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Home › Library › Philology › Bashō - Shake even the grave, My wailing is the autumn wind

塚も動け我が泣聲は秋の風 tsuka mo ugoke waga naku koe wa aki no kaze Bashō - Shake even the grave, My wailing is the autumn wind

This is a philological study of the haiku 塚も動け我が泣聲は秋の風 (tsuka mo ugoke waga naku koe wa aki no kaze), given to Bashō. It spans from its recording in his own travel book in 1702 and examines the memorial that occasioned it, the legend that grew around a second offering, and how the verse came into English.

Japanese Scroll of Bashō - Shake even the grave, My wailing is the autumn wind (tsuka mo ugoke waga naku koe wa aki no kaze) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Bashō - Shake even the grave, My wailing is the autumn wind (tsuka mo ugoke waga naku koe wa aki no kaze)

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

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Abstract

塚も動け我が泣聲は秋の風, move, grave-mound: my weeping voice is the autumn wind, is Bashō's own, composed at a memorial in Kanazawa on 5 September 1689 for Isshō 一笑, a tea dealer and poet he had never met, and recorded in his own travel book おくのほそ道. Two earlier witnesses are reported at second hand, neither examined here, an anthology and a book of anecdotes from 1691; an Edo commentary and a legend from 1723 tell of the master offering a variant of the verse a second time, at a stranger's grave. Miyamori, Henderson, Blyth, Shirane, Haldane and Fitzsimons carried it into English, and Blyth heard in it the ancient Hebrew poets.

Overview

The text. The scroll carries 塚も動け我が泣聲は秋の風, and the record carries one text written several ways. The が. The 1702 print writes 我泣聲, read on the 北海道大学 copy's leaf; so do the 1723 雑談集 (我なく声, 我泣声), 潁原's 1932 apparatus (我泣こゑ, 我泣聲), the Meiji anthologies and the 1928 index. Every one of them is read waga naku koe; the が is the reading spelled out, as the annotated editions of 1926, 1935 and 1936 spell it and as the scroll does. 動け / うごけ. The 1702 print and 淡々's first citation write 動け; 淡々's second, at the grave, writes うこけ; 梅丸's commentary, 陸奥鵆 and 潁原's two entries write うごけ. 聲 / 声 / こゑ, and 秋の風 / あきの風, are writings. Shiki's copy of the verse into his 発句類題全集 (1889) and Buson's hand in the 1932 facsimile are the same text. There is no variant of sense; every witness disagrees on nothing but spelling. The meter is five, seven, five: つ・か・も・う・ご・け, わ・が・な・く・こ・え・は, あ・き・の・か・ぜ, with a six-syllable first line, which Fitzsimons marks 6-7-5. The four designs served for this text do not all brush the catalogue's form: three write 動け我が and one writes 塚もうごけわが泣聲は秋の風, kana throughout; the same text in the print's two spellings.

The sense. 梅丸 read it as the truest kind of verse, 眞の句, and set beside it a 古今集 poem in which a man weeping alone at night will not be outdone by the belling deer, and 元政's tears for 西行: grief that is louder than the season and becomes it [1]. Tantan 淡々 read it as the model of an offering, a verse so exactly fitted to its use that the master could offer it twice [2]. Miyamori: what a violent outburst of grief; none but poets of Bashō's genius and sincerity can think of such impressive symbolism [3]. Blyth in 1952: an elegy like Lycidas or Adonais, which seems to have aroused in Bashō a state of mind in which utterly unrelated things are brought together, or rather, are seen connected in a fashion that strongly reminds us of ancient Hebrew poetry, with Psalm 29 beside it, the voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness [4]; and in 1994, against Tennyson's In Memoriam, as the example of the animistic in haiku, a dead man is alive, as alive as the lifeless sun [5]. Shirane files it among the poems of the journey without comment beyond the date [6]. The page's note, that the cursive carries the grief, is a reading of the calligraphy, not of the text; the text's grief is in the imperative and the copula.

The words. 塚 is the grave-mound; も, too, even: the mound as well as the mourners is to be moved. 動け is the imperative, move, shake. 我が泣く聲 is my weeping voice; は marks it as the topic of the line that follows; 秋の風, the autumn wind, the season word. The syntax makes the voice the wind, not like it: my weeping voice is the autumn wind, and it is that wind that is asked to move the mound. As words the line says: Grave, move too: my crying voice is the wind of autumn.

