Japanese poetry is well-known for its clarity and concision, and The Narrow Road to the Interior and Hjki are two of the best-loved, and most intensely Japanese, works of their kind; famous for their beautiful, delicate verse and subt...

In his perfectly crafted haiku poems, Basho described the natural world with great simplicity and delicacy of feeling. When he composed 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North' he was a serious student of Zen Buddhism setting off on a seri...