Travels Sponsored by the Fear of Mortality

Kobayashi Issa’s journal “Journal of my Father’s Last Days” is an exploration into the family dynamic and the effects it can have on behaviors and memories. Whereas Basho’s “Journal of Bleached Bones” is a physical journey that is shaped by an apprehension of mortality. Both of these journals have death as a central driving force for these trips. For both authors, growth only comes after facing their fears of death and moving past it. Both are also very introspective without much insight or concern for those around them.

“Journals of my Father’s Last Days” is a journey that is also a retreat into the past. In it a man who had been driven from his home by his father returns to care for him in the last month before he dies. The very first sentence of the passage signifies a shift that will remain for the remainder of Issa’s time at his father’s house, a type of regression. His father is worried that Issa, an adult, will become an orphan and not be able to support himself. This means that either he had been supporting Issa financially in the city all this time, or that he still saw his son as a child. This is a common scenario when family members reconvene, they begin to revert to the social dynamics of the past.

After his father divides his estate between his two sons, Issa is disappointed that his half-brother Senroku seems upset with his two rice fields and blames it on “greed, perversity and guile”. In this section, it seems that Issa has not given a full accounting of the truth. For instance, he doesn’t describe what he’ll be receiving with his father’s death or even if earlier promises had been made instead. From the notes, it seems that Issa would receive the ancestral home, a home that he hadn’t lived in for 25 years, where the son who had would be sent away. This would understandably make anyone upset and if Issa had thought it through he might have been able to empathize with his brother. However, Issa has essentially returned to a home that had evolved for years without him, but assumed he understood how their lives must have been. He assumes that his brother must be a disappointment to his father, but nonetheless is able to have him obey his suggestion to sleep beside his father’s bedside in case he passes in the night. This suggests that Senroku understood filial piety and might also be feeling pressured into a role he hadn’t assumed in quite some time.

His assumptions eventually led him to overstepping his bounds. Feeling unsure if his stepmother would properly take care of his father after they had an argument, Issa took it upon himself to send Senroku alone to get medicine, enraging his father. The father’s comment that “even you slight me” draws a parallel between Issa and his stepmother, suggesting that both arguments were similar in nature. This would mean that, as much as Issa might reject the idea, he did not return to a dysfunctional household, but one that had been burdened with the stress of a dying loved one. This is further suggested by the father’s rage at sending his youngest son away if even for a little while. Looking at the text from this perspective paints Issa as still immature and hanging onto his bitter memories of the past. In fact, both father and son made choices that they now regret. For the father it was sending his son to be apprenticed at 14 to avoid having to address the conflict between his wife and son, and for Issa it was for traveling from place to place but never returning home for a visit. This adds to the image of a man unwilling to grow beyond or face his past.

Issa also acts like a man unable to see outside of his own concerns, as shown when his father asks for sake instead of water. He refuses because the doctor had said such things would be bad for him, and both his step-mother and brother stay silent on the matter. It is only when an acquaintance mentions that if he’s dying, it would be cruel to deny him his wish that they speak up in their father’s defense. Issa, since he already has uncharitable thoughts towards them, recounts this as if they were just waiting for their chance to undermine him. At this point he doesn’t consider that maybe they too were concerned with his well being. In his bitter thoughts,he took their open concern for him as an attempt to hasten his death, when it could also be seen as comforting him on his final journey. Issa does not seem able to fully accept that the reason he came back home was to pay his last respects and is still clinging to childish hopes that somehow his father can be saved. Only when it was too late did he bemoan the fact that he had refused his father a final proper meal, still trying to prolong the duration of his father’s life, rather than the quality.

In his father’s final moments, Issa saw himself as useless and incapable to even remove the mucus from his father’s throat. In the moments after death, he was once again an aimless wanderer, signifying how little he had grown from the time he was 14 and only now that his past was gone, could he mature into adulthood. He realizes belatedly that death cannot be fought against and sees his past self’s attempts to do so as folly. With these newly opened eyes, he’s able to see the grief of the stepmother and brother as genuine, even if he can’t understand their previous actions.

Basho’s “Journal of Bleached Bones in a Field” at first glance reads as a travel journal of various places he went to and his thoughts and poetry about them. Looking deeper, it seems to be about a man looking at the end of his life and deciding to complete his bucket list. The journey begins with Basho leaving his “ramshackle hut” and not bringing any of his belongings. So he is signifying that he is not setting out for material goods or comfort, but rather experiences. He mentions that bleached bones have been on his mind and how the cold winds pierce his heart, a clear allusion to the influence his own mortality is having on him. As a sign of his fading health, he mentions a companion, Chiri, tasked with caring for him. This also shows that even though he lives in seclusion, he is not cut off from the world and is not without human connections.

After travelling along the Fuji river for a while he comes across a crying, abandoned child and shows himself to be either without empathy or desensitized to suffering. He mentally assumes that this child will die shortly and yet casually tosses him some food so his own conscience can be appeased. Even his words about not blaming parents but accepting his fate not only don’t help the child, but for a boy of two years old, probably wouldn’t even be understood. Thus his statement is only for his benefit as he quickly moves on. He gives as much attention to this moment as he does his horse eating flowers on the side of the road.

After arriving at the Ise temple and settling there for over a week, he is once again struck in the heart as he contemplates his advanced age. The fact that he mentions the age of the cedar tree suggests that the impermanence of his own existence is ever with him.

Even though it is not certain, it seems that part of his pilgrimage had to do with a family reunion at the home of his parents. It’s a reasonable assumption since it would seem odd if every one of his siblings never left home until well into their dotage. Unlike in Issa’s case, there appears to be no strife among themselves. Instead, they all take the time to speak on how much has changed and yet they are all still alive to meet together. Their comparing his eyebrows to Urashima Taro is more than just an acknowledgement that he has grown old, it also has the added meaning that, like Urashima, it happened in the blink of an eye.

After reminiscing with his family, he travels to Chiri’s hometown which he describes as consoling but without any specifics of what they did there or any information of Chiri’s family. He quickly moves on to the Taima Temple on Mount Futagami, and his main impression is of a thousand year old pine tree. He also connects the trees’ long life to its connection to Buddhism, another allusion to his concern for his own future after death made even more pronounced when paired with his following haiku about whether monks are truly reborn. After leaving his friend behind, he continues to travel and visit famous sites. Rarely does he show any interest in human interactions unless it’s in relation to his own relationship with death, such as when he receives word of the death of an acquaintance or meeting with an old friend.Here he describes their lives as existing between sakura blossoming, another hint at just how short life can seem. Near the end of his journey he has come to accept and not fear his bleached bones. He realizes that he is not dead yet and can still have new experiences. A large part of his more mature outlook comes from seeing the unchanging persistence of nature. Such as a when he states;

dew trickles down,

in it I would try to wash away

the dust of the floating world.

This, and his constant reference to the autumn winds are attempts to come to terms that he too will die and this is a journey to leave behind regrets. All of the stops on his trip, from old temples to famous grave sites, read as places he had meant to see before and yet put it off. The irony is that once he returns home, he ends his journal on a reminder to fulfill a menial task. This might mean that even though he has a new appreciation for his remaining time, not everyday will be an adventure, nor does it need to be.