Yamagata Castle was first built in the Tempyo era (729-748) by Ono Azumabito. Later it was lived in by generations of the Mogami family. The castle was rebuilt in 1622 and ruled by a number of vassals, Mastsudaira Nanori being in charge when Basho made his trip. Ryushakuji, however, was taken away from domain control by the third Tokugawa shogun Iemitsu, and received an independent stipend of 1420 koku. Apparently because it was located close to Yamagata, Basho thought it was under the domain's control.

Ryushakuji (Standing Rock Temple) gets its name from the fact that the mountain has many stone faces, one that is particularly outstanding is called Tenka iwa, or, more popularly, Tengu iwa. This mountain was opened by the priest Jikaku Daishi (794-864) and the temple was founded in 860. The hard, ancient, forbidding quality of this mountain is a sort of biopgraphy of Jikaku himself. Basho is not put off nor is he disappointed that the temple is closed - he hears the counterpoint, the trilling of the cicada. Here he is away from the fear he had experienced in crossing over the mountain range and is distanced from the relief he felt at arriving at Obanazawa, here he has achieved a kind of true serenity.

According to one commentator the temple complex was twice as extensive in Basho's time as it is today and the mountain had more trees and rocks. At that time the head priest was Shukai, the 46th in succession at this temple. From the outer gate to the inner temple complex is a path that consists mostly of stone steps.

Jikaku Daishi was a celebrated priest from Enkakuji on Mt. Hiei and was from the Mibu family. He was born at Tsuga in Shimotsuke in 794. He became a priest at the age of 15. In 838 he accompanied an embassy to T'ang China and stayed there for nine years. On his return to Japan he was celebrated by the Emperor and by the Fujiwara family. It was during his time that the temple complex on Mt. Hiei was organized. He died in 864 at the age of 70. He was the first Japanese priest to receive the title of Daishi. He is deeply connected to the old temples of the northeastern provinces. He is said to have founded such famous temples as Zuiganji, Chusonji, Moetsuji, and others. It is not certain, however, if he ever even came as far as Ryushakuji although the temple does have a coffin said to be Jikaku's.

When Basho says they were encouraged to visit Ryushakuji, he is referring to Seifu and the other people he met at Obanazawa. Basho and Sora had not originally planned to stop here. Sora was in charge of researching the places they should see on their trip, but Ryushakuji was not listed in the guidebooks he consulted. Originally they had planned to go directly to Oishida and Sakata but instead they took this detour southward which is why Basho says they backtracked.

Basho says they arrived at the temple before the sun was down. Sora puts the time more precisely at 3:30.

Basho uses the phrase iwa ni iwao wo kasanete. Iwao is a larger boulder than iwa; Basho uses the term to indicate the large and small boulders as a way of maintaining a sense of balance. Basho uses the phrase shohaku which refers both to pines and to evergreen oaks; trees that do not lose their leaves. The scene is one of unchanging permanence. Today the lower slopes of the mountain are covered with many ancient cedar trees while higher up there are pines. Some commentators think Basho intended to write pines and cedars here. Basho adds to this the image of the ancient earth and stones covered with the velvety, living moss.

There were something like 12 temples on the top of the mountain. The fact that they were closed up could mean that there were no priests living on top of the mountain at that time, or it could mean that it was too late in the day and the temples were already closed up for that reason. Either way the mood is one of isolation and lonliness.

When Basho says they crawled around the rocks his meaning is that the path was so steep he could not walk upright and had to crawl.

When Basho uses the phrase kokoro sumiyuku he means the place resembles that where one might gain satori.

THE POEM: In the utter silence... The season word is semi which denotes summer. Several explanations have been offered as to what sort of semi this is. It is probably a nii nii semi. Some say it is one semi, some say it is one or two, others say it is a whole cluster of them. Basho climbed this mountain on 5.27 (7.13) and since this is the north country, there probably were not so many semi. What he heard was not the sound of masses of them, probably just one.

