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夏草や兵どもが夢の跡 natsukusa ya tsuwamonodomo ga yume no ato Bashō - Summer grass, all the warriors are, but the remains of dreams

This is a philological study of the haiku 夏草や兵どもが夢の跡 (natsukusa ya tsuwamonodomo ga yume no ato), given to Bashō. It spans from its recording at Hiraizumi in 1689 and examines a variant reading that has survived from Edo commentary into twenty-first-century translation, and how more than two dozen English translators have argued over what 夢の跡 still holds.

Japanese Scroll of Bashō - Summer grass, all the warriors are, but the remains of dreams (natsukusa ya tsuwamono domo ga yume no ato) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Bashō - Summer grass, all the warriors are, but the remains of dreams (natsukusa ya tsuwamono domo ga yume no ato)

Haiku by Bashō on a traditional Japanese Scroll by Master Eri Takase.

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Abstract

夏草や兵どもが夢の跡, summer grass. The trace of the warriors' dreams, is Bashō's, composed at Hiraizumi in the fifth month of 1689, printed in the anthology 猿蓑 in 1691 under the heading 奥州高館にて, at Takadachi in Ōshū, and set in his travel journal 奥の細道; a prose piece on the dead prince Yoshitsune 義経 carries it as well, though its prose may be the anthologist's rather than the poet's. 猿蓑 and the journal's fair copy read が; the anthology 泊船集 of 1698 printed の, the first English translators, following Chamberlain in 1902, wrote の too, and the の endures even in translations after 1932. More than two dozen English translators, from Chamberlain to a 2018 essay, have carried the verse, disagreeing chiefly over whether 夢の跡 means the dream is over or still being dreamt.

Overview

The text. The scroll carries 夏草や兵どもが夢の跡, and the witnesses that quote the verse divide on one particle; 潁原's apparatus of 1947 records no other variant [1]. 兵ども and 兵共, 草 and 艸, 跡 and あと, つはもの and 兵 are writings: the five 奥の細道 editions and 島田's 1927 全集 print 夏草や兵どもが夢の跡; Hagiwara 萩原 in 1942 writes 夏艸; the 1931 一代集 writes 兵共; the 1933 children's encyclopedia writes 夢のあと with the old word glossed in kana above; Miyamori prints つはものどもが夢のあと. The fair copy Kashiwagi Soryū 柏木素龍 made for the poet in 1694, in its 1932 photographic facsimile, writes 夏草や兵どもか夢の跡, the particle a cursive か without dakuten, read が by ordinary practice and plainly not の [2]. 猿蓑, the anthology that printed the verse in 1691 under the heading 奥州高館にて, reads 夏草や兵共がゆめの跡 [1]. The other reading is nearly as old. The anthology 泊船集 of 1698 prints なつ草や兵どもの夢の跡 under the same heading; 潁原退蔵 Ebara Taizō, in his 1947 edition of the complete verse, records that two more Edo anthologies, 生駒堂 and 渡し船, print 兵どもの; and 服部畊石 Hattori Kōseki in 1932 sets the 泊船集 の beside the journal's が as the verse's two forms [1][3]. Others wrote the の in passing: Kyōden 京伝 in 1813 made 夏草や兵どもの夢路の落人 a chapter title, and a traveler of 1897 remembered the verse as 兵どもの夢のあと, while a gazetteer borrowed 兵どもが夢の跡 for a castle ruin. The first English readers were given the の, not the manuscript's が: Chamberlain's romaji in 1902 and again in 1905, where he also set the Japanese in type as 夏草やつはもの共の夢の跡 [4], Dickins copying Chamberlain in 1906 [5], and Nitobe in 1909, whose own footnoted Japanese is 夏草や武者どもの夢の跡, with 武者 for 兵 as well [6]. Miyamori in 1932 is the first English book to print が [7]. The の endures beyond the Edo witnesses: Blyth in 1960 and Sato in 2018 print the Japanese with の, and Lewis Mackenzie's introduction to his Issa, first published in 1957 and reprinted in 1984, gives the romaji as tsuwamonodomo no [8]; the other witnesses after 1932 read here that print Japanese or romaji write が (Henderson 1934 and 1958, Keene 1955 and 1976, Miyamori 1932 and 2002, Miner 1981 for 猿蓑, Higginson 1985, Ueda 1992, Sato 1996, Barnhill 2004, Reichhold 2008); the の is a living reading, as old as 泊船集 and not only a Meiji one. The meter is five, seven, five: な・つ・く・さ・や, つ・わ・も・の・ど・も・が, ゆ・め・の・あ・と.

