First Winter Rain - Analysis

The rain that changes everything

Bashō’s central move is simple and quietly radical: he treats the season’s first real cold rain as a moral event. “First winter rain” isn’t just weather; it’s the moment comfort stops being assumed. That opening phrase has the crispness of a notice posted on a door: the year has turned. The tone begins matter-of-fact, almost reportorial, and then softens into a kind of surprised compassion as the speaker looks at a creature not usually granted tenderness in poetry.

“Even the monkey”: a small ladder of sympathy

The middle line pivots on one word: “even.” The poem suggests the monkey sits low on some imagined ladder of need—scruffy, comical, exposed—and yet the rain makes that hierarchy collapse. If even the monkey seems to want shelter, then wanting shelter becomes universal, not a luxury or a human-only concern. The monkey is also a creature we often watch for entertainment; Bashō subtly reverses the gaze. Instead of being an object for us, the monkey becomes a mirror for us: caught in the same cold, suddenly understandable.

The raincoat: human comfort, animal body

The final line lands with a gentle, humorous sting: the monkey “seems to want a raincoat.” A raincoat is a very human solution—manufactured, domestic, slightly fussy—set against an animal who has only fur. That mismatch creates the poem’s key tension: nature is supposed to be “enough” for a wild creature, but winter rain makes “enough” feel thin. The word “seems” matters too; Bashō doesn’t claim to know the monkey’s mind. He only records an impression, and that restraint keeps the empathy from turning into sentimentality.

A joke that isn’t only a joke

The poem’s humor is real, but it’s not cruel. The raincoat image is funny precisely because it’s plausible as a human projection—what we would want—and because the monkey’s discomfort is also believable. Bashō lets both stand at once: our tendency to anthropomorphize, and the undeniable fact of cold rain soaking a living body. The result is a compassion that arrives sideways, through a smile.

If the first winter rain can make a monkey look like someone in need of clothing, what else—who else—have we been trained to see as “fine” until the weather changes?