“The months and days are travellers of eternity; the years that come and go are also voyagers.”

So begins The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Matsuo Bashō’s enduring masterpiece, which records a 150-day journey of some 2,400 kilometres that commenced in 1689.

The destination of this journey was Ōshū—present-day Tohoku—, a land long celebrated in classical Japanese poetry as a utamakura, a place imbued with poetic resonance. By hiking the 12-kilometre stretch of ancient road that remains along the Miyagi–Yamagata border, we retrace Bashō’s footsteps and seek to re-experience the state of mind in which he forged his aesthetic of 不易流行"fueki ryūkō"—the harmony between the timeless and the ever-changing—amid his travels.