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A review by dwgill
Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō by Yoshida Kenkō
5.0
If you're interested in historic Japanese Buddhist views on aesthetics, propriety, and the ideal life, you'll probably find this book worth looking at. I discovered Kenkō when I read The Art of the Personal Essay, which features a few excerpts from this work. I would suspect Essays in Idleness is a mixed bag for typical western readers. You have some passages that are categorically profound:
And then others that are so bound to their historic or cultural context as to render them almost meaningless to a typical non-scholar American like me:
This quote justifiably has half a page of footnotes that accompany it (in the Donald Keene translation), but it's inarguable that this passage and others like it just don't have much to offer people like me. Perhaps the most untranslatable passages are those where Kenkō elaborates on Japanese grammar, syntax, or vocabulary.
Riveting. In addition, there are some passages that are perhaps best described as straight non sequiturs.
So I'm not sure what to conclude about Essays in Idleness except that I found my time reading it ultimately well spent. I enjoyed reading the quirky nonsense, and the moving profundity. Here's one of my favorite passages.
Ultimately I feel like Kenkō has some worthwhile ideas to offer to a modern reader, and even despite the vast distance there is between he and I, I still often came away feeling in some sense having learned something.
When I sit down in quiet meditation, the one emotion hardest to fight against is a longing in all things for the past. After the others have gone to bed, I pass the time on a long autumn’s night by putting in order whatever belongings are at hand. As I tear up scraps of old correspondence I should prefer not to leave behind, I sometimes find among them samples of the calligraphy of a friend who has died, or pictures he drew for his own amusement, and I feel exactly as I did at the time. Even with letters written by friends who are still alive I try, when it has been long since we met, to remember the circumstances, the year. What a moving experience that is! It is sad to think that a man’s familiar possessions, indifferent to his death, should remain unaltered long after he is gone.
And then others that are so bound to their historic or cultural context as to render them almost meaningless to a typical non-scholar American like me:
Once when the retired emperor's courtiers were playing at riddles in the Daigakuji palace, the physician Tadamori joined them. The Chamberlain and Major Counselor Kinakira posed the riddle: "What is it, Tadamori, that doesn't seem to be Japanese?" Somebody gave the answer: "Kara-heiji—a metal wine jug." The other all joined in the laugh, but Tadamori angrily stalked out.
This quote justifiably has half a page of footnotes that accompany it (in the Donald Keene translation), but it's inarguable that this passage and others like it just don't have much to offer people like me. Perhaps the most untranslatable passages are those where Kenkō elaborates on Japanese grammar, syntax, or vocabulary.
The words "fixed complement" are used not only about priests at the various temples but in the Engishiki for female officials of lower rank. The words must have been a common designation for all officials whose numbers were fixed.
Riveting. In addition, there are some passages that are perhaps best described as straight non sequiturs.
You should never put the new antlers of a deer to your nose and smell them. They have little insects that crawl into the nose and devour the brain.
So I'm not sure what to conclude about Essays in Idleness except that I found my time reading it ultimately well spent. I enjoyed reading the quirky nonsense, and the moving profundity. Here's one of my favorite passages.
If we pick up a brush, we feel like writing; if we hold a musical instrument in our hands, we wish to play music. Lifting a wine cup makes us crave saké; taking up dice, we should like to play backgammon. The mind invariably reacts in this way to any stimulus. That is why we should not indulge even casually in improper amusements.
Even a perfunctory glance at one verse of some holy writing will somehow make us notice also the text that precedes and follows; it may happen then, quite suddenly, that we mend our errors of many years. Suppose we had not at that moment opened the sacred text, would we have realized our mistakes? This is a case of accidental contact producing a beneficial result. Though our hearts may not be in the least impelled by faith, if we sit before the Buddha, rosary in hand, and take up a sutra, we may (even in our indolence) be accumulating merit through the act itself; though our mind may be inattentive, if we st in meditation on a rope seat, we may enter a state of calm and concentration, without even being aware of it.
Phenomenon and essence are fundamentally one. If the outward form is not at variance with the truth, an inward realization is certain to develop. We should not deny that is is true faith; we should respect and honor a conformity to truth.
Ultimately I feel like Kenkō has some worthwhile ideas to offer to a modern reader, and even despite the vast distance there is between he and I, I still often came away feeling in some sense having learned something.