The sense. The prose around the verse fixes its sense and nobody has moved it: the warriors' glory became the grass, and the poet wept. What the readers add is what kind of thing the verse is. Shirane in 1998 reads it against the Noh play 邯鄲 and 李華's 弔古戦場文, the landscape as the memory of a text [9]; Konishi, carried by Ueda and Fitzsimons, says for the first time in the history of haikai, an idea has become the subject of a poem [10]; Miyamori in 1932 warns that the ellipsis lets a casual reader take it as grasses wave where the warriors dreamed of glory when the real sense is heroic deeds which have proved empty as in a dream [7]. The one live question is in 夢の跡, and the translators show it: is the dream over, so that the grass is all that remains, or is it still being dreamt, so that the grass is its trace and Porter's soldiers sleep beneath it dreaming? No Japanese reader here takes Porter's reading, and it is a real reading of the Japanese. Two facts about the line's resistance to English belong beside this: Henderson's twenty-five years of trying and his wish that some genius could find the proper English, and Miyamori's own note that the Japanese is ambiguous. They are the translators saying what the Japanese commentators say in Ueda: 夢の跡 holds more than one sentence, and no English line has held all of it [11].

The words. 夏草や is summer grass, the summer season word, with や setting it as the scene. 兵ども, tsuwamonodomo, is the warriors, the older word for a fighting man, and ども the plural that can carry contempt or pathos; the 1933 encyclopedia glosses it in kana above the line for children. 夢の跡 is the trace, site, aftermath of a dream; Shirane glosses 跡 as site, aftermath, trace, track and 夢 as dream, ambition, glory, and says the poem depends on polysemous key words [9]; Miyamori calls the line a puzzle to most readers for its ellipsis [7]. The translators show the range of the phrase: all that remains in Blyth, Nitobe, Carter and Hass; traces in Shirane and Revon; glory's aftermath in Fitzsimons; a relic in Chamberlain; and Porter's soldiers asleep within the grave, still dreaming. The 1936 school edition gives the plain sense: 嘗て忠義な士たちが勇戰し功名を立てた、その功名も夢の如くはかなく過ぎ去りてあとかたもなく, the loyal men who once fought bravely and won their names; even that glory passed like a dream and left no trace, and one sees only the heedless summer grass, green [12]. As words the line says: Summer grass: the trace of the warriors' dreams.

The verse in English. Chamberlain's 1902 paper to the Asiatic Society brought the verse into English, and for thirty years every book that carried it quoted him or worked from his romaji, which writes の [4]; Miyamori in 1932 gave the first が [7], and more than twenty further translators, through a 2018 essay, carried the verse on, disagreeing chiefly over whether 夢の跡 names a dream already over or one still being dreamt.

The historical record

1689. Bashō, 奥の細道, the Hiraizumi entry, as Shida Gishū 志田義秀 prints it in 1926. 三代の榮耀一睡の中にして、大門のあとは一里こなたにあり。秀衡が跡は田野に成りて、金鷄山のみ形を殘す。先づ高館にのぼれば、北上川南部より流るゝ大河なり。衣川は和泉が城をめぐりて、高館の下にて大河に落入る。泰衡等が舊跡は、衣が關を隔てゝ南部口をさし堅め、夷をふせぐと見えたり。偖も義臣すぐつて此の城にこもり、功名一時の叢となる。國破れて山河あり、城春にして草靑みたりと、笠うち敷きて時のうつるまで泪を落し侍りぬ。 The glory of three generations passed in the space of one sleep; the site of the great gate is a league this side of here. 秀衡's seat has turned to paddies and fields; only 金鷄山 keeps its shape. First I climbed 高館: the 北上 is a great river flowing down from 南部; the 衣川 circles 和泉's castle and falls into the great river below the hill. 泰衡's old seat, beyond the 衣 barrier, guarded the 南部 road against the northern tribes. Here the chosen loyal men shut themselves in this castle, and their glory became in a moment the grass. "The country broken, the hills and rivers remain; the castle in spring, and the grass is green": I spread my hat and wept until time passed. Then the verse, and after it Sora 曾良's 卯の花に兼房みゆる白毛哉, in the white deutzia I see 兼房's white hair. Shida's margin glosses Du Fu, 國破れて云々—杜甫、春望「國破山河在、城春草木深」, and Kanefusa 兼房 as Yoshitsune's old retainer who fought with his white hair streaming and died [13].

