Minamimido

This guide to Minamimido in Osaka follows the wandering poet Matsuo Basho, who came to the city in the autumn of 1694 not to write but to make peace between two feuding students, and fell ill with a fever that confined him to a small merchant's room facing this temple. It traces the last weeks of his life, too weak to hold a brush, dictating his words a few at a time to a student at his bedside. Stand at the gate and imagine the room that once stood just in front of it.