Enlightenment · East Asia · Culture

1694

Matsuo Basho's Narrow Road Posthumously Published

1694

Three years after the wandering poet's death, Matsuo Basho's masterwork Oku no Hosomichi - The Narrow Road to the Deep North - appeared in its final form. Part travelogue, part meditation on impermanence, its spare haiku and luminous prose elevated a walking tour through rural Japan into one of the great spiritual journeys in world literature.