1689. 松尾芭蕉, 御曹子, a prose piece, as the 1931 一代集 prints it. さてもそのゝち御さうしは、十五と申はるの比、鞍馬の寺を忍ひ出、あづまくだりの旅衣、はるけき四國西國も、此高館の土となりて、申ばかりはなみだなりけり。 And so, after that, the young lord, in the spring of his fifteenth year, slipped out of the temple at Kurama in a traveler's robe for the east; the far provinces of the west and of Shikoku too, all became the earth of this 高館, and there is nothing to say of it but tears. Then 夏草や兵共が夢の跡 旅士 はせを. The editor's note dates the piece 元祿二年作, names Shadō 洒堂's 白馬集 as carrying it, and records 「此一章得『古翁眞蹟』如『墨末』乾」也, that a copy was taken from the old master's own hand while the ink was fresh [14]. 服部 in 1932 quotes the piece from 白馬集 without comment [3]. 白馬集 itself is a book of 1702, compiled by Shadō and Masahide, thirteen years after the journey, and Fitzsimons's list of sources does not name it for this verse [15]. 潁原 in 1947 prints the piece as one of the verse's forms, tagged 白馬, and doubts the prose: 古い繪卷の十二段草子にこの詞書とほゞ同じ文句がある。それをとつて白馬集の撰者が附したものか, the old picture scroll 十二段草子 has words almost the same as this preface; perhaps the compiler of 白馬集 took them from it and attached them [1].

1691. 去来 Kyorai and 凡兆 Bonchō, 猿蓑, an anthology of the poet's school, as 潁原 prints it in 1947. 奥州高館にて, at Takadachi in Ōshū, then 夏草や兵共がゆめの跡. 潁原 takes this print as the verse's text, and his note gives the journal's 兵どもが beside it [1]. The book was published in Kyoto in the seventh month of 1691, two years after the journey [16]. Fitzsimons's heading, At Takadachi in Ōshū Province, translates this preface, and his list of sources names 猿蓑 for the verse [15]. Earl Miner and Hiroko Odagiri's 1981 translation of the anthology prints it as number 132, "At Takadate in Oshu" / Natsukusa ya / tsuwamonodomo ga / yume no ato, The summer grasses / the high bravery of men at arms / an aftermath of dreams [17].

1694. Soryū's fair copy of 奥の細道, the 素龍清書本 that Bashō kept, as photographed in 1932. The Hiraizumi passage in Soryū's cursive: 偖も義臣すぐつて此城に籠り功名一時の叢となる 国破れて山河あり城春にして草青みたりと笠打敷て時のうつるまで泪を落し侍りぬ, then in its own column 夏草や兵どもか夢の跡, then Sora's 卯の花 verse and 兼て耳驚かしたる二堂開帳. 兵 and 跡 in kanji, ども in kana, the particle a か without dakuten. The closest witness to the poet's hand that is open online, and it writes が; the cursive judged by a non-specialist eye, not a paleographer's [2].

1698. 風国 Fūkoku, 泊船集, an anthology of the poet's verse, as 潁原 prints it in 1947. 奥州高館にて, then なつ草や兵どもの夢の跡, the particle の [1]. 服部 in 1932 prints the same form in normalized spelling, 夏草や兵どもの夢の跡, beside the journal's が [3]. The dated Edo print of the の that both editions name, seven years after 猿蓑; the other two, 生駒堂 and 渡し船, are named by 潁原 without their text.

Edo, undated. Shōtei Kinsui 松亭金水 and Hiroshige 広重, 絵本江戸土産, a picture-book of Edo. The phrase 兵どもが夢の跡 borrowed, without the poet's name, for the ruin of the 里見 castle at 国府台: by this book's day the verse was the Japanese phrase for any ruin [18].

