Basho (1644 1694) is the most famous Haiku poet of Japan. He made his living as a teacher and writer of Haiku and is celebrated for his many travels around Japan, which he recorded in travel journals. This translation of his most mature journal, Oku-No-Hosomichi, details the most arduous part of a nine-month journey with his friend and disciple, Sora, through the backlands north of the capital, west to the Japan Sea and back toward Kyoto. More than a record of the journey, Basho s journal is a poetic sequence that has become a center of the Japanese mind/heart. Ten...