The verse in English. Miyamori translated the verse in 1932 [3], Henderson in 1958 [7]; Blyth followed in 1952 [4] and again in 1994 [5], Shirane in 1998 [6], Haldane in 2006 [8], and Fitzsimons in 2022 [9].

The historical record

1689, the twenty-second of the seventh month. Kanazawa, the memorial for Isshō. By the travel book's own prose and by the two anthologies of 1691 as reported.

1691. 丿松 (ed.), 西の雲, the memorial anthology; Kikaku 其角, 雑談集. 西の雲 prints the verse as 途中吟 by Ebara Taizō 潁原's apparatus [10][11]; Kikaku's 雑談集 tells of it, by Tantan's 1723 citation and by 梅丸, who sends his reader there: 其角が雜談集を讀まば此句の字々に魂のゆきわたれるをしらん, read 其角's 雑談集 and you will know how the soul runs through every character of this verse [12][2][1]. Neither is available here.

1702. Bashō, おくのほそ道, the 井筒屋 print. On the Kanazawa leaf: 大坂よりかよふ商人何處といふ者ありそれが旅宿を共にす / 一笑と云ものは此道にすける名のほのぼの聞えて世に知る人も侍りしに去年の冬早世したりとて其兄追善を催すに / 塚も動け我泣聲は秋の風 / ある草庵にいざなはれて / 秋涼し手毎にむけや瓜茄子 / 途中吟 / あかあかと日は難面もあきの風 [13].

1723. Tantan, 淡々雑談集, twice. First, as a citation: 奥の細道及ひ雑談集にも加賀の金沢一笑と云者早世しける追善に翁の句 塚も動け我なく声ハ秋の風とあり, in おくのほそ道 and in the 雑談集 too there is the master's verse for the memorial of one 一笑 of Kanazawa in Kaga, who died young; then the story of a basket-maker of 駿河府中, 籠作り九兵衛, whose grave the master was led to, where he wrote on a wooden tablet 塚もうこけ我泣声は秋の風 and offered it. The second use is a legend, told of a different dead man in a different province, and its only footing is this book [2].

Edo, undated. 梅丸, 蕉翁發句茜堀, autumn book, a commentary. Under 加州一笑が墓に詣でゝ, visiting 一笑's grave in Kaga: 塚もうごけ我が泣く聲は秋の風 / 眞の句なり。一笑が俳諧に信厚きより此吟あり。其角が雜談集を讀まば此句の字々に魂のゆきわたれるをしらん, a true verse; because 一笑's faith in haikai was deep, this verse came; read 其角's 雑談集 and you will know…; then the 古今集 poem 秋なれば山響むまでなく鹿に我れおとらめや獨りぬる夜は and 元政's account of weeping for Saigyō 西行 on the 天龍 ferry, as the verse's kin. The headnote makes it a grave visit, which the travel book does not say [1].

1774, 1889. Chōmu 蝶夢's 芭蕉翁発句集; Shiki's 発句類題全集. The verse in the eighteenth-century selection [14] and in Shiki's manuscript compilation of 1889 [15], both with the travel book's spelling.

1890–1936. The anthologies and readers. 百家説林 (1890) [16], the 1896 是空俳話 [17], Ōtsuka 大塚's 1903 全集 (一笑追善 塚も動けわが泣聲は秋の風) [18], Andō 安藤's 1906 俳家逸話 with the grave story [19], Satō Kōroku 佐藤紅緑's 1906 作法 [20], Ōmachi Keigetsu 大町桂月's 文章大辞林 (1913, with furigana つかうごけ) [21], Shimada 島田 1927 [22], Katsumine 勝峯 1931 [23], Shida 志田 1926 [24], Fujii Shiei 藤井紫影's 1935 名家俳句集 with the legend in full [25], 西山 1936 (我が泣く聲はあきの風, and the gloss that the wind is the weeper) [26].