1813. Kyōden, 雙蝶記, a tale, illustrated by Toyokuni 豊国. 夏草や兵どもの夢路の落人, summer grass: fugitives on the warriors' dream-road, as a chapter title in a tale of 北条時行 (the body text prints 兵 with the reading つはもの above it; the contents leaf carries the reading only, 夏草やつはものどもの夢路の落人), and 夏草の露と消にし夢の跡 as an allusion in the text. The verse remade for a story a century and a quarter after it was written [19].

1897. 西川太次郎, 全國週游日記, a traveler's diary. At Hiraizumi, the old castle and 中尊寺 visited, and 「夏草や兵どもの夢のあと」の句あるは此近郊とす, the verse "summer grass, the trace of the warriors' dreams" belongs to these parts; the account places it under an old tree at 衣が關, 衣が關古樹の下に, and says nothing of how it stands there; the の for が is a traveler's memory [20].

1927 to 1942. Shimada Seihō 島田青峰; Obara Kuniyoshi 小原国芳's 児童百科大辞典 of 1933; Itō Shōu 伊藤松宇's 俳諧雑筆 of 1934; 西山隆二's school edition of 1936; Hagiwara in 1929 and 1942. The verse in a kigo run, in a children's encyclopedia with つはもの glossed, in an essay on Bashō climbing the hill 弔ひ, to mourn, with the verse, in a school reader with the gloss quoted above and the note that Bashō changed Du Fu's 草木深 to 草青みたり, and there the craft lies [21][12].

The dictionaries today. The Britannica entry on kotobank gives the poet's dates; its separate 奥の細道 entry dates the journey to 1689 [22].

The attribution. Bashō's, in his own book and in his school's anthology of 1691 [1][16]. The journal dates the setting out, 十二日、平泉と心ざし, on the twelfth, making for Hiraizumi, and not the arrival [13]; the day of the visit is the editors'. The 奥の細道 entry: the glory of three generations of Fujiwara 一睡の中にして, gone in the space of one sleep; 秀衡's seat 田野に成りて, turned to rice paddies and wild fields; then the climb to 高館, the hill where 義経 died with his retainers, and the prose that leads to the verse, quoted above [13]. Shirane's index gives the day as the thirteenth of the fifth month of Genroku 2, June 29, 1689 [9], and Barnhill the same [23]; 服部 in 1932 heads the passage 五月十四日, the fourteenth [3], and the Japanese books the NDL has digitized from before 1949 divide between the two days. Fitzsimons heads the verse At Takadachi in Ōshū Province and dates it Summer, 1689 [15]. A second text carries the verse, first placed here from the 1931 一代集: a short prose piece headed 御曹子, the young lord, on Ushiwakamaru 牛若丸, who left the temple at Kurama at fifteen and whose journeys ended as the earth of this same hill, 此高館の土となりて; it closes with the verse signed 旅士 はせを, the traveler Bashō, and the editor dates the piece 元禄二年作 and names its source as Shadō's 白馬集 [14]. The verse is the poet's in both; the prose is his only if 潁原's doubt is wrong, since the preface nearly repeats the old 十二段草子 and may be the 白馬集 compiler's [1]. No one has ever given it to anyone else; the English translators, eleven of them counting Miyamori's five, all name Bashō.

What is not a source. Du Fu's 春望 is the text Bashō quotes on the hill, and the 1936 editor is right that the craft is in the one word he changed; it is the verse's company, not its origin. The Noh play and 李華's lament are Shirane's frame [9]. Kyōden's chapter title, the gazetteer's borrowed phrase and the 1897 traveler's remembered line are the verse's Japanese afterlife, and they show that it had become the phrase for a ruin a century before it became one in English; they are not sources for it. Its sources are the journal and the 1691 anthology, with the 白馬集 prose beside them under 潁原's doubt, read here in twentieth-century editions and not at an Edo leaf.

The verse in English

1902. Basil Hall Chamberlain, "Bashō and the Japanese Poetical Epigram," Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, volume 30, Rikkyo Gakuin Press, Tokyo, page 305, number 46. Natsu-gusa ya / Tsuwa-mono-domo no / Yume no ato; Haply the summer grasses are / A relic of the warriors' dream. Then his gloss: That is, "Of the warriors' dream of power and glory, nought remains but the high grasses waving o'er the moor that is their tomb." Introduced as Bashō's lines composed on one of Japan's most famous battle-fields, now a desolate moor. The earliest English rendering the harvest holds, and the one Miyamori calls Chamberlain's relic [4].

