Picturing Bashō’s Narrow Road to the Deep North

Giving in to my wanderlust, I happen upon a newly discovered masterpiece on a sweltering summer day in Japan's ancient capital of Kyoto.

KYOTO — TFP, we’re happy to report, is filing this from the road—a road more than 6,000 miles away from home, in the rain, on a sweltering summer day in the ancient former capital of Japan. And we couldn’t be more grateful. In addition to the lives of friends and family, the pandemic stole our spontaneity and ability to take to the road on a whim, visit old friends, or make new ones in new places, and in so doing better understand ourselves and the places we call home.

Americans tend to think we invented the road trip. And we do love a good adventure. Think of Twain’s Huck Finn, Kerouac’s On the Road, National Lampoon’s Vacation. But, in reality, the road trip is where literature began, with Gilgamesh, the epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia written—well, chiseled, really, into stone tablets—in about 2000 B.C. 

Gilgamesh is the story of the hero king of Uruk who sets out to conquer death with his wild buddy (the classic sidekick) Enkidu. I hate to spoil the story for you, but as in Homer…