1928, 1932. The index and the apparatus. The 1928 俳諧全句索引 lists the verse under ツカモ from 類聚, 奧細, 陸奥 and more, all 塚もうごけ / 塚も動け我泣聲は秋の風 [27]. Ebara's 1932 校註 芭蕉俳句集 prints two entries: under the travel book's headnote, 塚もうごけ我泣こゑは秋の風 (奥の細道・泊船集), and under 途中吟, 塚もうごけ我泣聲は秋の風 (西の雲), with the note ○塚もうごけ——この句雜談集を參照すべし, for this verse see the 雑談集 [11].

The attribution. Bashō's, on the strongest footing a verse can have: it stands in his own travel book, with its occasion in his own prose [13]. The headnote: 一笑と云ものは此道にすける名のほのぼの聞えて世に知る人も侍りしに去年の冬早世したりとて其兄追善を催すに, a man called 一笑, whose name for devotion to this art had reached even me and whom the world knew, had died young the winter before, and his elder brother held a memorial gathering; then the verse; then ある草庵にいざなはれて, invited to a hut, 秋涼し手毎にむけや瓜茄子, and 途中吟, on the road, あかあかと日は難面もあきの風. The date is the twenty-second day of the seventh month of Genroku 2, 5 September 1689, by Shirane's index and Fitzsimons's note; the memorial was at 願念寺 in Kanazawa, where a stone now carries the verse (Fitzsimons) [6][9]. The dead man was Isshō, a tea dealer of Kanazawa and, by the count of 一つ松 (1687), the most prolific poet of Kaga (Shirane, note 45); he died on the sixth day of the eleventh month of Genroku 1, 1688, aged thirty-six (Blyth 1952 [4]; Miyamori's note gives 元祿元年歿 享年三十六 and the years 1652–1688, Fitzsimons 1653–88 [3][9]). Before the book: the memorial anthology 西の雲 (1691, 丿松) carries the verse under the headnote 途中吟 by Ebara's report, and Kikaku's 雑談集 (1691) tells the story, by the 1723 雑談集's report and 梅丸's [10][12][2][1]; neither is available here. The travel book itself was written in 1693–94 and printed in 1702, so the two anthologies are the older witnesses and the book the poet's own.

What is not a source. His friend is the page's word and no witness's: Bashō had never met Isshō, who had hoped to meet him (Fitzsimons, note) [9]; the grief is for a poet known by name. The basket-maker's grave and the tablet are Tantan's legend of 1723 and are told of nobody else before him. 梅丸's headnote makes a grave visit of what the travel book calls a memorial gathering. 1652 and 1653 for Isshō's birth are Miyamori's and Fitzsimons's, and they disagree [3][9].

The verse in English

1932. Asatarō Miyamori, An Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern, Maruzen, Tokyo, page 12, in the introduction. Haijin Isshō no Shi wo Itamu; Tsuka mo ugoke / Waga naku koe wa / Aki no kaze; In Sorrow for the Death of the Haijin Isshō; Oh, grave-mound, move! / My wailing is the autumn wind. Used as the book's example of the season word. The note on Isshō, with his surname 小杉, his death year and his trade, is on page 336, under his own verses [3].

1952. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, volume 3, Summer-Autumn, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, page 409, THE AUTUMN BREEZE. 塚も動け我泣く聲は秋の風 芭蕉; Tsuka mo ugoke waga naku koe wa aki no kaze; Shake, O tomb! / My weeping voice / Is the wind of autumn. With the paragraphs quoted above [4].

1958. Harold G. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku, Doubleday Anchor. Headed At the Grave of His Pupil Isshō, dated 1688: Grave mound, shake too! / My wailing voice— / the autumn wind [7].

1994. R. H. Blyth, The Genius of Haiku, page 78. The same rendering again [5].

1998. Haruo Shirane, Traces of Dreams, Stanford, note 46 to chapter 8. Grave mound, move too! my weeping voice is the autumn wind, with the date in the index [6].

2006. Michael Haldane, in Bashō and the Haikuists, Delphi Classics, 2022. … shake your tomb! / my weeping voice …, with the romaji [8].

2022. Andrew Fitzsimons, Bashō: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Bashō, University of California Press, no. 548. Arouse the gravemound too / the wail of my grief-filled cry / the wind in autumn; Autumn, 1689; the note on 一笑, the memorial at 願念寺 and the stone [9].

Today. The house page carries no English. A rendering has one thing to keep: the mound is told to move too, and the voice does not resemble the wind, it is the wind.

