Yoshida Kenkō (1283–1350,) also known as Kenkō hōshi and Urabe Kenkō, originally Urabe Kaneyoshi, was a Japanese poet and essayist. He was the outstanding literary figure of his time.
Kenkō is celebrated for his collection of essays, Tsurezuregusa (c.1330; Essays in Idleness, 1967) and his views have had a prominent place in subsequent Japanese life. Tsurezuregusa became especially popular after the 17th century and formed a fundamental part of Japanese education.
Born in Kyōto, Kenkō was educated in native and Chinese classics, poetry, court customs, and Shintō religious texts. He served at court before taking Buddhist orders after the death of the emperor Go-Uda in 1324. Despite becoming a priest, he continued to take an active interest in all forms of worldly activities, as his essays disclose.
Kenkō’s poetry is conventional, but the essays of Tsurezuregusa display an acuity and wit that have enthralled readers since the 14th century. Kenkō’s lamentations over the passing of old customs express his conviction that life had sorrowfully deteriorated from its former glory.
Donald Keene’s Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko (1967) remains a popular anthology of Kenkō’s works. Japanese language and literature scholar Linda Chance wrote the useful Formless in Form: Kenko, Tsurezuregusa, and the Rhetoric of Japanese Fragmentary Prose (1997.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Yoshida Kenko
A man who studies wisdom, even insincerely, should be called wise.
—Yoshida Kenko
One should write not unskillfully in the running hand, be able to sing in a pleasing voice, and keep good time to music; and, lastly, a man should not refuse a little wine when it is pressed upon him.
—Yoshida Kenko
The truth is at the beginning of anything and its end are alike touching.
—Yoshida Kenko
Topics: Beginning
Ambition never comes to an end.
—Yoshida Kenko
Topics: Ambition
To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations—such is a pleasure beyond compare.
—Yoshida Kenko
Topics: Books, Reading, Solitude
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