1905. Basil Hall Chamberlain, A Practical Introduction to the Study of Japanese Writing (Moji no Shirube), second edition, Crosby Lockwood, London, and Kelly & Walsh, Yokohama, pages 223–224, number 8. The Japanese set in type on page 223, 夏草やつはもの共の夢の跡, and on page 224 the romaji with の and The summer grasses are what remains of the warriors' dreams. (Composed on an ancient battle-field.), beside 古池 and 物いへば as reading exercises. A plainer second rendering by the same hand [24].

1906. F. Victor Dickins, Primitive & Mediaeval Japanese Texts, translated into English, Clarendon Press, Oxford, "Epigrams — Hokku," page 310, number XXXII. Natsu-gusa ya / tsuwa-mono-domo no / yume no ato; Nought but summer grasses tall / fallen warriors' dreams recall. (The vanity of glory.) Page 309 says the texts are taken verbatim from Professor Chamberlain's admirable paper and the translations based on those there given; so one witness for the text and a second for the rendering, a rhymed couplet [5].

1909. 新渡戸稲造 Inazō Nitobe, Thoughts and Essays, Teibi Publishing Company, Tokyo, "In Hiraizumi," page 153. My thoughts are again with the dead, as my feet wander among these fields on the banks of the Kitakami and the Koromo … Even if the master epigrammatist sings,— "The summer grass!— / 'Tis all that's left / Of ancient warriors' dreams," I will not believe that the waving weeds are all that remain of strong men's aspirations and endeavors. Their brave deeds are ours still. His footnote prints the Japanese as 夏草や武者どもの夢の跡. The piece is undated; the one before it is signed Sakata, January 1906. The rendering Miyamori calls Nitobe's, at its first printing [6].

1921. Paul-Louis Couchoud, Japanese Impressions, with a note on Confucius, translated by Frances Rumsey, preface by Anatole France, John Lane, London, "The Lyric Epigrams of Japan," page 65. Or above all by the grave and perpetual thought of death: … The summer's green! / All that remains / Of the dreams of dead warriors. This last example was written on the site of a battlefield. The French line in English, and not Revon's; Couchoud's French original remains out of reach [25].

1923. Curtis Hidden Page, Japanese Poetry: an historical essay with two hundred and thirty translations, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, page 116. Old battle-field, fresh with Spring flowers again — / All that is left of the dream / Of twice ten thousand warriors slain. Unattributed on the page, inside his pages on these apparent trifles of Bashō's. The summer grass is gone and spring flowers stand in its place; only a search for dream followed by warriors turned it up [26].

1926. 宮森麻太郎 Asatarō Miyamori, Masterpieces of Chikamatsu, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, London, a translator's footnote. Of the warriors' dream of power and glory nothing remains but the high grasses waving upon the moor that is their tomb. Chamberlain's 1902 gloss, nearly word for word, six years before Miyamori's own anthology: his debt to Chamberlain is older than 1932 [27].

1927. Inazō Nitobe, Japanese Traits and Foreign Influences, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, London, "On Haiku," page 131. The 1909 lines verbatim, now set in a scene of his own: Bashō at the old battlefield of Koromo Fort, on his straw hat, the cicadas and the tall grass, then He feels intensely the vanity of human life [28].

1932. 宮森麻太郎 Asatarō Miyamori, An Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern, Maruzen, Tokyo, printed pages 125–126, number 17, 高館の廢墟. Ah, summer grasses wave! / The warriors' brave deeds were a dream!, and on the same pages five earlier renderings collected: Chamberlain's relic, Porter's soldiers asleep within the grave, Page, Nitobe and Revon in French. Chamberlain, Page and Nitobe are read at their own pages above; Porter and Revon are known here only through him: the harvest's one copy of Porter's A Year of Japanese Epigrams (1911) is scanned upside down and its text is unreadable, and Revon is French [7].

1934. Harold G. Henderson, The Bamboo Broom, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, page 27. The summer grasses grow. / Of mighty warriors' splendid dreams / The afterglow., with a word-by-word gloss that writes tsuwamonodomo ga [29].

