The Narrow Road to Oku

In the account which he named The Narrow Road to Oku, Basho makes a journey lasting 150 days, in which he travels, on foot, a distance of 600 ri. This was three hundred years ago, when the average distance covered by travelers was apparently 9 ri per day, so it is clear that Basho, who was forty years old at the time, possessed a remarkably sturdy pair of walking legs. Nowadays with the development of all sorts of means of transportation, travel is guaranteed to be pleasant and convenient in every respect, so it’s almost impossible for us to imagine the kind of journey Basho undertook, "drifting with the clouds and streams," and "lodging under trees and on bare rocks." During my countless re-readings of The Narrow Road to Oku, I would bear that in mind, and the short text, which takes up less than 50 pages even in the pocket-book edition, would strike me as much longer than that, and I would feel truly awed by Basho’s 2,450-kilometer journey.