Carpe Diem #1629 Kumano Kodo Pilgrimage ... the East route

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

Welcome at a new episode in our journey straight through the Kii peninsula were we are on the Kumano Kodo Pilgrimage. As I told you earlier the Kumano Kodo is not just one route, but five different routes and today I love to follow the East route better known as Iseji the Eastern route to Kumano.

Let me tell you a little bit more about this Eastern route: The Iseji route runs along the east coast of the Kii Peninsula between Ise-jingu Shrine and the Kumano Sanzan. The use of this trail rose dramatically in the Edo period (1603-1868) with the increasing number of pilgrims to the Ise-jingu Shrine. After paying homage in Ise, devotees would continue on the Iseji route to Kumano. To prevent erosion from heavy rains, extensive sections were paved with picturesque cobblestones. This route has a diversity of mountain passes, bamboo forests, terraced rice fields, and beaches.

In the Edo period lived a haiku poet who we all know, Matsuo Basho (1644-1694). In the last ten years of his life Basho went on several journeys and one of them was a journey to the Ise-jingu Shrine. So let us look at a few haiku by Basho about the Ise shrine.

Ise-jingu Shrine (also known as Ise Grand Shrine)

from what tree's 
blossoms I know not:
such fragrance

© Basho (Tr. Barnhill)


month's end, no moon:
a thousand year cedar
embraced by a windstorm

© Basho (Tr. Barnhill)

These haiku are written during Basho's visits to the Ise shrines. He didn't actually used the name of the shrine, but in these haiku we see a Shinto touch, because (as you know) Ise shrine was a Shinto temple.

Ise Grand Shrine is one of the renown Shinto temples that are part of the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage and it's the most important Shinto Shrine.

Well ... this episode is NOW OPEN for your submissions and will remain open until March 25th at noon (CET). I will try to publish our new episode later on.

Carpe Diem #874 Rainhat Island; since the cherry blossoms

Dear Haijin, visitors and travelers,

I have read wonderful haiku this first week of our journey with Basho and that makes me proud ... you are all very gifted poets and I am happy that I may be your host here ... the joy of creating CDHK I cannot explain ...

This month we arer on our way together with Basho and his companion Sora to find the deeper meaning of life, spiritual life, and I hope we will come closer to enlightenment while traveling to the deep north.

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Passing through the castle towns of Abumizuri and Shiroishi, I arrived at the province of Kasajima (Rainhat Island), where I asked the way to the mound of Lord Sanekata of the Fujiwara family. I was told that I must turn right in the direction of the villages of Minowa and Kasajima visible at the foot of the mountains in the distance, and that the mound was still there by the side of a shrine, buried in deep grass. I wanted to go that way, of course, but the muddy road after the early rain of the wet season and my own weakness stopped me. The names of the two villages were so befitting to the wet season with their echoes of raincoat and umbrella that I wrote:

Rainhat Island—
where did you say it was?
muddy roads in May

© Basho (Tr. Donald Keene)

 I stopped overnight at Iwanuma.

My heart leaped with joy when I saw the celebrated pine tree of Takekuma, its twin trunks shaped exactly as described by the ancient poets. I was immediately reminded of the priest Noin who had grieved to find upon his second visit this same tree cut down and thrown into the River Natori as bridge-piles by the newly-appointed governor of the province. This tree had been planted, cut, and replanted several times in the past, but just when I came to see it myself, it was in its original shape after a lapse of perhaps a thousand years, the most beautiful shape one could possibly think of for a pine tree. The poet Kyohaku wrote as follows at the time of my departure to express his good wishes for my journey:

Credits: Takekuma Pine

the Takekuma Pine:
show it to him,
late-blooming cherries

 © Kyohaku (Tr. David Landis Barnhill)

The following poem I wrote was, therefore, a reply:

since the cherry blossoms,
I was longing to see the Twin-Pine
three months have passed

© Basho (Tr. Chèvrefeuille)

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I am in the nightshift and I hadn't taken my notes with me, so in this episode I have used translations by others instead of Jane Reichhold.

This episode is open for your submissions tonight at 7.00 PM (CET) and will remain open until December 9th at noon (CET). I will publish our next episode, iris leaves; summer grass, later on.