The mood of the poem changes depending on whether we think it was written in the morning, at mid day, or at evening. According to what we know it was evening when Basho was on the mountain; this makes the mood even more lonely and pensive.

The sense of being this deep in the mountains is one of purity and solitude. This is what Basho was seeking and his heart felt pure and ready for Satori. At first he wrote: Yamadera ya/ ishi ni shimitsutsu/ semi no koe. Later he changed the first line to shizukasa ya. This term, shizukasa ya comes from the very depths of Basho's soul. The 'ya' is a poetic emphatic. It emphasizes the silence and the solitude of this place. The phrase iwa ni does not mean one or two rocks, but rather the whole grand slope of the rocky mountain where, as we have already seen, there are large and small boulders all over the mountain.

The lines shizukasa ya - iwa ni work in a way that another image could not. Shizukasa ya kawa ni is totally different in mood. The stone is an image of lonely impenetrability even in the face of being lashed by storms of wind and rain. The rock is impenetrable and imperterbable, yet the sound pierces it. The sound does not flow over the stone or echo off it, but penetrates to its very heart. And what is it that penetrates these stones; it is the voice of the cicada, the image of the vanity and emptiness of this world. One has a feeling that these great stones have a sense of hearing so acute that even the cry of the cicada penetrates to their very hearts. Here the sound penetrates the stones just as we feel dripping water might. Basho has set us up for the water image with the ancient stones covered with wet moss, but in this poem he pierces the stones with sound.

The cry of the semi is one of the piercing sounds of summer. The solitude and stillness are suddenly shattered by its presence. The mood of the poem is changed dramatically by this intrusion. There are not a lot of cicadas making a racket all over the mountain, but a single one that penetrates the rocks. Sound and silence are joined in the word shizukasa ya where the sound is necessary to define the silence. The voice of the semi does not shatter the silence and the solitude, but emphasizes it. Basho's own heart is penetrated by the solitude and the silence.

In Basho's famous frog poem he uses a moment to define eternity. In this poem he does a variation on the same thing by using sound to define silence. It is only the humming of the cicadas that makes him realize how silent everything is. This notion has been used by other writers. In Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim (p. 276) we have this: "I stopped; the silence over Patuan was profound, the feeble, dry sound of a paddle striking the side of a canoe somewhere in the middle of the river seemed to make it infinite." Similarly Mark Twain in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, chapter viii, writes: "There was not even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat even stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was broken by no sound but the occasional far-off hammering of a woodpecker, and this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense of lonliness more profound." It is interesting that both western writers use the word profound in this case, and that surely is the mood Basho intended.

Basho had planned to go directly from Obanazawa to Oishida and Sakata, but at the urging of friends, on 5.27 (7.13) he set out from Obanazawa shortly after eight o'clock and headed southward for Ryushakuji. According to Sora, Seifu let them take a horse as far as Tateoka. From there they passed through Rokuda and Tendo arriving at Ryushakuji about 3:30. Since there was still some time before dark, they arranged to spend the night at the foot of the mountain and then climbed to the top. The priest with whom they arranged lodging was probably the resident priest Tokuzenbo.

Ryushakuji was quite different then than it is today. It was twice the size it is now and had many more trees and stones as well as some 17 sub temples. The complex had been independent with a stipend from the Bakufu from Iemitsu's time until the Meiji Restoration. Now many of the trees have been cut down and the temples have collapsed and it is quite different from when Basho was there.

So Basho changed his plans on the spur of the moment and went well out of his way to visit this place, but his effort was not in vain. He created from this experience one of the highlights of his trip built around the poem Shizukasa ya. This is one of the finest examples of the unique characteristics of Basho's art.

The peace and quiet of this visit after meeting all those people at Obanazawa is reminiscent of his earlier vist to Unganji at Kurobane in creating the sense of purity, lonliness, and separation from the world. This whole passage is studded with allusions to the Kanzanshi, Cold Mountain, collection of Chinese poems which was one of Basho's favorites.