum on the back of the mirror.

The verse in English. Blyth rendered it in the preface to the fourth volume of Haiku in 1952, with the Japanese above it [12], and in other words in 1966 [13]; the 1952 preface was reprinted in 1994 [14]. Henderson followed in 1958 [7], then Ueda in 1992 [3], Shirane in 1998 [6], Barnhill in 2004 [15], Haldane in 2006 [16], Reichhold in 2008 [8], Kern in 2018 [9], and Fitzsimons in 2022 [17].

The historical record

1692, New Year. Bashō. A New Year's verse. The year rests on a print of that summer and on a letter of the second month, below.

1692, second month. Bashō's letter to Suganuma Kyokusui 曲水, dated the eighteenth. Kyokusui had praised Bashō's New Year verse, and Bashō answered: 年々ハ口にまかせ心にうかぶ計に申捨候へ共、もはや是を歳旦之名殘にもやなど存候而、少ハ精を出し候處、御耳に留り候ヘバ、甲斐ある心地せられて悅にたへず候, every year I toss off whatever comes to my mouth and mind, but this time, thinking this might be the last of my New Year verses, I took a little trouble, and that it caught your ear makes it feel worth the effort, and I cannot contain my joy [5]. The letter does not quote the verse. Shikō, in a note on the letter, wavered between 1692 and 1693 and then gave the 1692 verse, 人も見ぬ春や鏡の裏の梅 [2].

1692, summer. Shayō 車庸, 己が光, printed in Kyoto. The preface is dated 元禄五壬申夏日, a summer day of 1692. The verse stands first among the spring verses, signed 翁 [1]. 七瀬川, also of 1692, carries it by Ebara's list [18][19].

Edo, undated. Baimon 梅門, 師走嚢, a commentary. The verse glossed as the unrecognized virtue, in the words quoted above; the leaf is cursive [10].

Edo, undated. 幻住庵俳諧有也無也関, a haikai manual. In its eight styles of the hokku, 発句八躰之事, the verse stands first, directly under that heading and before the first style name, 幽玄躰, the style of the deep and dim. Whether the name belongs to this verse turns on whether the manual's names close their groups or head them, and the next leaf answers: the last name, 風曲躰, is followed by two verses and then the closing 右發句八躰の事, so the names head their groups, 幽玄躰 names the three verses after this one (やがて死ぬ気色は見えず蝉の声, 古池や蛙飛込水のおと, 梅の木に猶やどり木や梅の花), and this verse opens the list with no name of its own. 梅が香にのつと日の出る山路哉 stands eight verses down, the last under 無心躰 [20].

1697 to 1698. The disciples' anthologies. Tōrin 桃隣's 陸奥鵆, with an afterword of 1697; 續猿蓑, compiled by Senpo 沾圃 and printed in 1698, where Sekisui found it in the New Year section; and Fūkoku 風国's 泊船集, printed the same year [18][2][19][21][22]. Ebara adds a prose passage of Shikō's in 東山墨直し of 1711 [18].

1773. 鷗沙, 鏡塚, Nagoya. For the eightieth year since Bashō's death, 鷗沙 had the verse, from an autograph his family owned, cast onto a mirror, and buried the mirror in a mound at the temple 清浄寺: 余家有翁之眞跡一句、以故鑄鏡寫之、納於壺中, my family has one verse in the master's own hand; so I had it cast onto a mirror and put it in a jar; 見鏡塚、則如見其人, who sees the mirror mound sees the man. The stone reads 人も見ぬ春や鏡のうらの梅 芭蕉翁 [23].

1774. Chōmu, 芭蕉翁発句集. Under 元禄六酉年, 1693, on a leaf of that year's spring verses, 人も見ぬ春や鏡のうらの梅, the 鏡 confirmed against the scanner's 夢 [24].

1783. Sanriki 鼻中庵三力, 俳諧第一義集, a Zen reading of the haikai canon. Under the compiler's headnote 目前分明, the verse, then two leaves of gloss: the other readings dismissed, the hexagram 艮 and 程子 quoted, and the reading that the plain front is what everyone sees and no one notices, so the back is where to rest [11].

