After days of reluctant farewells to the people of Sakata, I gazed toward the clouds over the Hokurikudo, my heart aching at the thought of the long road; I heard it was a hundred and thirty ri to the provincial capital of Kaga (Kanazawa). Crossing the Nezu Barrier, we set foot in Echigo and reached the Ichiburi Barrier in Etchu. Those nine days, worn down by heat and rain and falling ill, I wrote nothing.
"Fumizuki ya / muika mo tsune no / yo ni wa nizu" (The seventh month: even the sixth night is unlike other nights. Tomorrow is Tanabata, and tonight already feels different.)
"Araumi ya / Sado ni yokotau / Amanogawa" (The rough sea: stretching out toward Sado, the River of Heaven. Beyond the wild Japan Sea lies Sado Island, and toward it the Milky Way spans the sky.)
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This verse is said to have been written at Izumozaki in Echigo. Izumozaki prospered as the port where gold and silver from the Sado mines were landed, and as a post town on the Hokkoku Kaido.
Sado had been an island of exile since ancient times. Many people, among them the Retired Emperor Juntoku, Nichiren and Zeami, were exiled there and ended their lives or spent long years. Sado, floating beyond the rough waves, was an island holding the sorrow of such exiles.
On the night of Tanabata, the Cowherd and the Weaver cross the River of Heaven for their once-a-year meeting. But the exiles of Sado, cut off by the rough sea, could never meet their families at home. The River of Heaven and the rough sea, love in heaven and parting on earth: the sorrow of the human world is layered onto a vast natural scene.
In fact, some say it rained on the night Basho stayed at Izumozaki and the Milky Way could not be seen, and some say that in the seventh month the Milky Way does not lie in the direction of Sado. This verse may be a landscape of Basho's heart, beyond the scene before his eyes. At Izumozaki, on the site of the inn where Basho is said to have stayed, there is the "Basho Garden" with a stone carved with the verse.