A reading

I read the verse as the travel book frames it: a poet arrives to meet a man who has been dead since winter, and is asked to speak at the memorial. What he says is an order to the grave and an identification of his own voice with the season, and the two are one gesture: if the voice is the wind, the wind can move the mound. 梅丸's kin are right, the belling deer and the tears on the ferry; Blyth's Psalm is righter. The scroll's が is the readers' spelling of what every witness reads and is a fair choice for a stranger's eye.

References

  1. 梅丸『蕉翁發句茜堀』, in 『俳諧註釈集』, 1912 typeset, p. 53. National Diet Library pid 950162, scan 40. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/950162/1/40
  2. 半時庵淡々 Tantan『淡々雑談集』, 1723. National Diet Library pid 2533380, scan 44. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2533380/1/44
  3. Asatarō Miyamori, An Anthology of Haiku Ancient and Modern, Maruzen, Tokyo, 1932, pp. 12 and 336.
  4. R. H. Blyth, Haiku, vol. 3, Summer-Autumn, Hokuseido Press, Tokyo, 1952, p. 409.
  5. R. H. Blyth, The Genius of Haiku, 1994, p. 78.
  6. Haruo Shirane, Traces of Dreams, Stanford University Press, 1998, note 46 to ch. 8, index p. 360.
  7. Harold G. Henderson, An Introduction to Haiku, Doubleday Anchor, 1958, p. 39.
  8. Michael Haldane, in Bashō and the Haikuists, Delphi Classics, collected 2022 (rendering first published 2006).
  9. Andrew Fitzsimons, Bashō: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Bashō, University of California Press, 2022, no. 548.
  10. 丿松 編『西の雲』, memorial anthology, 1691. NIJL WID 1531755.
  11. 潁原退蔵 Ebara Taizō 校註『校註 芭蕉俳句集』, 1932, p. 113. National Diet Library pid 1170439, scan 64. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1170439/1/64
  12. 其角 Kikaku『雑談集』, 1691. NIJL WID 5049.
  13. 松尾芭蕉『おくのほそ道』, 井筒屋 print, 1702. NIJL 国書データベース WID 15725, BID 100000092, canvas 45. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/100000092/manifest
  14. 蝶夢 Chōmu『芭蕉翁発句集』, 1774. National Diet Library pid 2540314.
  15. 正岡子規 写『発句類題全集』, 1889. National Diet Library pid 2586451, scan 16.
  16. 『百家説林』, 1890. National Diet Library pid 993393, scan 232.
  17. 『是空俳話』, 1896. National Diet Library pid 875193, scan 20.
  18. 大塚甲山 Ōtsuka Kōzan 編『芭蕉俳句全集』, 1903. National Diet Library pid 875661, scan 64.
  19. 安藤 Andō Wafū 編『俳家逸話』, 1906. National Diet Library pid 875446, scan 119.
  20. 佐藤紅緑 Satō Kōroku『俳句の作法』, 1906. National Diet Library pid 875594, scan 51.
  21. 大町桂月 Ōmachi Keigetsu『文章大辞林』, 1913. National Diet Library pid 951697, scan 138.
  22. 島田青峰 Shimada Seihō 編『芭蕉俳句紀行全集』, 1927. National Diet Library pid 1194541, scan 48.
  23. 勝峯晋風 Katsumine Shinpū, 1931. National Diet Library pid 1194541, scan 103 (address shared with ref 22 in the record's own bracket; not independently confirmed here, reported).
  24. 志田義秀 Shida Gishū 編『俳文学選』, 明治書院, 1926. National Diet Library pid 947714, scans 60–62. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/947714
  25. 藤井紫影 Fujii Shiei 校『名家俳句集』, 有朋堂, 1935. National Diet Library pid 1259717, scans 86 and 404. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1259717
  26. 西山隆二『受験奥の細道・鶉衣』, 玄鹿洞書院, 1936. National Diet Library pid 1275207, scans 55–57. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1275207
  27. 『俳諧全句索引』, 日本俳書大系刊行会, 1928. National Diet Library pid 1179400, scan 190.

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), 2026-09-06, citations · Claude Sonnet (Anthropic), 2026-09-14, citations — one rendering added — Henderson's 1958 translation, wrongly said absent; one page citation corrected — Shirane's index page corrected to its true printed page; several page images supplied