Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory, and the Poetry of Basho

by Haruo Shirane

Basho (1644-94) is perhaps the best known Japanese poet in both Japan and the West, and yet there has been remarkably little serious scholarship in English on his achievement. This book is intended to address that virtual void by establishing the ground for critical discussion and reading of a central figure in Japanese culture, placing the works of Basho and his disciples in the context of broader social change. Intended for both the general reader and the specialist, Traces of Dreams examines the issues of language, landscape, cultural memory, and social practice in early modern Japan through a fundamental reassessment of haikai ―popular linked verse that eventually gave birth to modern haiku ―particularly that of Basho and his disciples. The author analyzes haikai not only as a specific poetic genre but as a mode of discourse that emerged from the profound engagement between the new commoner culture that came to the fore in the seventeenth century cities and the earlier traditions, which haikai parodied, transformed, and translated into the vernacular. Traces of Dreams explores the manner in which haikai both appropriated and recast the established cultural and poetic associations embodied in nature, historical objects, and famous places―the landscape that preserved the cultural memory and that became the source of authority as well as the contested ground for haikai re-visioning and re-mapping.

Genres: Poetry, Japan

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[meeners · Rating 5 out of 5]

a remarkable reassessment of bashou and his poetry within the larger context of haikai developments in kinsei japan. the close readings of the kasen in winter days are particularly exceptional. (the book's emphasis on intertextuality is also pretty hawt.)

[Kristen Lindquist · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stimulating, engrossing academic book for students of Japanese poetry and especially the haiku form.

[Alexander Curran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Traces of Dreams looks at language, landscape, cultural memory, and social practice within early modern Japan through a fundamental reassessment of haikai—popular linked verse that eventually gave birth to modern haiku—particularly that of Basho and his disciples.

Haruo Shirane analyses haikai dually as specific poetic genre and as a mode of discourse that emerged from the profound engagement between the new commoner culture that came to the fore in the seventeenth century cities and the earlier traditions, which haikai parodied, transformed, and translated into the vernacular.

Traces of Dreams explores the manner in which haikai both appropriated and recast the established cultural and poetic associations embodied in nature, historical objects, and famous places—the landscape that preserved the cultural memory and that became the source of authority as well as the contested ground for haikai re-visioning and re-mapping.

Overall a beautiful examination into the enriched imagination, memory and vision, that comes through the power of poetical Basho with a worthy explanation, detailed account, of significance full of cultural meaning and poise.

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE book for understanding Bashō. A wonderful corrective to the Orientalizing misreadings from the turn of the last century, especially the hyper-investment in Bashō as a haiku poet or a "Zen master." Wonderful scholarship, well-written, unusually enlightening.