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| Matsuo Bashō, 1644-1694 |
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| 'Matsushima left poet Basho at a loss for words' - The Asahi Shimbun, 6th January 2004 |
Matsuo Bashō, Japan’s foremost poet
and undisputed master of haiku (or hokku,
as he would have called it), writes that: “Much
praise had already been lavished upon the wonders of the islands of Matsushima.
Yet if further praise is possible, I would like to say that here is the most
beautiful spot in the whole country of Japan ...” – It is a regular conceit
of newspapers and guidebooks alike to claim that Bashō was so stunned by the
beauty of the place that “it rendered him speechless.” Usually what is meant by
this is that, unusually for Bashō, he wrote no poems about the place (at least
no poems that we currently know about). It is unusual because during his life Bashō travelled widely throughout Japan, and frequently wrote poems about
the many places he visited, hence there are many towns which can find a
connection to the nation’s foremost bard – some more famously than others. His
travelling companion, Sora, on the other hand did write a poem while they were
staying in Matsushima; which Bashō includes in his travel journal:
Matsushima ya
Tsuru ni mi wo kare
Hototogisu
-
Sora
Clear voiced cuckoo,
Even you will need
The silver wings of a crane
To span the islands of Matsushima.
(translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa, 1966)
Bashō gives an evocative description
of Matsushima in his journal, but confesses he’s at a loss to distil his
feelings about the place into verse: “The
islands are situated in a bay about three miles wide in every direction and
open to the sea through a narrow mouth on the south-east side. Just as the
River Sekkō in China is made full at each swell of the tide, so is this bay
filled with the brimming water of the ocean, and innumerable islands are
scattered over it from one end to the other. Tall islands point to the sky and
level ones prostrate themselves before the surges of water. Islands are piled
above islands, and islands are joined to islands, so that they look exactly
like parents caressing their children or walking with them arm in arm. The
pines are of the freshest green, and their branches are curved in exquisite
lines, bent by the wind constantly blowing through them. Indeed, the beauty of
the entire scene can only be compared to the most divinely endowed of feminine
countenances, for who else could have created such beauty but the great god of
nature herself? My pen strove in vain to equal this superb creation of divine
artifice.”
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| The Boat from Shiogama |
Like Bashō before me, I arrived by
boat from nearby Shiogama. And the marvellously picturesque effect isn’t much
diminished today either. Shiogama is fairly heavily industrialised with a
hulking great power station overlooking the bay, but rounding the headland the
boat enters a small enclave of rocky islets – each sculpted by the wind and the
waves into remarkable shapes, and each is capped by a scrub of artfully ragged
pines, reminiscent of the best bonsai displays. Fast fishing boats raced past
us, heading back into land, whilst yachts and dinghies with elegant white sails
glided silently past in the opposite direction. Hugging close to some of the islands
and visible just above the waves there are great long rows of wooden stilts on
which oysters and seaweed are traditionally farmed in these clean waters.
The dramatic process of geological
formation of this stretch of the coast is quite interesting in itself. The bay
is underlain by a seabed laid down during the Holocene era, made of sedimentary
clays which sit over a Miocene era bedrock of limestone. It’s thought that the
bay itself and the islands along with it were formed as the result of a massive
landslide which sent a huge portion of this part of the coastline into the sea.
Hence the age of the marine clay strata suggests the landslide occurred as far
back as the early to middle Holocene, roughly some 6000 years ago (read more
here). It’s also thanks to this topographical configuration that Matsushima was
largely spared from the full devastation of a more recent massive natural
disaster – the awful tsunami which struck in March 2011 following on from the
Tohoku Earthquake, which also damaged the nuclear power station a little
further south along the coast at Fukushima.
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| Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa (British Museum) |
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| Statue of Masamune Date at nearby Sendai |
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| Zuiganji |
Godaidojima is a small island,
named after a sacred hall built there again by Date Masamune in 1609, which
houses five statues of the Mikkyo, Buddhist deities. These statues are only
unveiled once every 33 years – the next occasion will be in 2039. The
footbridge which connects this island to the mainland is curiously constructed
like an arched ladder with large gaps between the beams underfoot. It’s thought
that this was deliberately done because the island was meant to be off-limits
to women (happily, not so today), and so this design would have made it more difficult
for them to cross in their geta –
which are a kind of wooden sandal set upon raised stilts, nowadays mainly worn
by geisha as part of their traditional costume in Kyoto. That’s not to say geta weren’t worn by men sometimes too –
in fact I was once given a pair to wear when staying at a traditional ryokan in Izu. They take a bit of
getting used to, as they are quite disconcerting at first, but once you get the
hang of them you can clack along on them at a fair old pace!
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| Godaidojima |
Fukuurajima is a much larger
island, reached by crossing a much longer bridge (252 metres long) which is one
of the most picturesque aspects of Matsushima – often featured on picture postcards
of the place. The island also has a couple of shrine buildings, one of which is
dedicated to the goddess Benten, but it is mainly known as a kind of natural
botanical garden, as it is home to some 250 species of plants.
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| Benten-do |
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| Fukuurajima |
Oshima is much more secluded and
has a more mysterious air to it. It was once a place of retreat for Buddhist
priests and monks. There are many time-worn Buddhist carvings in the rock-faces
across the island, some are thought to be memorial stones. But there are also a
couple of stelae dedicated to our old friends, Bashō and Sora, inscribed with
their poems. There’s also a longish foot tunnel which is also said to have been
carved by hand too. On the morning I visited the island was suitably deserted,
hence it seemed a very peaceful and meditative place removed from the bustle of
the town. Just the quiet sounds of the water all around and the fresh scent of
pine trees filling the air.
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| Monuments to Matsuo Bashō and Sora |
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| Oshima |
There is a story relating to
another of Japan’s most famous poets, named Saigyō, who also liked to roam the length
and breadth of the country some 500 years before Matsuo Bashō. It is said that
whilst Saigyō was en route to
Matsushima he chanced to meet a young Zen monk meditating under a pine tree not
far from the town. Their conversation evolved into an elaborate debate
regarding the tenets of Zen Buddhism which ended with Saigyō eventually
conceding defeat. And so, immediately thereafter, feeling rather, disconsolate
Saigyō gave up on his plan to visit Matsushima and passed on by. – Personally
I’d say it’s better to avoid disappointment and borrow a blank leaf from Matsuo
Bashō’s notebook and be sure to see the town and its bay of many islands for
yourself. It’s a place where literature, history, and nature all combine in the
subtle poetry of the place itself.
Also on 'Waymarks'
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