HOME > Essays in Idleness the Tsurezuregusa of Kenko
Essays in Idleness
the Tsurezuregusa of Kenko
| Author | Kenko Yoshida |
|---|---|
| Translation | Donald Keene |
| Price | JPY 1,760 |
| ISBN | 978-4-8053-0631-4 |
| Format | 130×203mm 214pages Paperback |
| Availability | Out-of-print |
Between 1330 and 1332 the Buddhist priest Kenko, having, as he put it, "nothing better to do," turned to his inkstone and brushes. He jotted sown his thoughts, observations, and opinions; anecdotes that he found interesting, amusing, or instructive; accounts of customs and ceremonies--everything that seemed to him worthy of preservation.
The little essays--none of them more than a few pages in length, and some consisting of but two or three sentences--give us the self-portrait of a most engaging gentleman. He is consistent in his statement of the peculiarly Japanese aesthetic principle: beauty is intrinsically bound to its perishability. The imperfect, the irregular, the understated, beginnings and endings--these have a charm of their own which surpasses that of completion.
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