1795. Akisato Ritō 秋里籬島, 俳翼, a small book of haikai relics. In the section 其角述 芭蕉翁四季発句, the verse, followed by a headnote for 乙州's departure to Edo and 梅若菜鞠子の宿のとろろ汁 [25].

Late eighteenth century. Ishiko Sekisui, 芭蕉句選年考, a study of the dates of Bashō's verses. 元祿五年の己が光集に有り, it is in 己が光 of 1692, and 續猿蓑集歳旦の部に見えたり, it appears in the New Year section of 續猿蓑, then the readings of 素堂, 說叢 and Shikō quoted above [2].

1889. Masaoka Shiki 正岡子規, 発句類題全集, his manuscript copy. The verse in a mixed list; it scans as すや for 春や, and the leaf remains unsettled [26].

1909. 芭蕉句選, a verse list by season appended to a 菅菰抄 typeset. 春之部, page 143: 人も見ぬ春やかゝみのうらの梅, two verses under 梅か香にのつと日の出る山路哉, with 山里は萬歲おそしむめの花 between them; the leaf's margin note on another verse points the reader to 泊船集 [27].

1927, 1935. Shimada Seihō 島田青峰, 芭蕉俳句紀行全集; Chōmu's collection in the 有朋堂 typeset. The verse in the 1927 全集 [28], and in the 1935 typeset of the 1774 collection as 人もみぬ春や鏡のうらの梅, with 鏡, which is how the scanner's 夢 was first doubted [29].

1932, 1947. The collected editions. Hattori Kōseki files the verse under 元禄五年 and gives its source as 己が光 [4]. Ebara Taizō prints it with the tag 己が光 and lists the later carriers: 七瀬川, 續猿蓑, 陸奥鵆, 泊船集, and Shikō's prose in 東山墨直し [18].

The dictionaries today. kotobank's page for 松尾芭蕉 gives the poet's dates and does not quote the verse [30].

The attribution. Bashō's at every witness that names a poet, with no rival, and first in his lifetime: the 1692 print signs it 翁 [1]. The disciples' anthologies of 1697 and 1698 carry it [18][19], and every later witness above gives it to him. The date. 1692, by the print of that summer [1] and the New Year of the letter [5][2], which Sekisui, Hattori, Shirane, Barnhill and Fitzsimons follow [2][4][6][15][17]. Chōmu's 1774 collection files it under 1693 [24] and Henderson prints 1693 [7]; a verse in a book prefaced in the summer of 1692 cannot be a New Year verse of 1693. Reichhold prints 1691, between two verses she dates 1692 [8]. The 1783 compiler heads the verse 目前分明, plain before the eyes, which is his and not the poet's.

What is not a source. The scanner's 夢 was never a variant; the leaf shows 鏡. Chōmu's 1693 is contradicted by the 1692 print. The compiler's headnote of 1783 is his. The page's note on mirror backs is right about the object and is not a reading of the verse; the readings are above.

The verse in English

1952. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, volume 4, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, Preface, page xvi. 人も見ぬ春や鏡のうらの梅, then A spring unseen of men,— / On the back of the mirror, / A flowering plum-tree, and: This verse by Bashō is one that Keats would have appreciated. There is a world of art which hardly belongs to this world except as a kind of perversion of it, a sort of back-of-the-mirror which our mind holds up to nature. This is the world that Bashō was also drawn to, but like Wordsworth, the real world was the one he earnestly desired to live in [12].

1958. Harold G. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku, Doubleday Anchor, page 47. Titled On New Year's Day: Spring that no man / has seen: plum bloom on the back / of the mirror, dated 1693, with a note that bronze hand mirrors were usually decorated with a raised design on the back, one favorite motif being quite beautiful but highly stylized plum branches [7].

1966. R. H. Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics, volume 4, Hokuseido Press, page 167. On case 22 of the 無門関, at the line a spring that does not belong to Yin and Yang: As for the last line, we are reminded of Bashō's verse: A spring unseen of men,— / The flowering plum tree / On the back of this mirror, and then: This is the spring of art, and he turns to Keats's Grecian urn [13].

