Poetry in motion

, Japanese poet Matsuo Basho - master of the 17-syllable haiku form - began to dream of seeing the moon hanging over Matsushima Bay, one of Japan's most famed beauty spots.

"The gods took possession of my soul," he later wrote, "the roadside deities beckoned", and he set off for a five-month trek north of what is now Tokyo and then looped around to Kyoto. He chronicled this journey in his most famous work, a haiku-sprinkled travelogue called The Narrow Road to the North.

The book remains a handy travelling companion - many of the paths trodden by Basho have disappeared under concrete, but others still wind through car-free woodlands and over remote, undisturbed passes little changed from the poet's time - down to the original ishi-datami paving stones with rounded edges that once provided grip for the straw sandals of straining porters.

Basho walked on a combination of older footpaths and an early 17th-century highway network for foot and horse traffic. Today, most visitors to Japan simply ricochet between Tokyo and Kyoto by bullet train, unaware that the country seems purpose-built for walking tours.

The volcanic landscape offers gentle climbs to passes with fine views that are often recognisable from the works of woodblock print artists. And after a long day spent on foot, mineral-rich, geothermally-heated spring waters cleverly piped straight to baths at each night's accommodation provide the perfect balm for any aches.

But judicious use of Japan's infinitely efficient rail network means there's no need to follow the poet and take five months off. Tokyo's seemingly endless suburban sprawl shoots by as quickly as 300km/h on the way to the site of the fortress at Kokufu-Tagajo. The distance that took Basho from March to May to traverse can now be reached before lunch, and taxis and delivery companies can conveniently whisk modern travellers' baggage ahead, leaving only cameras to carry.

The castle was long gone even by the time of Basho's visit, but he still recorded the inscription on a 1.8-metre-high stele marking its foundation nearly a thousand years earlier, which still stands gnarled and covered in lichen at the base of a broad stone staircase. He was moved by the loss of monuments to the passing years - but excavations mean there's now more to see than there was in the poet's day, not less. It was on his walk to the port at Shiogama that Basho first used the phrase that became the title of his book. What he called the "narrow road to the north" winds uphill past fields of leafy daikon radishes, trees hung with neon persimmons, and great stands of bamboo and pines. Small houses have tiny gardens of exceedingly neat topiary, and dignified torii gates lead to shrines for the roadside deities that called to the writer.