1952. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, volume 3, Summer–Autumn, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo. Ah! Summer grasses! / All that remains / Of the warriors' dreams [30].

1955. Donald Keene, Anthology of Japanese Literature, Grove Press, New York (Tuttle, Tokyo). The summer grasses— / Of brave soldiers' dreams / The aftermath., romaji Tsuwamono domo ga. Reprinted unchanged in his Narrow Road to Oku (Kodansha International, 1996) and quoted as Keene's by Beichman 1982 [31].

1958. Harold G. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku, Doubleday Anchor, New York, page 27. It is almost impossible to reproduce this in English, because we have no proper words. His notes on the words: 夏草 stands for all the quick-growing plants of summer; tsuwamono, literally "the strong ones," a name for medieval warriors, somewhat archaic even in Bashō's time; ato includes relic, trace, aftermath, what is left behind. His literal line, Summer grasses: the afterward of strong men's dreams, and then, after twenty-five years of trying, the best that I can do: Summer grass: / of stalwart warriors splendid dreams / the aftermath. And: I wish that some genius could find the proper English for this haiku [32].

1960. R. H. Blyth, Japanese Life and Character in Senryu, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo. Cites the verse as the model of a senryū parody, printing 夏草やつわものどもの夢のあと, the last word in kana, romaji tsuwamono-domo no, and his 1952 rendering. The の, in Blyth's own Japanese, in 1960 [33].

1966. Nobuyuki Yuasa, The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches, Penguin, page 118. Four lines, A thicket of summer grass / Is all that remains / Of the dreams and ambitions / Of ancient warriors [34].

1968. Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu, Back Roads to Far Towns, Grossman, New York. summer grass / warriors / dreams' ruins. Corman again in One Man's Moon (Gnomon Press, 2003), page 16: The summer grasses / the mightiest warriors' / dreams' consequences [35].

1976. Donald Keene, World Within Walls, Grove Press, page 104. A second rendering, The summer grasses— / For many brave warriors / The aftermath of dreams., and his note that the hokku's strength is partly sound: the first line has only a and u vowels [36].

1981. Hiroaki Sato, From the Country of Eight Islands, Anchor, page 285. One line, Summer grass: where the warriors used to dream. Again in Bashō's Narrow Road (Stone Bridge Press, 1996), romaji tsuwamono-domo ga, and in On Haiku (New Directions, 2018), where he prints the Japanese as 夏草や兵共のゆめの跡. The の, in Sato's Japanese, in 2018 [37].

1985. Lucien Stryk, On Love and Barley, University of Hawaii Press, number 252. Summer grasses, / all that remains / of soldiers' dreams. Again in Zen Poetry (Grove, 1995) [38].

1985. William J. Higginson, The Haiku Handbook, McGraw-Hill, page 22. summer grass / those mighty warriors' / dream-tracks [39].

1991. Steven D. Carter, Traditional Japanese Poetry, Stanford University Press. Summer grasses— / all that is left to us now / of warriors' dreams [40].

1991. Sam Hamill, Narrow Road to the Interior, Shambhala. Summer grasses: / all that remains of great soldiers' / imperial dreams, kept in The Sound of Water (1995), The Essential Bashō (1998) and The Poetry of Zen (2004), where he calls it a brilliant indictment of the stupidity and cruelty of war [41].

1992. Makoto Ueda, Bashō and His Interpreters, Stanford University Press, page 242. summer grasses / where stalwart soldiers / once dreamed a dream, romaji tsuwamono-domo ga, and the Japanese commentators in sequence: Nobutane on the scorched leaf-tips, Ebara on the transitoriness of glory, the emptiness of prosperity, Shiison on the summer grass warm with blood against Buson's cold gale, Imoto on the endeavors that have left no trace on the present landscape [11].

1994. Robert Hass, The Essential Haiku, Ecco Press. Summer grass— / all that's left / of warriors' dreams [42].

1998. Haruo Shirane, Traces of Dreams, Stanford University Press, pages 238–239. summer grasses / traces of dreams / of ancient warriors, and the reading against the Noh and the Chinese lament; the book takes its title from the verse [9].