1992. Makoto Ueda, Bashō and His Interpreters, Stanford University Press, page 335. spring that people / do not notice—plum blossoms / on the back of a mirror, with the commentaries of Aida Gozan, Naitō Meisetsu, Ōta Mizuho and Ebara Taizō [3].

1994. R. H. Blyth, The Genius of Haiku, British Haiku Society and Hokuseido Press, page 99. The 1952 preface reprinted, rendering and paragraph [14].

1998. Haruo Shirane, Traces of Dreams, Stanford University Press, page 50. a spring no one sees / plum blossoms / on the back of a mirror, with the 歳旦吟 reading, the retreat reading, and the date: at the beginning of 1692 (Genroku 5), at the age of 49 [6].

2004. David Landis Barnhill, Bashō's Haiku, State University of New York Press, no. 598, page 132. a spring unseen: / on the back of a mirror, / plum blossoms, under Spring 1692 [15].

2006. Michael Haldane, in Bashō and the Haikuists, Delphi Classics, 2022. unseen Spring – / at the mirror's reverse, / the blossoming plum [16].

2008. Jane Reichhold, Bashō: The Complete Haiku, Kodansha, no. 777, pages 192 and 359. people do not see / spring in a mirror / plum blossoms on the back, dated 1691, read as a riddle [8].

2018. Adam L. Kern, The Penguin Book of Haiku, Penguin, pages 43 and 251. spring overlooked! / on the back of a handglass, / plum blossoms, with the scent reading and Gozan through Ueda [9].

2022. Andrew Fitzsimons, Bashō: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Bashō, University of California Press, no. 752. A spring no one sees / On the back of a mirror / blossoms of ume, dated Spring 1692, with Ebara's sentence through Ueda [17].

Today. The renderings split on the first line, unseen of men, no man has seen, no one sees, people do not notice, overlooked, and agree on putting the plum last, on the back.

A reading

I read the verse as a New Year verse of 1692 that the tradition has rightly heard twice: the object is a bronze mirror's reverse, and the object is a person, the good that no one turns the mirror over to see, and the man who wanted, that spring, to be that plum. Bashō's own letter says he took trouble over this one, thinking it might be his last New Year verse, and Shikō, who knew him, heard the retreat in it; that is the layer the letter supports. Shirane's two layers are the fullest modern account, but the closing of the gate came, as Ogino shows, in the autumn of the following year, so the verse is the wish before the act. Chōmu's 1693 is a filing error. The 1774 leaf reads 鏡, and the scanner's dream is gone.

