Introduction

Poetry album:
In the Wake of Basho.
Bestiary in the Rock Garden
Book by Yury Lobo
http://www.stihi.ru/2013/05/13/10607
This book is available on Amazon

Из Басё Цикл Бестиарий в саду камней. Книга
http://www.stihi.ru/2014/09/13/8946
Эту книгу в авторском переводе на английский язык можно
купить на Амазоне


Introduction

 

Poetry album " In the Wake of Basho, Bestiary in the Rock Garden " is written on behalf of the terminally ill  errant samurai Haruki Okami (1621-1695) (1*), -  a great admirer of the poetry of Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)(2*) and William Shakespeare (1564-1616). He goes on a pilgrimage ( musha shugyo)(9*) to the places of the Japan's greatest poet last journey, and  ends his life by committing  kanshi (  a ritual suicide))(3*) on November 28, 1695 in Osaka, exactly one year after the great poet found his death there.
 
     Not much is known of Okami. He was born in a family of an impoverished samurai on Kyushu Island and received the initial education and upbringing in keeping with the spirit of traditional Shintoism and Buddhism, however, at the age of 16 years old he was baptized as a Catholic together with his father and other members of the family, having received a Christian name Jorge. Later on, for his carriage and bravery, the Portuguese Jesuit monks gave him the nickname
Lobo (this is his Japanese last name Okami translated into Portuguese directly, which means “wolf”), and Jorge Lobo (or George Lobo) became his new Christian name and also his pen name. He was an agemate and companion-in-arms of Amakusa Shiro (1621- 1638)(4*) – the spiritual leader of the revolt of the Catholic Christians in Shimabara. After suppression of the revolt and deaths of all the rebels, Okami, who had miraculously escaped, managed to run away to the Portuguese colony Macao (5*), where he lived over half a century and practiced Oriental medicine. In particular, he was engaged in acupuncture and treatment with herbal infusions, as several generations of his maternal ancestors did before him. In addition to the Portuguese his patients, neighbors, and friends were other Catholics of various origins: Japanese and Chinese, and also English Catholics escaped to Macao because of the religious persecution of the British Crown. The English Catholics introduced Okami to the works of William Shakespeare , who, according to their beliefs, was pretty much a recusant as they were (6*).
     In 1645 he married an English woman, Susanne Smith, who was a daughter of a local Roman Catholic priest, and they lived together for over 40 years. They did not have children. During the years of his expatriation Okami learned English, Portuguese, Spanish, Latin, and Chinese languages, he accumulated an extensive library and collection of European artwork, pursued literary translation from Chinese (Lao Tzu, Confucius, Zhuang Zhou) and English (the sonnets of Shakespeare), read a lot of ancient Greek writers in Latin translations and the original works of the ancient Roman writers, continued mastering his art of kenjutsu sword play (7*), and even opened his own martial art school in the colony where he had many students.
     Okami also traveled a lot by sea as an interpreter and a physician to the lands of China, India, Philippines, New Spain (Mexico), Portugal, Spain, England, Ireland, France, and Italy. Supposedly, he met in Vatican with Pope Innocent XI (1676-1689) on a Portuguese delegation. Though all these years Okami grew very much nostalgic for his native land, and was eager to get any message from Japan, which had closed its boarders tightly as a shell with the firmly-closed valves(8*).
     While living in Macao he heard the rumors of a poetic gift of Matsuo Basho. He bought several books of the master from the Chinese merchants who traded with Japan, and he started translating them into Chinese and English. After his wife died in 1689, Okami, having sensed his own death approaching, secretly returned to his native land at the age of 68 years old, and under the guise of a ronin (9*) began wandering around and visiting Buddhist and Shinto temples of Japan (10*), dipping himself into the long-forgotten world of the old legends and myths. Out of the blue, he learned about the existence of a secret sect of the Catholic Christians - Kakure Kirishitan (11*), and he got in touch with its leaders. He also succeeded to become accepted to the remote circle of the Basho’s apprentices. He visited often the famous banana hut (12*). After Basho’s death in 1694 he decided to follow the trail of the poet’s last journey writing some poetic notes along the way, a kind of a non-traditional hokku (13*) As like as not, he thought and wrote in English as if it had became his native language after all of those years married to an English woman. Then he translated his own writings into Japanese; this gave his poetic style a certain European turn. His poetry is a stream of consciousness with a continuous flow of awareness: it is the chased moment of the sad enchantment of beauty, and at the same time it is an imprint of frailty of the outside world (14*). All 46 (15*) tercets are gathered into 15 traditional rocks of a Japanese garden (16*), three rocks in each tercet (17*), with the exception of the last one, which has four (18*). The general subject of his
poetry is the animal world of Japan against the background of all four seasons (19*), is akin to to ancient  medieval bestiary (20*), which in its turn is dedicated to ancient Chinese tractates of real and fantastic nature (beasts and plants). Okami’s poetry, apart from the pure love, landscape, and philosophical lyrics, is a skillfully encoded Christian Zen (21*), in which Catholic mysticism (22*), anitya and wabi-sabi (23*), contemplation (24*), yugen (25*), and satori (26*) are subtly intertwined.  Everything works at the level of the
subliminal consciousness of the author, and therefore, it is absolutely  seamless from the point of view of perception by any reader, despite his or her nationality and faith. The possibility of such cross-cultural interaction and latitude in religion comes from a special set of mind of the Japanese, ability to absorb all the different and, at  first glance, hardly compatible elements by smoothing out the rough edges. Because of Okami's multiculturalism, multilingualism and polytheism, his poetry is polyphonic and allows contemplating the outside world in its diversity of colors, and has various   cultural and theological connotations. Thus, the author does not try to imitate a great poet, - that is essentially impossible, - but merely attempts to project himself into the poet’s character, namely, to look at the world through the poet’s eyes, without obstructing the view of his own vision.
 
