The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches

Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972. First Penguin Ed., Fourth printing. 12mo with green and blue pictorial wraps; 167 pages: illustrations, maps; 18 cm Near fine(-); one page is dog-eared and wraps have slightest edgewear; else clean and tight. Paperback. ISBN: 9780140441857, 0140441859

Out of print thus. Edo Period poet Bashō (1644-1694), considered "one of the greatest geniuses in Japanese literature, and five years after his death, the last of his Major Anthologies, Zoku Saru Mino (A Coat for a Monkey, Continued), was published, being the collection of the poems he wrote in the last few years. Fortunately, however, his works survived him, and through them we can enter into the inner depths of this great man. Hois travel sketches, in particular, show him at his best or on his way to his best, for they are, as I have already pointed out, the products of his ripest years. Now the reader is invited to read them in an English translation."--Introduction

Contents:, The records of a weather-exposed skeleton, A visit to the Kashima shrine, The records of a travel-worn satchel, A visit to Sarashina village, The narrow road to the deep North, Language