References

  1. 車庸 Shayō 編『己が光』, Kyoto, 井筒屋庄兵衛, preface dated 元禄五壬申夏日 (1692); the verse at canvas 16, the preface's date at canvas 4. National Institute of Japanese Literature, 国書データベース, the 東京大学総合図書館 洒竹文庫 copy, BID 100411341. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/100411341/16
  2. 石河積翠 Ishiko Sekisui『芭蕉句選年考』, typeset as 大野洒竹・沼波瓊音 校訂『芭蕉句選年考』, 1911, pp. 30–31. National Diet Library pid 991654, scan 31. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/991654/1/31
  3. Makoto Ueda, Bashō and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary, Stanford University Press, 1992, p. 335; the commentators identified in its list of commentators.
  4. 服部畊石 Hattori Kōseki『芭蕉句集新講』下巻, 四条書房, 1932, p. 697. National Diet Library pid 1145829, scan 84. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1145829/1/84
  5. 志田義秀・荻野清 編『芭蕉講座』第7巻 書簡篇, 1948, the letter to 曲水 of the eighteenth of the second month, from 『芭蕉翁三等之文』, and 荻野清 Ogino Kiyoshi's commentary. National Diet Library pid 1707573, scans 109–110.
  6. Haruo Shirane, Traces of Dreams, Stanford University Press, 1998, p. 50.
  7. Harold G. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku, Doubleday Anchor, Garden City, 1958, p. 47.
  8. Jane Reichhold, Bashō: The Complete Haiku, Kodansha International, 2008, no. 777, p. 192; note p. 359.
  9. Adam L. Kern, The Penguin Book of Haiku, Penguin Classics, 2018, p. 43; note p. 251.
  10. 梅門 Baimon『師走嚢』, manuscript, undated. National Diet Library pid 2540341, scan 13.
  11. 三力 Sanriki『俳諧第一義集』, 1783. National Diet Library pid 2568262, scans 9–10. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2568262/1/9
  12. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 4, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1952, Preface, p. xvi.
  13. R. H. Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics, vol. 4, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1966, p. 167.
  14. R. H. Blyth, The Genius of Haiku, British Haiku Society and Hokuseido Press, 1994, p. 99.
  15. David Landis Barnhill, Bashō's Haiku: Selected Poems by Matsuo Bashō, State University of New York Press, 2004, no. 598, p. 132.
  16. Michael Haldane, in Bashō and the Haikuists, Delphi Classics, collected 2022 (rendering first published 2006).
  17. Andrew Fitzsimons, Bashō: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Bashō, University of California Press, 2022, no. 752.
  18. 潁原退蔵 Ebara Taizō 編著『新校芭蕉俳句全集』, 全国書房, 1947, p. 27, the verse with its tag and the note. National Diet Library pid 1128353, scan 25. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1128353/1/25
  19. National Institute of Japanese Literature, 国書データベース, work records: 己が光, 元禄五刊, work 749622, https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/work/749622 · 七瀬川, 元禄五, work 394423, https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/work/394423 · 陸奥鵆, 元禄一〇跋, work 510225, https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/work/510225 · 続猿蓑, 元禄一一刊, work 41941, https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/work/41941 · 泊船集, 元禄一一刊, work 411132, https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/work/411132
  20. 『幻住庵俳諧有也無也関』, undated. National Diet Library pid 2539775, scan 15. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2539775/1/15
  21. 「続猿蓑」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/続猿蓑
  22. 風国 編『芭蕉泊船集』, typeset 1909. National Diet Library pid 875664, scan 19.
  23. 『愛知県金石文集』, 1942, p. 1245, 芭蕉鏡塚, 名古屋市中区矢場町 清浄寺. National Diet Library pid 1042157, scan 647. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1042157/1/647
  24. 五升庵蝶夢 Chōmu 編『芭蕉翁発句集』, 井筒屋, 1774. National Diet Library pid 2540314, scan 70. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2540314/1/70
  25. 秋里籬島 Akisato Ritō 編『俳翼』, 1795. National Diet Library pid 2541278, scan 10. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2541278/1/10
  26. 正岡子規 Masaoka Shiki 写『発句類題全集』, 1889. National Diet Library pid 2586392, scan 164.
  27. 蓑笠庵梨一 Saryūan Riichi『奥細道菅菰抄』, bound with 擲筆菴 編『芭蕉句選』上巻, 1909, p. 143. National Diet Library pid 888896, scan 82. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/888896/1/82
  28. 島田青峰 Shimada Seihō 編『芭蕉俳句紀行全集』, 1927. National Diet Library pid 1194541, scan 27.
  29. 藤井紫影 Fujii Shiei 校『名家俳句集』, 有朋堂文庫, 1935. National Diet Library pid 1259717, scan 66.
  30. 「松尾芭蕉」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/松尾芭蕉-16739

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, Takase Studios, LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · grok-4.6 (xAI), 2026-09-05, citations · gpt-6-astra (OpenAI), 2026-09-05, citations · Claude Sonnet (Anthropic), 2026-09-14, citations — every claim tested at its address; one correction — the Haldane 2006 rendering's claimed missing third line is not missing, the line is present in the text layer, now fixed; the rest not openable — leaves not supplied, whole-book absence claims, a live address, a script call and a missing file

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 人も見ぬ春や鏡のうらの梅 (hito mo minu haru ya kagami no ura no ume)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/hito-mo-minu-haru-ya-kagami-no-ura-no-ume.