(1283-1352) poet, essayist
Yoshida Kenko was born into a family of Japanese Shinto priests around the year 1283. He distinguished himself at a young age through his literary abilities and served in the Japanese court under the emperor Go-Uda. While his early poetry is traditional and conservative, he was regarded as a fine poet during his lifetime.
In 1324, Yoshida became a Buddhist priest. His most famous work, Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness, 1330), a series of 243 short chapters or essays, reflects the Buddhist view of the world, especially the transience of all things and the cycle of life, growth, death, and rebirth. The essays are unified by Yoshida’s belief that the world and everything in it was steadily declining, but this was not a negative view. As Yoshida says in “Essay 7,” “If man were never to fade away … but lingered on forever in the world, how things would lose their power to move us.”
While Essays in Idleness was not widely read during Yoshida’s lifetime, it has become a standard work in Japanese education. It has also posthumously established Yoshida’s reputation as an insightful and gifted essayist.
English Versions of Works by Yoshida Kenko
Essays in Idleness. Translated by Donald Keene. New York: Columbia University Press, 1967. Miscellany of a Japanese Priest. Translated by William H. Porter. Rutland,Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1973.
A Work about Yoshida Kenko
Chance, Linda H. Formless in Form: Kenko, Tsurezure-gusa and the Rhetoric of Japanese Fragmentary Prose. Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997.
