"Days and months are travellers of eternity, and so too are the years that pass by."

Okay, I'm ashamed to say that before reading this translation of Narrow Road to the Interior I had never before heard the rumor that Bashô was a ninja -- and that he was on a mission during the Narrow Road journey through the northlands. He was, after all, born to a decayed samurai family in Iga, that hotbed of documentable ninja activity, and apparently there was something hinky going on in Sendai around the time he was passing through.

It seems the rumor has, alas, been solidly refuted by scholarship. But still, it does raise the question:* would a poetry-diary written by a ninja have, by definition, a Ninja Replacement Score of zero?

Also, haiku are so much easier to read after bushwhacking through classical Heian poetry. Unfolding the layers takes no less work, but the language is not only more modern, but spare rather than mannered.


* I mean, aside from the other question of why aren't there more haiku in Naruto?

---L.