During the past few weeks, I took up reading a 12th-century Japaense text, the Hojoki (discussed here) using Dr. Meredith McKinney’s excellent translation. It’s not a big text; you can probably read it in an hour or less. There’s a lot of stuff to unpack in this paragraph near the end.
I do not make claims for these [simple] pleasures to disparage the rich. I am simply comparing my past life with my present one. The Triple World is solely Mind. Without a peaceful mind, elephants, horses and the seven treasures are worthless things, palaces and fine towers mean nothing.
Kamo no Chomei, the author, used to be part of the aristocracy in the Capital, but was on the losing end of a family struggle for a prestigious position. Eventually he was pushed out and sidelined by his cousin, and later retreated as a hermit. So, Kamo no Chomei had a taste of the good life, but was obviously unhappy with the outcome. Compare this with the melancholy tone of Lady Murasaki’s diary a century earlier, or the Gossamer Years a generation earlier than that, and you can see that in spite of all the glamour, romance and beauty, there were plenty of people living among aristocracy who were all miserable in some way or another.
Kamo no Chomei gets to the heart of this: wealth and luxury might make day-to-day aspects of life easier, but that doesn’t equate to happiness or peace of mind.1
The phrase “The Triple World is solely Mind” requires some explanation. The term “Triple World” is an old Buddhist phrase to describe existence as a whole. The details are not important here.2 In modern American English, I suppose we could just call it the “Whole Enchilada”, existence as a whole. So, Kamo no Chomei is saying that the Whole Enchilada is just Mind with a capitol “M”. I explored this in an earlier post, but basically we perceive the world around us through the filter of our own mind. I am working on a lengthier post to explain this, but it’s a very Tendai-Buddhist concept (and Zen too) and too long to go into here, and I am still researching.
In any case, Kamo no Chomei even starts to question his attachments to his own humble lifestyle, seeing that he is getting complacent in that too:
The Buddha’s essential teaching is to relinquish all attachment. This fondness for my hut I now see must be error, and my attachment to a life of seclusion and peace is an impediment to rebirth. How could I waste my days like this, describing useless pleasures?
In the quiet dawn I ponder this, and question my own heart: you fled the world to live among forest and mountain in order to discipline the mind and practise the Buddhist Way. But though you have all the trappings of a holy man, your heart is corrupt. Your dwelling may aspire to be the hut of the holy Vimilakirti himself, but the practice you maintain in it cannot match even that of the fool Suddhipanthaka. Have you after all let the poverty ordained by past sins distract you? Or have your delusions tipped you over into madness?
Finally, exasperated, he writes at the end:
When I confront my heart thus, it cannot reply. At most, this mortal tongue can only end in three faltering invocations of the holy, unapproachable name of Amida.
It’s interesting to me that he starts with some pretty difficult, intellectual statement (the Triple World is Mind), moves into a lengthy discussion of self-doubt, and then finally ends with reciting the nembutsu.
I often feel this way too. As a nerd, I like going down “rabbit holes” sometimes, but in the end I get flustered and realize that I understand a lot less than I prefer. Maybe this is just self-doubt, but it makes one disheartened. So, sometimes, instead of re-hashing intellectual debates that are a thousand-years old (or more), better to just recite the dang nembutsu.
Namu Amida Butsu
1 Even if money can’t buy happiness, a healthy society needs robust social welfare to ensure basic human dignity and well-being. Sorry dudebros.
2 If you really want to know, the three worlds are the world of desire (the mundane world we live in), the world of form (similar to Plato’s world of form in the Allegory of the Cave), and the world of formlessness (i.e. pure though). But usually, this isn’t relevant and people just say “Triple World” as a stock phrase to mean “all of existence”.
When news of the capital happens to come my way, I learn of many people in high places who have met their end since I retired to this mountain, and other lesser folk besides, too many to be told. And how many houses too, have been lost in all those fires? In all this, my mere passing shelter has remained tranquil and safe from fears.
Small it may be, but there is a bed to on a night, and a place to sit in the daytime. As a simple place to house myself, it lacks nothing. The hermit crab prefers a little shell for his home. He knows what the world holds. The osprey chooses the wild shoreline, and this is because he fears mankind. And I too am the same….
The Hojoki “Record of a Ten Foot Square Hut”, Dr Meredith McKinney translation
The Triple World [a Buddhist term for reality] is solely Mind. Without a peaceful mind, elephants, horses and the seven treasures are worthless things, palaces and fine towers mean nothing.
The Triple World is solely Mind. Without a peaceful mind, elephants, horses and the seven treasures are worthless things, palaces and fine towers mean nothing.I love my tiny hut, my lonely dwelling. When I chance to go down to the capital [Kyoto], I am ashamed of my lowly beggar status, but once back here again I pity those who chase after the sordid rewards of the world. If any doubt my words, let them look to the fish and the birds. Fish never tire of water, a state incomprehensible to any but the fish. The bird’s desire for the forest makes sense to none but birds. And so it is with the pleasure of seclusion. Who but one who lives it can understand its joys?
