Now it is long ago. In a place called Sarashina in the province of Shinano there lived a man. He lost his parents when he was small and was raised by his aunt. He thought of her as a parent, and they had lived together for many years.
But the man's wife hated this aunt. The aunt was old, bent at the waist, as if her body had folded in two. At every turn the wife pressed her husband: "Take that old woman deep into the mountains and leave her there." At first he let it pass, but as she said it again and again, his heart gradually leaned her way.
On the bright moonlit night of the fifteenth of the eighth month, the man said to his aunt, "There is a wonderful service at the temple. Let me take you," and carried her out of the house on his back. She was glad to be carried. He climbed to a high mountain peak, to a place she could never get down from, left her there and fled home. She called, "Wait, wait," but he did not answer and went down the mountain.
He went home and lay down, but he could not sleep. Having abandoned the aunt who had raised him like a parent for so many years, he was unbearably sad. He looked, and above that mountain the moon was shining cold and clear. He gazed at the moon all night and composed:
My heart cannot be consoled, seeing the moon shine on Obasute at Sarashina.
Unable to wait for dawn, the man climbed the mountain, took his aunt on his back and brought her home. And it is said that he cared for her well, as before.
From then on, this mountain was called Obasute, "Aunt-Abandoning." That "hard to console" came to be called "obasute" comes from this poem.
At Obasute in Chikuma, Nagano, terraced rice fields spread at the foot of Mount Kamuriki, famous for "the moon in every paddy," the moon reflected in each flooded field. Basho too came to see the moon here on the journey of his Sarashina Travelogue. The folktale "The Mountain Where the Old Were Abandoned" spread from such old tales into stories of wise old people who solve riddles and save the land.