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Matsuo Basho's decision to leave his burgeoning practice as a "marker" in Nihonbashi in the winter of 1680 and move across the river to take up a more solitary and frugal life in Fukagawa has always mystified scholars. Most see his act as evidence of a new "seriousness" of purpose, a desire to pursue spiritual rather than material goals. However, when viewed as a professional choice, Basho's move was a precedented act with implications readily understandable to those in the world of haikai society. That he stopped working as a "marker" did not mean that he stopped practicing his profession. Indeed, it is argued here, his action was as an instance of what those in the highest ranks of a profession are always wont to do: to test their competence in a wider arena, and by so doing to claim a transcendent status for themselves and their occupations.
To Margaret. . . the station of King's Cross had always suggested Infinity.
E. M. Forster, Howard's End
MANY THINGS ABOUT THE CAREER Of Matsuo Basho seem remarkable. Not the least of these is his decision in the winter of 1680, at the age of only thirty-seven, to abandon his literary practice in Nihonbashi and move across the river to Fukagawa, literally opting out of haikai "high society" in favor of a life both less conspicuous and less materially prosperous. But should we take that act truly to signify Basho's realization that, in the words of Ueda Makoto, fame "was not what he wanted"especially when we remember that fame was what he got?1 In this paper I will attempt to think through this question by examining Basho not merely as a poet, in the inevitably romantic sense of that appellation, but as a haikai professional.2 Among other things, this may help us to understand some of his activities-particularly his activities after 1680-in new and interesting ways.
But what does it mean to see Basho as a professional? A useful approach to that question may be to look at the careers of two earlier poets, both of whom prefigure Basho in some ways. The first, Shotetsu (1381-1459), had no direct, documentable influence on Basho's work, while the second, Ino Sogi (1421-1502), was clearly a model to whom...