2002. Miyamori, Classic Haiku, Dover reprint of the 1932 anthology, page 80. The 1932 page with its lineup, and his own note that the Japanese is ambiguous, and might lead a casual reader to construe it as "Ah! summer grasses wave where the warriors dreamed of glory." [43]

2004. David Landis Barnhill, Bashō's Haiku, SUNY Press, number 386, page 93. summer grass: / all that remains / of warriors' dreams, with the date in his notes: 1689, thirteenth of the Fifth Month, June 29 [23].

2008. Jane Reichhold, Bashō: The Complete Haiku, Kodansha USA, number 528, notes. The word gloss summer grass / soldier common of / dream of trace, and a reading of her own: the pillow of grass of journey poetry, the cut grass under the poorest soldiers' heads still holding a trace of their dreams. Her verse rendering in the main text was not located [44].

2018. Minh Nguyen, editor, New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics, Lexington Books, page 233, the essay "Bashō and the Art of Eternal Now." Ah, summer grass! / brave warriors' / site of dreams [45].

2022. Andrew Fitzsimons, Bashō: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Bashō, University of California Press, number 515, page 191. The summer grasses / For warriors of the past / glory's aftermath, headed At Takadachi in Ōshū, dated Summer, 1689, with Konishi's judgment carried from Ueda [15].

Today. A rendering of this line has to hold 夢の跡 open, because the Japanese does, and Shirane's traces of dreams holds it best.

A reading

Two things I would add. The sentence before the verse, Du Fu's line and the hat spread on the ground, because the verse is an answer to that line and a reader who has the line has the verse. And the heading the verse went into print under, 奥州高館にて, at Takadachi: the hill where Yoshitsune died, not the Fujiwara capital at large, so that from its first printing the verse was read as a verse for the dead prince and his men and not only for the view. The 白馬集 prose says the same louder, but I would not rest anything on it while 潁原's doubt stands. On 夢の跡 I hold the phrase open, as Shirane does, and I think Porter's soldiers asleep and dreaming under the grass is a real reading the Japanese permits and the Japanese commentators do not take, which is exactly the kind of thing a history should record.

