Yoshida Kenkō

Yoshida Kenkō (c. 1283－c. 1352) would take Chōmei’s invisible keiki even further, and with more thoroughness. Kenkō was another aristocratic runaway─but in contrast to Chōmei, who was past fifty when he took up the eremitic life, Kenkō was still in his early thirties when he secluded himself in Shugakuin and Yokawa (both part of the network of temples on and around Mount Hiei), and in his forties when he built the hermitage on Narabigaoka hill where he wrote his famous Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness). Perhaps this is why he seems to have been more firmly grounded in his thought─and why he was able to set the point of departure for the medieval exploration of the phenomenology of nature. This sensibility is clearly expressed in the following passage from Tsurezuregusa: Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, and the moon only when it is cloudless? To long for the moon while looking at the rain, to lower the blinds and be unaware of the passing of spring─these are even more deeply moving. Kenkō was completely committed to an aesthetic that focused on the heart, not on material things. He wrote scornfully of the crowds filling the stands erected for the procession of the Aoi Festival in Kyoto, “All they are interested in is what they can see.” Kenkō’s own way of appreciating the festival was to take in the silence of the streets after it was over and recall the procession that had passed by: “You realize, with a pang of grief, that life is like this. If you have seen the avenues of the city, you have seen the festival.” Perhaps he overdoes it a bit here, but he is convincing, nonetheless.