According to write-translator David Landis Barnhill, the Kashima Kikō is "most significant for the amusing but complex self-image near the beginning" where Bashō compares his companions to a bird and a mouse before calling himself a mixture of both: a bat.
[1] It was written as a tribute to Bashō's Zen master, Buchhō, and so it contains direct references to enlightenment and the Gateless Gate.
[1] Written in October of 1687 (Edo era), the work covers a 45-year old Bashō's journey to Kashima Shrine to see the harvest moon.
The journal is inspired by a poem from Teishitsu of Kyoto, imagining the exiled Ariwara no Yukihira viewing the Moon.
Spending the night at an old priest's home, Bashō wakes at the flush of dawn and rouses the others to see the Moon breaking through the storm clouds.