あらすじ
If you do not love to read experimental literature, you had better not buy this book.
This novel is a literary portrait of Matsuo Basho, a Japanese poet of haiku.
Recalling the journey of the Deep North, Basho wrote ""The Narrow Road to the Deep North"" and died.
His last poem was as follows:
Stricken on a journey,
My dreams go wandering round
Withered fields.
(translated by D.Keene)
This speculative fiction, written in a highly abstract manner, consists of the following chapters:
Chapter 1
The route of the journey described in ""The Narrow Road to the Deep North"" is presented. Then, groups of adjacent places on the route are presented.
Chapter 2
Groups of words are presented. Each word represents an object, a thing, or a person evoked by each place shown in Chapter 1.
Chapter 3
A hundred samples of streams of Basho's consciousness are presented. These streams are made from the places and words shown in Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.
Chapter 4
The places on the route of the journey are presented in descending order of frequency of occurrence in the hundred streams of places shown in Chapter 3. Also, the words associated with the places on the route of the journey are presented in descending order of frequency of occurrence in the hundred streams of words shown in Chapter 3.
