Playlist: Medieval Japan: Kenkō’s Essays in Idleness and Japanese Aesthetics

Essays in Idleness was written around 1330 by Yoshida Kenkō. Buddhist beliefs were spreading in Japan at this time and are reflected in the literature—such as this work by Kenkō—written during this period of Medieval Japanese history.

Transcript

Robert Oxnam: Kenkō, another author writing a century later [than Kamo no Chōmei], took a different perspective. A former court poet who became a priest, Kenkō agreed that one had to renounce the world to seek salvation. But instead of finding only sorrow in life's impermanence, he found beauty as expressed in his Essays in Idleness.

[Excerpt from Essays in Idleness]

Were we to live on forever — were the dews of Adashino never to vanish, the smoke on Toribeyama never to fade away — then indeed would men not feel the pity of things. ... Truly the beauty of life is its uncertainty ...

Donald Keene: He really still believes in the eternal truths of Buddhism. He is a devout man, but at the same time he is living in this world, and he wants to make the life in this world as agreeable, as aesthetically pleasing, as possible.

And it has worked, in a curious sense, because since the seventeenth century when his book became widely known to all classes of society, the prevailing Japanese aesthetics derive a great deal from this book. You can talk about Japanese aesthetics in terms of this one particular book, what he preferred.

---

Excerpt from Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Donald Keene, ed. (New York: Grove Press, 1960), p. 232.

Note: In most cases, Japanese writers are referenced by their family names, but Yoshida (family name) Kenkō (personal name) is commonly referred to by personal name only.

Transcript

Donald Keene: For example, he [Kenkō] speaks of the desirability of impermanence.

[Excerpt from Essays in Idleness]

Are we to look at flowers in full bloom, at the moon when it is clear? Nay, to look out on the rain and long for the moon, to draw the blinds and not be aware of the passing of spring — these arouse even deeper feelings. There is much to be seen in young boughs about to flower, in gardens strewn with withered blossoms.

Donald Keene: We're familiar in the West with the Greek idea of "call no man happy until he's dead" and the lament that things don't last, even marble buildings don't last, and so on. But he's saying that is the source of beauty.

If things lasted all the time in pristine condition, we would never appreciate them. It is only the fragility of things, such as the Japanese favorite flower, the cherry blossom, which blooms just for two or three days and then falls. This is more precious than a flower like a zinnia which blooms for a month or two months at a time.

And this love of the impermanent, the transient, is authorized, shall we say, by Buddhism, which insists that everything is always changing, things are impermanent. We cannot trust in things because they don't last. This is given the opposite meaning. It is because things change, it is because they are not destined to stay forever in the world, that we prize them, that gives them their beauty, it gives them their value.

This kind of Buddhist aesthetic, which he [Kenkō] developed, I think has been true of the Japanese traditionally ever since then, certainly since the seventeenth century. In many different ways, one can find that.

---

Excerpt from Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Donald Keene, ed. (New York: Grove Press, 1960), p. 239.

Transcript

Donald Keene: The Japanese love of simplicity, again, is found in his [Kenkō’s] work when he talks about the beauty of a room which is not overly furnished, where there's plenty of space to move around.

[Excerpt from Essays in Idleness]

There is a charm about a neat and proper dwelling house, although this world, 'tis true, is but a temporary abode. ... The man is to be envied who lives in a house, not of the modern, garish kind, but set among venerable trees, with a garden where plants grow wild and yet seem to have been disposed with care. ...

Donald Keene: He says that in a house it is the worst thing to have too much furniture in it. It clutters up the place, and you feel claustrophobic. The best thing is to just have a few pieces of furniture, and that of course, is today, even today, true of Japanese aesthetics. A Japanese room has very little furniture in it.

[Excerpt from Essays in Idleness]

... A room with sliding doors is lighter than one with doors on hinges. ... As for construction, people agree in admiring a place with plenty of spare room, as being pleasing to the eye and at the same time useful for all sorts of purposes.

Donald Keene: And so Buddhism, in a sense, negates this world. It says, this is not the permanent world; there's another world, which we will go to after we die, which will be the permanent world. But, at the same time, the fact that it is not permanent gives this world its beauty, and Kenkō in his Essays in Idleness captured that, I think, very beautifully.

---

Two excerpts from Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Donald Keene, ed. (New York: Grove Press, 1960), p. 231.