‘Essays in Idleness’: The Thoughts of a Monk in 14th Century Japan
A review of ‘Essays in Idleness’, by Yoshida Kenkō; Columbia University Press, 1998.
The Japanese ‘literature of reclusion’ is rooted in Taoism. Zhuangzhi and Laozi held that people should cast off the heavy shackles of society and urban life and live a life of spontaneity and freedom away from the city instead. But it was hundreds of years before Saigyō Hōshi, a guard of the retired Emperor Toba, took the vows of a monk and went into isolation. After the capital moved from Heian (present-day Kyoto) to Kamakura, south-west of Tokyo, many court aristocrats grew weary of government and everyday life and began to ‘take the tonsure’ — become monks — and live on the outskirts of civilisation. It was common for these eccentric men to set down, through art or writing, their reflections on life. The most famous exponents of Recluse Literature are Kamo No Chōmei and the author of the subject of the present review: Yoshida Kenkō.
Kenkō’s Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness) is a fragmentary intellectual tour of the Japan of the 14th century. It is a work of zuihitsu (literally ‘follow-the-brush’), which describes writing that is loose and intuitive, combining thoughts, musings and observations that here come together to paint a picture of the fleeting character of life and the beauty and peace of the mundane. Kenkō holds up a mirror to Japan, exploring its values, its culture and its mindset. Behind this tapestry of thoughts lie profound ideas about the nature of life and death.
It was hundreds of years before Saigyō Hōshi, a guard of the retired Emperor Toba, took the vows of a monk and went into isolation.
We have the sense of being given a tour not only of Japan but of the author’s mind. He reflects on the beauty of a moonlit night, the transience of cherry blossom; the merits of living in seclusion; and the foolishness of human wants. His personal system of values is quintessentially Buddhist, and so deals with suffering; the root of suffering, which is desire; and the necessity—the urgency—of letting go of desire if we are to find any peace in this world. Like his fellow Recluse writer Kamo No Chōmei, he is animated particularly by the notion of mujo, or impermanence, which comes up again and again throughout the text. Death is inevitable, life is ephemeral. Wisdom is to be found in accepting these unchanging truths.
It is his central theme. And so, aware that everything will one day be no more, he is charmed by the wilting of flowers or the passing of seasons. Like Sir Roger Scruton, he is intimately aware with the idea that love is ‘a love for dying things’: that the finality of life and of those we love is why they matter. Given this, we ought, in Kenkō’s view, to embrace simplicity and detachment. To attach ourselves to things is to condemn ourselves to suffering, for they will not remain the same. To hoard wealth or status is to cling to what we will one day to lose, and to be distracted in the attempt from what matters. True contentment lies in needing little and wanting even less.
To attach ourselves to things is to condemn ourselves to suffering, for they will not remain the same.
Like the Fragments of Heraclitus, we have to be patient with Essays in Idleness. It is not linear: in fact, it is, basically, a set of random jottings-down. But I did not close the last page on Essays on Idleness with any feeling of confusion. There are connecting threads—on human folly and the nature of the world—that pull together what at first glance seems arbitrary and unrelated. And so the work comes together to form a whole. It helps, of course, that, like many authentically spiritual writers, his style is elegant and unadorned. He prose is marked by the simplicity he promotes. There are no attempts to impress: no frills or tenuous metaphors. It is raw; and yet—and here I am reminded of Pablo d’Ors or the Imagist poets—it has a certain poetic quality. And it is funny. He is, it must be said, a bit cynical, even curmudgeonly, such is his ill-feeling towards life in the city.
This is a sparkling gem not just of Japanese but of world literature, one that gives us a glimpse not just of the vast mind of the author but, as it were, the mind of Japan. Transience, simplicity, the folly of human wants—these are themes of enduring value and meaning. Indeed they are more apt to describing our dilemmas today: so completely ‘freed’ are we from our bonds to others that we find ourselves running around rather madly, trapped in a utilitarian and pleasure-seeking mindset, dependent on others for validation, unable to find an anchor that will bring us back home to the world and ourselves … Nicolás Gómez-Dávila writes in his The Authentic Reactionary: ‘Liberty is not an end, but a means. Whoever mistakes it for an end does not know what to do once he attains it.’
This, reader, is a lovely little book.
