ba · shō · an — the banana-leaf hermitage
Bashō-an
芭蕉庵
A hermitage for slow words.
One narrow path off the loud avenues of the internet: a small hut devoted to haiku, Japanese literature, and the art of travelling slowly through language.
the old pond —
a frog leaps in,
the sound of water
Matsuo Bashō, 1686
Named after a torn leaf
In 1680 the poet Matsuo Bashō moved into a small hut by the Sumida river. A disciple planted a bashō — a banana tree — beside the door. It grew tall; its wide leaves tore easily in the wind and bore no fruit in the cold. Bashō loved it precisely for that beautiful uselessness, and took its name as his own.
Bashō-an is built in that spirit: a quiet place for reading and writing that ripens slowly, tears a little in the weather, and refuses to shout.
Fukagawa, Edo — 1680
three ways
What grows here
俳句
haiku
Haiku
Seventeen sounds, one season, the whole world. Close readings of Bashō, Buson, Issa and Chiyo-ni — and the patient craft of writing your own.
紀行
kikō
The Road
Travel writing in Bashō's footsteps: the narrow road to the deep north, station by station, with maps, diaries and the occasional detour.
季語
kigo
Seasons
A living almanac of season-words, from first frost to returning geese — the old calendar still ticking inside the new one.
from the travel diaries
The months and days are the travellers of a hundred ages, and the years that come and go are travellers too.
Oku no Hosomichi — The Narrow Road to the Deep North, 1689
letters
When the lamp is lit
The hut is still under construction. Leave an address and we will send word — a few letters a year, each one worth reading. Nothing else, ever.