Matsuo Bashō is one of Japan’s greatest writers, bar none—the most famous poet of the Edo period and a revered travel writer. It makes sense, then, that some of the world’s greatest contemporary animators—including Yuri Norstein, Isao Takahata, and Koji Yamamura—would pay his work a glorious tribute. Enter Fuyu No Hi, or Winter Days, a stunning collaborative animated film based on a renku, or collaborative linked poem, from Bashō’s 1684 collection of the same name.
Each animator contributed 30 seconds or more to illustrate a single stanza of the poem, and the whole was lovingly sewed together by the director Kihachirō Kawamoto. It is one of the great tragedies of translation—or lack thereof, in this case—that this stunning work has neither been subbed nor dubbed into English, although the visuals stand for themselves. The good news? It’s on YouTube. Get on it.
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