The last few weeks have been pretty rough for me, after a senior engineer on my team resigned, and my workload suddenly grew exponentially. I try to turn off the news as well when it feels overwhelming, but it still weighs on my mind even when I try not to think about it.
Lately I have a persistent feeling of “it’s just one damn thing after another”, but as I think about it, this is a pretty good summation of Buddhist doctrine, the Dharma, as well.
The Buddha described the world using the term dukkha which doesn’t translate well in English, but was often compared to a spinning potter’s wheel. A wheel that is sukkha spins smoothly and easily. A potter’s wheel that is dukkha wobbles and requires more effort to make it spin the way you want. In the same way, life is marked with frustration, challenges, dissatisfaction and so on.
Then, things outside your control happen, throwing a wrench in your plans and aspirations. It really can feel like “one damn thing after another” both on a personal level, and at a macro level.
The Buddha is thus cynical of the cosmic rat race and all the suffering that comes with it. Like waves in water, arising and falling in rapid succession, many things in life, both beneficial and harmful, will come and go. The Buddha’s teaching is thus not to get too attached, too invested. See it for what it is, and let it go.
On flows the river ceaselessly, nor does its water ever stay the same. The bubbles that float upon its pools now disappear, now form anew, but never endure for long.
Kamo no Chomei, the Hojoki, trans. by Meredith McKinney
As I wrote about recently, the end of the Heian Period in Japan (8th century to 12th century) represented a seismic shift in Japanese culture from a cultured aristocracy to a military society led by the samurai class. This finally stabilized Japan from decades of strife, but there was also a palpable sense of loss reflected in such works as the Hojoki (Ten Foot Hut) and other works of the time.
One of my favorite, and the best known from this era is a work called the Tsure-zure-gusa (徒然草) which is hard to translate in English.1 The most accepted translation of the title is “Essays in Idleness”, but this not the only one. It’s a classic that every kid in Japan studies in school, just as American kids might read Ivanhoe or something.2
A depiction of Kenkō, drawn centuries later by Kikuchi Yōsai. Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
The Tsure-zure-gusa was written by a Buddhist monk of the Jodo-shu sect named Yoshida Kenkō (吉田兼好, 1283?–1350?). The text was composed between 1330 and 1332, and is a form of free-form writing. Kenko would just write down what he was thinking. Sometimes it was old anecdotes, or stories he had heard. At other times, he wrote deeper thoughts about life. Sometimes, he would just point out social faux-pas committed by others. There is no overarching messages in the text, but it covers many aspects of life, so it’s a fascinating look at Japan during the Kamakura Period (12th-14th century) as well as food for thought.
For example, here’s a commentary on fish:
119) The fish called katsuo is unequaled among those caught in the sea off Kamakura, and of late has been much in demand. An old gentleman of Kamakura told me, “When we were young, this fish was never served to persons of quality. Even the servants refused to eat the head. They cut it off and threw it away. It is typical of these degenerate times that such fish have become accepted.
Translation by Donald Keene
Interestingly, katsuo (known in English as bonito) is pretty universal in Japanese cuisine now as it is the most common ingredient of dashi (fish broth), as well as numerous dishes.
Another amusing example:
57) It is exasperating when discussions of poetry are devoted to bad poems. How, one wonders, could anyone with the smallest knowledge of the art have supposed such verses were worthy of discussion?
Even to an outsider, it is both embarrassing and painful to listen to someone discuss a subject — whatever it may be — that he doesn’t really know.
Translation by Donald Keene
One can imagine a bad TED Talk the same way too.
The text is at times surprisingly relevant to people living in the 21st century, though:
29) When I sit down in quiet meditation, the one emotion hardest to fight against is a longing in all things for the past. After the others have gone to bed, I pass the time on a long autumn’s night by putting in order whatever belongings are at hand. As I tear up old correspondence I should prefer not to leave behind, I sometimes find among them samples of calligraphy of a friend who has died, or pictures he drew for his own amusement, and I feel exactly as I did at the time. Even with letters written by friends who are still alive I try, when it has been long since we met, to remember the circumstances, the year. What a moving experience that is! It is sad to think that a man’s familiar possessions, indifferent to his death, should remain unaltered long after he is gone.
Translation by Donald Keene
It’s a pretty moving book to read, with all its random quips, reflections on an age now gone, plus deeper thoughts. The Donald Keene copy is hard to find now, but I have seen other good translations too, so don’t hesitate to pick one up if you can find it.
1 The phrase つれづれ (徒然 tsure-zure), pronounced as “tsoo-ray zoo-ray”, often appears in modern blogs or diaries as well in Japanese as a kind of introduction.
2 My wife recalls learning it, but just as reading Shakespeare without some guidance is hard for English speakers, reading the Tsure-zure-gusa to a native Japanese speaker is difficult since so many centuries have passed and the language has changed.
One historical period that has continuously fascinated me for a long time is the end of the Heian Period in Japan, culminating in the climactic war between the Heike (Taira) Clan and the Genji (Minamoto) Clan, followed by the rise of military government for the next 800+ years.
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Why does this matter?
