What is the name of Matsuo Bashō's famous travel diary?

Matsuo Bashō’s famous travel diary is The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

The work is known in Japanese as Oku no Hosomichi, often translated as The Narrow Road to the Interior or The Narrow Road to the Deep North. It is a haibun, a hybrid form combining prose and poetry, rather than a diary in the modern purely factual sense. Bashō blended observations, literary allusions, reflection, and haiku into a carefully shaped artistic narrative.

Bashō began the journey in 1689 with his disciple Kawai Sora. They traveled through northern and northeastern Japan, visiting sites associated with history, religion, and earlier poetry. The journey was physically demanding, and the finished work presents travel as both a geographical expedition and a spiritual search.

The book became one of the major works of Edo-period Japanese literature. Readers should not treat every detail as a literal itinerary: Bashō revised and stylized parts of the account. His famous travel writing helped establish the enduring image of the poet as a traveler who discovers beauty, impermanence, and solitude in the landscape.