Essays in idleness and Hōjōki

187 Pages·2013·1.23 MB·English

by  Kamo

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