References

  1. 潁原退蔵 Ebara Taizō (ed.), 『新校芭蕉俳句全集』, 全国書房, 1947, pp. 117–118. National Diet Library pid 1128353, scans 70–71. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1128353/1/70 · https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/api/page/1128353_70 · https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/api/page/1128353_71
  2. 柏木素龍 Kashiwagi Soryū's fair copy of 奥の細道, photographic facsimile, 1932, pp. 52–53. National Diet Library pid 1175286, scan 41 (not resolving in the local archive at this session; reported).
  3. 服部畊石 Hattori Kōseki, 『芭蕉句集新講』, vol. 1, 四条書房, 1932, pp. 440–442. National Diet Library pid 1145820, scans 226–227. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1145820/1/226 · https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/api/page/1145820_226
  4. Basil Hall Chamberlain, "Bashō and the Japanese Poetical Epigram," Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. 30, Rikkyo Gakuin Press, Tokyo, 1902, p. 305, no. 46.
  5. F. Victor Dickins, Primitive & Mediaeval Japanese Texts, translated into English, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1906, "Epigrams — Hokku," p. 310, no. XXXII.
  6. 新渡戸稲造 Inazō Nitobe, Thoughts and Essays, Teibi Publishing Company, Tokyo, 1909, "In Hiraizumi," p. 153.
  7. 宮森麻太郎 Asatarō Miyamori, An Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern, Maruzen, Tokyo, 1932, pp. 125–126, no. 17.
  8. Lewis Mackenzie, Autumn Wind Haiku: Selected Poems by Kobayashi Issa, Kodansha International, 1984 (first as The Autumn Wind, John Murray, 1957), introduction, note 6.
  9. Haruo Shirane, Traces of Dreams, Stanford University Press, 1998, pp. 238–239.
  10. Makoto Ueda / Andrew Fitzsimons, carrying Jin'ichi Konishi's judgment.
  11. Makoto Ueda, Bashō and His Interpreters, Stanford University Press, 1992, p. 242.
  12. 西山隆二, school edition, 1936. National Diet Library pid 1275207, scan 39.
  13. 志田義秀 Shida Gishū (ed.), 奥の細道, 1926, pp. 96–97. National Diet Library pid 947714, scan 56. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/947714/1/56
  14. 『芭蕉一代集』, 1931, pp. 644–645. National Diet Library pid 1190041, scan 34. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1190041/1/34
  15. Andrew Fitzsimons, Bashō: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Bashō, University of California Press, 2022, no. 515, p. 191.
  16. 「猿蓑」, at kotobank (精選版 日本国語大辞典; 改訂新版 世界大百科事典, 白石悌三). https://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%8C%BF%E8%93%91-70194
  17. Earl Miner and Hiroko Odagiri, The Monkey's Straw Raincoat and Other Poetry of the Basho School, Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 145, no. 132.
  18. 松亭金水 Shōtei Kinsui・広重 Hiroshige『絵本江戸土産』, undated. National Diet Library pid 8369306, scan 21.
  19. 山東京伝 Santō Kyōden『雙蝶記』, 1813. National Diet Library pid 2554013, scan 11.
  20. 西川太次郎『全國週游日記』, 1897, pp. 42–43. National Diet Library pid 762105, scan 25. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/762105/1/25
  21. 島田青峰 Shimada Seihō; 小原国芳 Obara Kuniyoshi『児童百科大辞典』, 1933; 伊藤松宇 Itō Shōu『俳諧雑筆』, 1934; 萩原蘿月 Hagiwara Ragetsu, 1929 and 1942. National Diet Library pids 1194541 (scan 41), 1720355 (scan 120), 1235614 (scan 43), 1189216 (scans 15–16), 1899874 (scan 123).
  22. 「松尾芭蕉」および「奥の細道」, at kotobank.
  23. David Landis Barnhill, Bashō's Haiku, SUNY Press, 2004, no. 386, p. 93.
  24. Basil Hall Chamberlain, A Practical Introduction to the Study of Japanese Writing (Moji no Shirube), 2nd ed., Crosby Lockwood, London, and Kelly & Walsh, Yokohama, 1905, pp. 223–224, no. 8.
  25. Paul-Louis Couchoud, Japanese Impressions, with a note on Confucius, trans. Frances Rumsey, John Lane, London, 1921, "The Lyric Epigrams of Japan," p. 65.
  26. Curtis Hidden Page, Japanese Poetry: an historical essay with two hundred and thirty translations, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1923, p. 116.
  27. 宮森麻太郎 Asatarō Miyamori, Masterpieces of Chikamatsu, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, London, 1926.
  28. Inazō Nitobe, Japanese Traits and Foreign Influences, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, London, 1927, "On Haiku," p. 131.
  29. Harold G. Henderson, The Bamboo Broom, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1934, p. 27.
  30. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 3, Summer–Autumn, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1952.
  31. Donald Keene, Anthology of Japanese Literature, Grove Press, New York, 1955.
  32. Harold G. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku, Doubleday Anchor, New York, 1958, p. 27.
  33. R. H. Blyth, Japanese Life and Character in Senryu, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1960.
  34. Nobuyuki Yuasa, The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches, Penguin, 1966, p. 118.
  35. Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu, Back Roads to Far Towns, Grossman, New York, 1968.
  36. Donald Keene, World Within Walls, Grove Press, 1976, p. 104.
  37. Hiroaki Sato, From the Country of Eight Islands, Anchor, 1981, p. 285.
  38. Lucien Stryk, On Love and Barley, University of Hawaii Press, 1985, no. 252.
  39. William J. Higginson, The Haiku Handbook, McGraw-Hill, 1985, p. 22.
  40. Steven D. Carter, Traditional Japanese Poetry, Stanford University Press, 1991.
  41. Sam Hamill, Narrow Road to the Interior, Shambhala, 1991.
  42. Robert Hass, The Essential Haiku, Ecco Press, 1994.
  43. Asatarō Miyamori, Classic Haiku, Dover, 2002, p. 80.
  44. Jane Reichhold, Bashō: The Complete Haiku, Kodansha USA, 2008, no. 528.
  45. Minh Nguyen (ed.), New Essays in Japanese Aesthetics, Lexington Books, 2018, p. 233.

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; most resolve; a couple of corrections made — a citation's page index corrected from a PDF marker to the printed page, and a quoted ending's kana restored where the account had printed kanji; its unopened page images re-opened by hand