Abumizuri gets its name from the mountain pass separating the Kaegawa and the Saigawa. The road through the pass is so narrow that when Yoshitsune rode through here his stirrups scraped on either side of the pass. The word "Abumi" means stirrups while the word "zuri" means to brush against. Shiraishi was a castle town presided over by Katakura Kojuro, a retainer of the Date family and Basho spent the night there on 5.3 (6.19).

Fujiwara Chujo Sanekata was a famous courtier and poet and is ranked as one of the 36 poetic geniuses. He was at one time a lover of Sei Shonagon and his name appears in her book, Makura Soshi. According to some accounts, during the reign of the emperor Ichijo (r. 986-1011), Sanekata quarrelled in the palace with Fujiwara no Yukinari and knocked his hat off with a baton he was carrying. The emperor witnessed this incident and was enraged at Sanekata's behavior. Sanekata was dismissed from the court and sent to investigate utamakura in distant parts of the country. In 995 he was demoted and sent to Michinoku as governor. It was there that he died in 998. According to Gempei Seisuiki when he rode past the Dosojin Shrine at Kasajima he failed to dismount and worship. The gods were offended and as punishment for this disrespect he was thrown from his horse and died.

In the reference to the deep grass, the passage actually says, "The Dosojin Shrine, and off to the side the susuki grass, are still there." This is a reference to a poem composed by the poet Saigyo when he visited this site. Saigyo's poem, Shinkokinshu #793 goes:

Kichimosenu/ sono na bakari wo/ todomeokite/ kareno no ira/ katami ni zo miru.
"When traveling in Michinoku, he came across a large tomb. He wondered whose it was and learned it was the grave of Fujiwara Sanekata. It was winter and frost- bitten plume grass stood forlorn, and he wrote this, feeling sad: A name unperishable/ he left behind/ but only plume grass/ stands by, all withered." (H.H. Honda, p. 217).

Basho says they did not make the detour to actually visit the site of Sanekata's grave and Sora confirms this. They just looked in that direction as they passed by. Basho had already expressed his feelings about Sanekata at Asaka and justifies not visiting the grave now in part by mentioning the rain they had been experiencing with the phrase "kono goro no samidare." We know from Sora's account that it rained hard on the night of 5.2 and all day on 5.3. The rain let up on the fourth with occasional sunshine. Basho uses the poetic word "Samidare" or rains of May here. In this word the "Sa" is short for "Satsuki" (fifth month) and "midare" is an abbreviation for "mizu tare" (water falls). By being lost and having to ask directions to Sanekata's monument Basho depicts himself as the lost pilgrim on a journey far from home and in this way links himself with both Sanekata and Saigyo who had traveled here before him.

Basho's poem plays on the place names where the grave is located. The kasa of Kasajima means "umbrella" and mino of Minowa means "raincoat". With this inspiration he writes a poem asking where is this Kasajima and how to find it with the roads all deep in mud. The word "nukari" suggests both "to be muddy" and "to ignore" something. Thus, because the roads were muddy he ignored the grave he might otherwise have visited. This poem appears in slightly different versions in Sarumino and other collections.

Basho concludes by saying they spent the night at Iwanuma and it was indeed an overnight stopping place along the highway. According to Sora's diary they did not spend the night at Iwanuma, indeed they made a rather curcuitous route and actually passed Iwanuma before they reached Kasajima. Their actual itinerary: 5.3 they spent at Shiraishi leaving there on the morning of 5.4. They passed Iwanuma that day and also Takekuma no matsu and arrived at Sendai where they spent the night. Evidently Basho said they spent the night at Iwanuma as a way of setting off or drawing attention to their visit to Takekuma no matsu. Basho's purpose is to focus on those things that moved him most.

This gives us some clue to the dynamics of the trip that Basho is creating here. In this passage he creates the image of the pilgrim trudging along muddy roads in a downpour of rain. In the previous passage he had described spending the night at a dilapidated lodging at Iizuka where he complained of the onslaught of vermin, filth, and illness. This passage dealing with Kasajima marks the tail end of that mood and he is ready for a fresh, new, more positive experience with Takekuma no matsu and Sendai.

In this passage we can clearly picture Basho slogging through the mud and rain picturing in his mind a poetic vision of Sanekata's grave. While he was exhausted in the present, his heart was inflamed by a vision from the past. He was able to view his present suffering objectively, even humorously as though he was standing outside himself. In the end, three moods are expressed in this passage: 1) a feeling of nostalgia for the past as seen in his desire to visit Sanekata's grave; a yearning for both Sanekata and Saigyo. 2) There is a sense of reality found in his weariness as he trudges through the endless mud and rain. 3) Both these feelings are mixed together in a way that evokes some humor that overlays the entire passage. The poem he presents here is technically well constructed in the way it links the names of Kasajima and Minowa with the rainy season of May and the difficulties of travel. What is not so readily evident is the wit in it; a sardonic wit that arises in his response to this place and time. He makes a clever poem, but he is still wet, tired, and miserable. On the one hand he expresses his empathy with Sanekata and Saigyo who had experienced the same hardship and lonliness he now experiences, but he contrasts this with a clever wordplay on place names as if to show that he is not daunted by the rigors of the trip or grief over the past.