After days of unsettled feelings, when we reached the Shirakawa Barrier my traveler's heart at last grew steady. It is only natural that people of old wished, "Somehow I must send word of this to the capital," to share with those in the city their feelings on crossing the barrier.
The Shirakawa Barrier was known from ancient times as one of the three barriers of Oshu; beyond it lay Michinoku. Among all the utamakura, it was one on which poets lavished special feeling.
When I think of Noin's poem, "Miyako o ba / kasumi to tomo ni / tachishikado / akikaze zo fuku / Shirakawa no seki" (I left the capital with the spring haze, but at the Shirakawa Barrier the autumn wind is blowing), the autumn wind lingers in my ears; when I think of Minamoto no Yorimasa's poem, "In the capital I saw it still green, but at the Shirakawa Barrier the red leaves lie scattered," the image of red leaves rises before me, and the green treetops of today are moving too. Where the deutzia blooms pure white, wild roses bloom beside it, and it feels like crossing through snow.
It is recorded in the writings of Fujiwara no Kiyosuke that people of old straightened their caps and changed their clothes when they crossed this barrier. A man called Takeda no Taifu Kuniyuki, out of respect for Noin's poem, is said to have put on fresh clothes to cross it.
"U no hana o / kazashi ni seki no / haregi kana" (Sora) (People of old crossed this barrier with caps straightened and robes changed; we have no such things, so let deutzia in our hair be our finery for the barrier.)
Basho himself recorded no haiku at the Shirakawa Barrier. Some say his heart was so taken by the feelings and poems of the ancients that no verse would come. Later, at Sukagawa, when a man named Tokyu asked how he had crossed the Shirakawa Barrier, he answered with "Furyu no / hajime ya oku no / taueuta" (The first taste of poetry: rice-planting songs of the deep north). The first poetry he met in Oshu was the simple songs the farmers sang as they planted rice.