Kenkō Yoshida

The Buddhist priest Kenko clung to tradition, Buddhism, and the pleasures of solitude, and the themes he treats in his "Essays, " written sometime between 1330 and 1332, are all suffused with an unspoken acceptance of Buddhist beliefs.

The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō

Essays in Idleness

Jeremy Wang

kenko meanders from the annoyingly didactic to the deceptively profound in the space of a few sentences. this makes his essays a fairly difficult read; one never knows when to expect something fascinating and so is forced to carefully read lots of tedium. 

but i do think that these weaknesses can be viewed as strengths too! his pedantism means that the occasional delightfully specific detail of 14th century urban life is preserved in totality, and his moralizing gives the reader an opportunity to reflect: am i tired of his preaching because it’s irrelevant or merely because it’s an alien perspective that sometimes disagrees with my own? i think kenko would be pleased by these subtleties. 

also, despite the centuries and miles that separate us, i find that we often share some fundamental philosophies. though the gradually morphing themes of his daily life dominate the page-to-page (the proper way to behave as a cultured gentleman, house and garden design, the intricacies of politics), a few general themes remain constant throughout. among these are a serious belief in life’s transience that echoes ecclesiastes as well as a taste for immediate and complete commitment that stems from an awareness of death’s nearness and echoes teachings by jesus and paul. keene claims that japan’s obsession with fleeting beauty is first codified in these writings, and i believe that. aside from these more intellectual things, kenko has a generally sharp eye and notes a number of clever fables and pretty scenes. a totally unique read!

“The pleasantest of all diversions is to sit alone under the lamp, a book spread out before you, and to make friends with people of a distant past you have never known.”

Essays in Idleness The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō

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