Yoshida Kenkō and Kamo No Chōmei ESSAYS IN IDLENESS AND HŌJŌKI Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Meredith McKinney Contents Note on the Translation Map Introduction HŌJŌKI ESSAYS IN IDLENESS Notes Further Reading Timeline of Emperors Follow Penguin PENGUIN CLASSICS ESSAYS IN IDLENESS AND HŌJŌKI Kamo No Chōmei (c. 1155–1216) was a prominent poet, essayist and musician associated with the court in Kyoto. At the age of fifty, personal setbacks and despair at the world led him to take the tonsure and retire to live in a hut beyond the city limits. Here, he wrote the three works for which he is now remembered – Mumyōshō (Nameless Treatise), Hosshinshū (A Collection of Religious Awakenings), and the famous Hōjōki (Record of a Ten-foot-Square Hut). Yoshida Kenkō (or Kaneyoshi) (c. 1283–c. 1352) was a poet, essayist and noted calligrapher. He took the tonsure probably in his late twenties, and underwent a period of rigorous monastic training, but for the most part continued to remain involved with life in the capital. The sole work for which he is now remembered, Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness), a rich compendium of opinions and anecdotes, is counted among Japan’s greatest classics. Meredith McKinney holds a Ph.D. in medieval Japanese literature from the Australian National University in Canberra, where she is currently a visiting fellow. She taught in Japan for twenty years, and now lives near Braidwood, New South Wales. Her other translations include Ravine and Other Stories by Furui Yoshikichi and, for Penguin Classics, Kokoro and Kusamakura by Natsume Sōseki and The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon. Note on the Translation Several variants of the Hōjōki text, displaying minor textual differences, have come down to us. This translation is from the 1244 Daifukukōji-bon. There is little doubt that this is the earliest text, and a postscript states that it is in the hand of Kamo no Chōmei himself. I have based my translation on the text as found in the Shin Nihon Bungaku Taikei edition. The text of Tsurezuregusa presents a more complex history. The earliest transcription we have, known as Shōtetsu-bon (dated 1431), has numerous textual problems and cannot be thought to preserve unchanged the original form of the work. The present translation is based on the Karasumaru-bon (dated 1613), which is the textual form in which Tsurezuregusa has long been read.1 No textual line is without its problems, however, and in this translation I choose from among the several other variants available on the few occasions where the text as preserved in the Karasumaru-bon seems problematic. All such textual choices are noted. Names and titles present frequent translation problems, particularly in Essays in Idleness, which follows the common practice of referring to people by title rather than name, and frequently by the kind of associative epithet that was the fashion at the time. I have attempted to clarify such places, either with a note or occasionally by substituting the name, where known. Religious titles present a more difficult problem. The complexity of the religious world of medieval Japan defies direct translation, and readers should be aware that religious titles and other terms that appear in the translation bear little relation to the Western religious tradition. Clerical ranks were complex,and titles such as sōzu or hōin have no equivalent in English. For these two titles, I substitute the title ‘abbot’, which should be taken to broadly refer to a high- ranking cleric. Lesser ranks are usually simply given the name ‘priest’. Besides titles relating to monastic ranking, there are also numerous more general terms, such as hōshi (a general term for one who has taken the tonsure, translated here as ‘monk’)2 and nyūdō (a lay monk or novice who may or may not continue to live in the family home), which can only be very approximately conveyed in translation. I have chosen to retain the title Hōjōki for Kamo no Chōmei’s work, which has variously been translated as ‘An Account of My Hermitage’3 and ‘Record of the Ten-Foot-Square Hut’.4 For Yoshida Kenkō’s Tsurezuregusa (a more difficult name for the English speaker to retain), the title chosen by its early translator G. B. Samson5 in 1911 and later used by Donald Keene for his 1967 translation6 cannot be surpassed for both euphony and precision. Tsurezure, the opening word of the work itself, has the primary meaning of tedious time spent in idleness, while gusa (literally ‘grass’ or ‘herbs’) was a term conventionally used for personal and informal writings, much like the earlier meaning of the word ‘essay’.7 Map Introduction In a period roughly spanning the twelfth to fourteenth centuries in Japan, a vibrant and complex literary culture flowered from Buddhist teachings and practice. This book contains the two prose works that were the finest embodiments of that culture, and that still rank among Japan’s great classics. The men who wrote these works were tonsured monks, who had formally dedicated themselves to the practice of the Buddhist Way; they were not, however, attached to any monastery, and one of them (Yoshida Kenkō, 1283– 1350) was actively involved in the social sphere of the capital (present-day Kyoto). In their different ways, these men belonged to a niche that gave them access to two contrasting worlds – the mundane and the religious – while allowing them to escape the more arduous demands of both. The freedom of their situation, along with its inherent tensions, was at the heart of the literature that they and others like them produced. Buddhism in Japan had a long tradition of solitary practice for those who chose to distance themselves from the often intensely political world of the monasteries. The most impressive of these hermit ascetics were considered holy men, and accorded almost saintly status. Tales of their wisdom and the severity of their ascetic practice circulated among both monks and laity. They represented one extreme of the non-monastic Buddhist practitioner; the other was the figure of the ‘lay monk’ or shami (translated here as novice), who chose to take the tonsure as a means to retire from active engagement with the world, often in response to increasing age or to a setback in his career, but who frequently remained at home and continued to have limited dealings with the world. Such a gesture could be calculated or impulsive, sincere or merely formal. Between the two extremes, and sometimes tending now towards one and now the other over the course of a life, was a wide range of men (and occasionally