Comparing Oku no Hosomichi and Tosa Nikki

1466 Words3 Pages

“The one I knew – If only she had been an ageless pine!

What need then of these grievous farewells?”

-Tosa nikki(935)

In Japan, the pine tree(matsu) is an important symbol of longevity as well as a symbol that appears very often in Japanese poetry(waka) and Japanese literature as a double meaning, one being the literal meaning of a pine tree, and the other meaning to wait or to long for, as the word matsu written in different kanji can mean 'to wait'. Like a pine tree, Japanese travel journals are eternal, providing amazingly well-detailed glimpses into the travel and life experiences of the writers of these diaries to modern readers long after these authors have passed on. Furthermore, these travel journals can also be compared to a flower pressed into the pages of a book, which reveals its beauty and unique qualities each time it is looked upon. Two examples of such travel journals that were very famous in Japanese literary history are Tosa nikki, written by Ki no Tsurayuki during the Heian period in the year 935, and Oku no hosomichi(The Narrow Road to the Deep North) written by the acclaimed haiku and renga(linked verse) poet Matsuo Bashō from the spring of 1689 to December of 1691 during the Tokugawa period. Despite the separation of these two works by over seven hundred years, these works have many similarities, such as the use of poetry as a way to show the thoughts and feelings of the people on the journey and the detailed accounts of the travels of the authors and their companions. This paper will also describe the differences between these two travel journals.

Although Tosa nikki and Oku no hosomichi are similar in the fact that they both detail journeys to distant areas of Japan, their primary differences lie i...

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... same literary genre, are both travel journals which stand on their own as unique works which both involve journeys to different places and for different reasons. On the other hand, Oku no hosomichi and Tosa nikki differ from each other in the overall mood of the individual journals, as Oku no hosomichi is more lighthearted while Tosa nikki has more of a somber mood due to the tragic loss of the governor's daughter in the story.

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Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai, First. Introduction to

Classic Japanese Literature. Fourth edition.

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