Essays in Idleness: from anecdote to reflection

The title comes from the prefatory phrase tsurezure naru mama ni. Its speaker sits at an inkstone and records the miscellaneous thoughts that pass through his mind. Tsurezure suggests having nothing to do, boredom or loneliness. The collection then ranges well beyond quiet scenery: court memories, a monk’s mistake, learning a skill and death can all set a passage in motion.

The work is conventionally attributed to Kenkō, a Buddhist renunciant and poet. He is often called Yoshida Kenkō, but that familiar name carries a biography that needs scrutiny. Kanazawa Bunko’s account of Takeo Ogawa’s research explains that descent from the Yoshida shrine’s Urabe family and the associated court career were constructed after his death. Documents preserved at Shōmyōji and Kanazawa Bunko instead offer evidence of connections with the Kanazawa Hōjō household.

The National Institute of Japanese Literature introduces the work as dating from around 1331. That conventional date does not settle the writing and assembly of every passage. Surviving books are later witnesses: the Shōtetsu manuscript of 1431 is the earliest surviving copy with a known copying date. Its date records an act of transmission, rather than Kenkō’s completion of the work.

A separately presented preface precedes sections numbered 1–243. Their lengths vary, and subjects change abruptly. Dialogue can enter an argument, while an amusing incident can end in a judgment. Takafumi Nakano studies the work within medieval traditions of letters and writing that substitutes for conversation. That approach asks who is being addressed and how an anecdote becomes an opinion, rather than treating the book as a supply of quotations.

A monk of Ninnaji grows old without having visited Iwashimizu and finally walks there alone. After worshipping at Gokurakuji, Kōra and related places, he thinks his purpose fulfilled. Back home, he mentions seeing other visitors go uphill, but says worship was his aim, so he did not follow. The reader recognises the mistake: he has stopped at associated sites below the main shrine. Only then comes the comment about wanting a guide even in small matters.

A celebrated tree climber directs another man to climb and cut branches. He says nothing while the work looks most dangerous. Only when the man descends to about the height of the eaves does he call for care. Asked why, he explains that danger itself keeps a person alert; mistakes happen when the task seems easy. The expert giving instructions and the man actually in the tree are different people. Attention changing with circumstances is the point of the anecdote.

Some aspiring learners say they will practise privately and reveal their skill only once they are good. The passage replies that such people never master an art. It contrasts them with beginners who join accomplished practitioners, endure ridicule and keep practising seriously under the discipline of the art. Here nō means ability or accomplishment. The word alone does not make this a documentary account of training for Noh theatre.

Must flowers be seen only in full bloom, or the moon only when unobscured? The passage turns to branches about to blossom, a garden after petals have fallen and longing for the moon during rain. Anticipation, memory and an absent sight also belong to appreciation. This is broader than a slogan about preferring flaws: the opening expands the moments worth attending to, rather than asking readers to dislike flowers at their height.

Later in section 137, a festival includes more than the procession: the street, carriages and waiting crowds matter, as does the quiet after screens and mats are removed. The discussion then shifts to continual deaths, compared with water steadily escaping from a vessel through a small hole. Its ending insists that a secluded mountain hut offers no escape from mortality. Impermanence develops through scenes and argument; it is not conveyed by fallen petals alone.

The speaker longs for a friend with whom to discuss pleasures and the world’s uncertainty. Someone who merely agrees, however, would feel like no company at all. A little disagreement might enliven conversation; yet the passage then laments how differing feelings can still separate close friends. Its turns expose a difficulty in companionship. They resist reduction to a rule that friends should either agree completely or be entirely unlike one another.

The Shōtetsu manuscript at Seikadō Bunko preserves a copying record from 1431. Its wording sometimes differs from familiar textbook texts, inviting comparison between witnesses. Transcription is also editorial work: Isamu Sasaki’s account of transcribing this manuscript specifies modern forms for some characters and punctuation supplied by the transcriber. A photograph, a transcription and a modern-language translation therefore provide different kinds of access.

Printing allowed the work to circulate in different book forms. NIJL’s early-Keichō movable-type edition comprises two volumes and uses differently coloured papers decorated with mica printing. Cursive letters that resemble handwriting can still have been set in type. The paper and rows of text belong to a deliberately made reading object, rather than a surviving fourteenth-century author’s notebook.

Edo-period readers encountered illustrated editions, commentaries, albums and scrolls. An illustrated edition dated 1694 places a scene of solitary writing beside the preface and an Urabe genealogy near the front, showing how later books framed the author. Kaihō Yūsetsu’s seventeenth-century set of twenty illustrated scrolls offers another pictorial retelling with accompanying text. Such images help stage an episode, while faces and dwellings remain later artists’ representations.

Hiroshima University holds a 1909 Kokubun tokuhon Tsurezuregusa shō associated with teacher-training education. In a Ministry of Education document for high-school textbooks intended for use in 2019, one edition groups selections by social anecdotes, skills, life and the seasons. Sections 52, 150 and 137 appear in different thematic units. Selection makes a large work teachable and also shapes which parts readers encounter first.

Modern-Japanese explanations and translations into other languages open the work to readers unfamiliar with classical grammar. Donald Keene’s English Essays in Idleness appeared in 1967; a 1998 edition added a new preface. A memorable translated sentence can be read alongside its passage’s story, shifts of argument and speaking voice. The underlying text, notes and edition help explain the choices a translation makes.