Notes:
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(1*) Haruki Okami is of course  a fictitious character. His life is a compilation of the fate of that generation of the Japanese people, who fell under the press of the religious persecutions of the Catholic Christians at the very beginning of the Edo epoch (1603- 1868) (27*), and who were forced to leave their native land or go into deep hiding in order to save their faith and lives. The main prototype of Haruki Okami’s character is a real historical figure, namely, Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga (1571—1622); he was a Christian samurai, the first Japanese man, who visited Europe with a diplomatic mission.    
      In 1613, Date Masamune, daimyo of the city of Sendai, sent a body of deputies as his legation on a mission to Spain in order to establish trade,
political, and spiritual connections with Madrid and Vatican. Hasekura Tsunenaga, his vassal, was put in charge of the mission. He crossed the Pacific Ocean, reached Acapulco in Mexico, and then went from the sea port of Veracruz to Madrid in Spain via Havana, and after that to Rome in Italy, thus, becoming the first Japanese man, who crossed the Atlantic Ocean. In Madrid he was favorably received by the king of Spain and Portugal Philip III, who introduced Hasekura Tsunenaga to his own spiritual father who baptized him according
to Catholic religion.
     On the way to Italy the ship of the Japanese ambassador had to make an involuntary stop at the French port of Saint-Tropez because of the bad storm. The Japanese were never seen before in Europe, and besides, they were Catholics. They made a great sensation in Saint-Tropez, and the noise of this
boom reached as far as Germany. Upon their arrival to Italy Hasekura Tsunenaga gained a personal audience with Pope Paul V (1605-1621), who promised to send to Japan in the nearest future as many Christian missioners as possible. However, when Hasekura Tsunenaga came back to his native land 7 years later, he found out to his horror that the results of his diplomatic and spiritual mission and the huge collection of the Christian artifacts, including the portrait of the Holy Father, were something no one wanted in Japan, and that his life and the lives of his family and servants were in great danger; the new rulers of Japan had proclaimed Christianity and Christians outlawed. Just  several days after his return the first public executions of Christians started. (28*) The next Japanese diplomatic mission will arrive in Europe two centuries later (29*)
 
*** 
 
(6*) William Shakespeare was born to a Catholic recusant family. Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, descended from a staunch Catholic family, and his father, John Shakespeare, was listed as a Catholic recusant.