Narrow Roads to
Inner Lands Scene Six (Bashō
and the Chestnut Tree)
Japanese Chestnut Tree
The main
speech in this scene about the tree is entirely a creative invention
though I feel it embodies an attitude that is found in other
statements about reality by Bashō.
In the original his statement is an elaboration of the statement that
tradition regards it as a holy tree.
The chestnut is a
holy tree, for the Chinese ideograph is Tree placed directly below
West, the direction of the holy land. The Priest Gyōki
is said to have used it for a walking stick and the chief support for
his house. Translation Nobuyuki Yuasa.
Chestnut Tree blossoms
Unohana
flowers
are profuse white blossoms of the plant deutzia,
varieties of which are found in China and Japan.
The tiny white flowers, deutzia, popularly called
unohana,
flower in the month of U, the fourth month, as they bloom at the time
of rice planting. Yoshiko
Dykstra
Unohana
flowers
The Japanese
Chestnut Tree, castanea
crenata, is
an oriental form of the Chestnut Tree somewhat more delicate than its
western counterpart
though capable of growing to considerable size.
SCENE SIX
On the road.
Bright light. Clear day. A stylized chestnut tree in the
background. Enter Bashō and Sora walking.
BASHŌ
So after many days
of lonely wandering
We've passed the
barrier gate at last. Let us
Now rest in cool
shade's invitation, here granted
As gift by this wide
ancient chestnut tree
For weary guests who
wander endless roads.
(Bashō and
Sora sit.)
SORA
Yes, it has seemed
so many days of long
And solitary,
footsore plodding-on
Since leaving
Kurobane, that it seems
Indeed an endless
road that we are travelling.
BASHŌ
But life, you know,
is also so: a wide
And endless road, a
journeying that starts
Before the birth of
memory and ends
With mystery of
passing from this world.
SORA
But why, dear
teacher, did you have to leave
Your house and
friends and fine success in Edo
To take to the
changing danger of the road?
BASHŌ
What is important is
to place the mind
Within the world of
true, high understanding
And in returning to
the everyday
Seek beauty’s
truth, thus realizing this-
That all we do and
find has bearing on
That primal
consciousness which is the core
That we call poetry.
Now it may be
Possession of the
cosiness of place
Can lull us to a
comfort-loving sleep.
And so I felt I had
to cast away
My old spot,
shedding habit's self to venture
Upon the
unpredictability
Of life. At first I
clung to memory
Of home, but slowly
I am shedding all
The dead attachments
to the heavy past -
Much like an old
tree losing leaves in autumn.
SORA
Well, passing
Shirakawa marks a point
Of deeper
penetration towards the north.
BASHŌ
That's true. And
going through that gate I found,
In truth, the first
of times, since we set out
Some sense of true
composure and I thought
Of ageing travellers
who burn with strong
Desire to write home
to friends. And thus
My mind grew calmer,
more detached, resigned
To meet and greet
whatever shall arrive.
SORA (rising)
Well, for today the
day seems fine and clear.
BASHŌ
And truly, in this
presence of the present,
It is most beautiful
to walk on here,
By trees thick-laden
with their new-grown leaves,
The faint sound of a
far wind in our ears,
The summer's vision
here before our eyes.
SORA
This chestnut tree
is rich with clustered green
And restful shade- a
bounty of new leaves.
It calls to mind the
road to Shirakawa
Where bountiful,
fresh life was shown by all
The bushes of white
flowers there spreading in
Their thousands by
the wayside till it seemed
The earth was spread
with wrongly-seasoned snow.
According to
accounts the ancients dressed
In their best
clothes to pass the barrier gate;
But I could only
decorate my head
With those white
blossoms - my only gala clothes.
BASHŌ
You wrote, if I
recall, a verse on this.
SORA
Yes, master Bashō,
that is so. I wrote-
White
unohana
Flowers
in my hair- dressed for
Passing’s
ancient rite.
BASHŌ
And so we pushed on
further towards the north.
SORA
Yes, then we crossed
the Abukuma River-
Mount Aizu on the
left and to the right
Iwaki, Soma and
Miharu villages.
BASHŌ
Then on we went, on
past the Mirror Pond,
Which on our visit
only showed grey sky,
Until we came to
Sukagawa where
We stayed with Tōkyu
making verse and now
In all the flowering
of fields and plains
This single chestnut
tree's a sanctuary
Of peaceful rustling
and of shadowed coolness.
SORA
And
so it is - a welcome shade- this tree.
(Sora
sits down.)
BASHŌ
Tradition
holds it is a holy tree.
(Bashō
rises)
Yet every tree that
rises from good earth
Is sacred in the
silence of true seeing.
For here there is
the many-seasoned trunk
Supporting all, the
very growth of patience;
Beneath’s the hold
of roots that drinks from darkness.
Above the branchings
reach out towards sun's light.
In spring, from buds
upon bare-wintered twigs,
Burst forth fresh
leaves of longer days. The tree,
Between the earth
and sky, in-weaves their powers
In long-enduring,
life-renewing strength.
A single tree shares
in all earth and draws
From sun and all the
weathers of the sky -
From soil, from
rain, from air, from warmth, from light.
And even lives in
shifting moon and stars.
It speaks of
streaming life that reaches out
Into the vision of
the heavens' vastness.
Like
many miracles of every day,
The
tree in truth is barely seen. We do
Not
truly pause to see the greater real;
So busy are we with
each day's small purpose,
We never stop and
stand and really see.
Bashō sits,
takes out writing materials; he pauses, then writes.)
Ah, the
chestnut grows
In its
magnificence - yet
Seen by almost
none.
(They pause.)
BASHŌ
But we must rise.
Our footsteps cannot cease,
But needs must carry
us along the roads
From Sukagawa ever
further onward
To Rapid's Head and
Iizuka town.
We must keep onward,
northward-bound.
(Bashō and
Sora rise and exit. Lights fade.)
