The text I will use to lecture from:

• Narrow Road to Oku, translated by Donald Keene, with illustrations by Miyata Masayuki, Kodansha Intl, 1997 / ISBN 4770020287
  • 1996 translation. Copious illustrations. No map. (I will therefore provide a map as a handout, and on the website.) Notes of the highest quality. Japanese on facing pages, a true bilingual edition. Contains only this one journal. A very brief introduction on the bare essentials of Bashô's life and a slightly more extended rumination on translating the journal.
  • Comment: This is the "star power" edition. It is an attractive book in terms of book design; it benefits from the efforts of the most seasoned and eminent of scholars; it has an additional interpretive facet through a first class illustrator. The illustrations really do help to think through the poems. This book is a pleasure to own, almost a coffee-table edition, unless you do no care for the modern feel of the illustrations. (You can get a sense of Miyata's work by going to his website: Miyata Masayuki) Considering the caliber of individuals involved, the introduction is far too short but the notes, on the other hand, are the most useful of any of the editions. Rather than just spinning off facts, these notes indeed provide information that enhances reading comprehension and pleasure. The translation, too, hits a good tone.

Excellent second choice:

• Narrow Road to the Deep North, translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa, Penguin Books, 1967 / ISBN 0140441859
  • 1967 translation. Numerous illustrations by Buson, an 18th century haiku poet of nearly equal fame as Bashô. Serviceable maps. Solid notes of excellent academic quality. No Japanese. Contains in addition to this journal three other travel journals by Bashô. Extensive introductory essay on Japanese poetry, haiku poem and Bashô's life in detail, including his other writings.
  • Comment: This remains the usual pick for academics when they teach on campus, either because of habit, availability, or the scholarly introduction. It is somewhat dated, though. The translation comes across as more prosaic than poetic. Its low-key style sometimes comes across as mature and balanced but sometimes comes across as simply bland. The book presentation itself, doesn't help—it is the typical Penguin Classic print and paper. If it were not for Buson's truly charming illustrations, this edition, highly dependable though it is, would be almost dreary compared to others.

Other choices that have their advantages and disadvantages:

• A Haiku Journey: Basho's Narrow Road to a Far Province, translated by Dorothy Britton, with illustrations by Shiro Tsujimura, Kodansha Intl, 2002 / ISBN 477022858X
  • 1974 translation (the book edition is much newer than the original translation). Though the citation says illustrations by Tsujimura, there are very, very few of them (3 or 4, counting the front cover, which is the only color illustration). Good maps. The Japanese text is printed separately as about the last one-third of the book. Contains only this one journal. An introduction of moderate length concerning Bashô's life and the origins of haiku poems.
  • Comment: Tsujimura is a ceramic artist; Britton, it seems, is a professional translator with a background in Japan. She also translated Totto-chan. This edition is meant to appeal to poets and poetic-minded readers. It is lucid and a real pleasure to read. The book itself is attractive. Now and then, though, I find its language unnecessarily mannered (for example, a farmer says, "This moor be all a tangle of grass"). It suffers from a lack of notes—the reading goes quickly and the flowing text is fairly evocative but in the end the reader might feel that he or she has missed out on something.
• Narrow Road to the Interior, translated by Sam Hamill, Shambhala, 2000 / ISBN 1570627169
  • 1998 translation, evidently. No illustrations. Good map. High quality notes that focus on things Chinese and Buddhist. Romanized Japanese for the section of this book devoted to other haiku that Bashô wrote. Contains in addition to this journal three other travel journals by Bashô. Also contains a generous selection of Bashô's haiku. (This book was published earlier under the title The Essential Bashô.) A solid, scholarly introduction, one with a different emphasis than the others.
  • Comments: Hamill also translates Chinese literature. His comments strongly highlight the journal's connections to Chinese literature and literary culture. Hamill also emphasized, perhaps even over-emphasizes, Bashô's religious views. Still, it is good to have this perspective. In terms of accuracy, I think he makes a few misses here and there, but that is just a conclusion based on a quick perusal. The language is lucid. Like Britton, he wishes to appeal to the poetic-minded reader, and perhaps those with a special interest in China and/or Buddhism.

Other choices that I have some hesitation about:

• Back Roads to Far Towns, translated by Cid Corman and Kamaike Susumu, White Pine Press, 1986
  • 1986 translation. Numerous black and white, "haiku-esque" watercolors as illustrations. A somewhat difficult to use map. Notes of uneven reliability. Japanese on facing pages, but the print is not crisp. (The English print, for that matter, is quite small.) Contains only this one journal. No real introductory essay to speak of, only the barest of comments.
  • Comment: This has a zippy style, a strongly contemporary tone I find too lively for a wizened Bashô near the end of his life. It is intriguing, however. The placement of notes is awkward, and too many word are left in Japanese, then explained in distracting margin notes.
• "The Narrow Road of the Interior," translated by Helen Craig McCullough, in Classical Japanese Prose: An Anthology, Stanford University Press, 1990.
  • Pre-1990 translation is about as accurate as I can get on this. No illustrations. Map. A few footnotes. Romanization of the Japanese for the poems. A very concise introductory essay.
  • Comment: This is a chapter in the Anthology. Though the translation quality is high, it lacks the presentation of the stand-alone versions and McCullough's "voice" is relatively consistent from one text to the next, a consistency that erases some of the individuality of the works. The introductory comments, however, are cogent, insightful and clearly the result of seasoned scholarship. One would hope for more than these three or so pages, though.