Nameless Mountain ~ The Humor of Bashō

Spring is here and with spring comes spring mist. Bashō gave us a lovely image of this some time ago during one of his walking trips.

春なれや名もなき山の薄霞
Haru nare ya na mo naki yama no usugasumi[1]

spring is here—
the nameless mountains
covered with mist
—Bashō[2]

This is from his travel journal Nozarashi Kiko; Bashō was around Nara when he wrote it, in the year 1685. I know the woodblock up there shows Mount Fuji and not a mountain near Nara, but finding a woodblock print that features any mountain other than Mt Fuji is a challenge.

Now—the mountains around Nara, including Mount Kaguyama (香具山), Mount Miminashi (耳成山), and Mount Unebi (畝傍山),[3] are in fact some of the most famous mountains in all of Japanese myth and classical poetry, so they were hardly nameless. Classical poetry was forever referring to them, such as in the second poem from the Hyakuin Isshu:

春過ぎて夏来にけらし白妙の
衣ほすてふ天の香具山
haru sugite natsu ki ni kerashi shirotae no
koromo hosu chō ama-no-kaguyama

spring seems gone
and summer is come again—
this is when, they say,
the pure white robes are dried
on heavenly mount kagu
—Empress Jitō

Mt Kaguyama is actually considered the most sacred of all the mountains around Nara because, according to the Kojiki, when Amaterasu was hiding in her cave and the world was as a result covered with darkness and Ame no Uzume danced to lure her out, Ame no Uzume was holding a bamboo twig from Mt Kaguyama.[4]

Bashō may have been having a bit of fun by calling these well-known mountains “nameless”. That is fitting with his sense of humor. Then again, he might have been pointing out that they are so famous that they don’t even need to be named. Or perhaps it was a deeper commentary on the transient nature of fame and the timeless beauty of nature itself. You decide!

At any rate, mist is a common enough feature of spring and we can easily picture a scene in our heads similar to the one he is describing. Similar to the scene that first woodblock print shows.