Bashō's Garden
This is a woodblock print by Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858), entitled "Bashō's
Hermitage and Camellia Hill on the Kanda Aqueduct at Sekiguchi." The rice fields
on the left bank (looking northwest) are where Waseda University is located today
("Waseda" means "early rice field"). The garden on the right is called "Bashōen,"
or "Bashō's Garden," because the great haiku poet Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694)
lived there for a time. The pond in the garden is, according to local lore,
the one that inspired Bashō's most famous haiku (indeed perhaps the most
famous of all haiku poems), "The Old Pond." There is a stone next to the pond
on which is engraved the haiku in Bashō's calligraphy.
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The old pond
A frog leaps in
The sound of water. |
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| Read Henry D. Smith's
description of this print. |
Wooden image of Bashō, Tokugawa period.
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