As the quote above suggests, the fall of the Heian Period and of the Imperial aristocracy, built around a Chinese-inspired Confucian bureaucracy, came slow, then suddenly when the lower samurai class rose and and asserted power. Let’s compare the before and after:
The Heian Period (平安時代, 794 – 1185) of Japanese was a long, 400-year period, that began when the Imperial capitol moved to the new city of Heian-kyō (modern day Kyoto) away from Heijō-kyō (modern day Nara). The Imperial government had been plagued with infighting and manipulation by powerful temples in Heiji-kyo, so the Emperor decided to make a clean start and migrate the capitol.
But the earlier Nara Period and the Heian Period represent a single continuum of life in Japan where the Emperor ruled in a Chinese-Confucian style bureaucracy with Japanese characteristics. The Imperial bureaucracy was run by a large number of literate officials either through Entrance Exams that tested your knowledge of the Confucian Classics, and aspects of Chinese history, or through connections if you were nobility.
Speaking of nobility, everyone in the Court, from the lowliest bureaucrat, to the Emperor had an official rank. This was part of the old Ritsuryō system. The Emperor was automatically 1st rank upper (正一位, shō ichi-i), while just below him someone might be 1st rank lower (従一位, ju ichi-i), then 2nd rank upper (正二位, shō ni-i), and so on until you get to the lowly paper-pushing bureaucrat at 少初位下 (shō so-i no ge) rank. Each year, the Emperor would approve promotions or demotions of rank, which would be annouced, so for doing some good work, you might be promoted one year, and your stipend increased, as well as other perks. However, there was a catch. If you were born to a venerable noble family such as the Fujiwara, Ōe or Tachibana, you were automatically 5th rank or higher. If you were not, it was almost impossible to attain anything above 7th rank. Sugawara no Michizane was a rare exception, but he paid for it when court treachery got him exiled.
Thus, the aristocracy held a grip on the Imperial court, but it didn’t stop there. The aristocracy held increasingly large tracts of land called shōen (荘園) that were tax-exempt due to a loop-hole in the system. The wealth of the aristocratic families grew larger and larger while the state became increasingly bankrupt.
Further, as the Heian Period went on, the aristocracy figured out how to manipulate power even further by arranging marriages with the reigning Emperor, and if they had a son, pressure the reigning Emperor to abdicate, so the ambitious family could control the Imperial heir as a regent. Case in point, during the 990’s two different branches of the Fujiwara clan were struggling for control, on led by Fujiwara no Michitaka and the other by Fujiwara no Michinaga. Both them had daughters wed to reigning emperor Ichijō, who had multiple sons. Initially, next reigning emperor was his son Emperor Sanjō who had not been born from a Fujiwara mother, but he was soon pressured to abdicate by Fujiwara no Michinaga, thus allowing Michinaga’s grandson and Ichijo’s other son to become emperor Go-Ichijō (i.e. “Ichijō the latter”) to reign.
Things got even nuttier when certain emperors, forced to abdicate and take tonsure as Buddhist monks, figured out how to retain power behind the scenes at odds with the nobility. The most well known example was Emperor Go-shirakawa who only reigned officially as emperor for three years, but retained power as the “cloistered emperor” for another 37 years.
None of this takes into the account the growing power and political manipulation of Buddhist temples, and their armies of soldiers, an open violation of the Buddhist principle to abstain from politics and violence.
Thus with such a toxic mix of competing power centers, a crippled central government, to say nothing of the earthquakes, plagues and political neglect of the provinces.
… and then it finally started to fall apart.
The Fall
The battle of Dan-no-ura, courtesy of Wikipedia
The fall of the Heian Period and its aristocratic society started with a power struggle between the upstart Taira and Minamoto clans. Like many other samurai families, they began as little more than escorts and bodyguards to the nobility, but in time they rose to positions of power and influence, filling in the gaps of government when emperors pushed the Fujiwara back.
This culminated with the dreaded Taira no Kiyomori seizing power in all but name. This grandson, the child Emperor Antoku, technically reigned, but behind the scenes Emperor Go-Shirakawa mentioned above still held to some power, but was effectively a hostage himself. The Minamoto clan were scattered and its clan head was executed for formenting a rebellion.
Kiyomori’s grip on power didn’t last long, and wasn’t long before the his enemies in the provinces began to rally around Minamoto no Yoritomo who led a successful counterattack that resulted in a war across most of Japan, with the Taira (e.g. the “Heike clan”) mostly dominating the west and the Minamoto (e.g. the “Genji”) ruling in the eastern provinces. The current TV drama in Japan, the Thirteen Lords of Kamakura, reenacts this struggle, and the aftermath.
The Taira, including the child emperor Antoku, were wiped out at the battle of Dan-no-ura, but the battles didn’t end there. The genie was out of the bottle, and there was no going back. Minamoto no Yoritomo then seized power by compelling to emperor to recognize him as Shōgun, the generallisimo of all Japan, and he went after rivals within the Minamoto clan including the famous warrior and half-brother, Minamoto no Yoshitsune. He based his regime in the eastern city of Kamakura, not Kyoto, thus drawing power away from the old Imperial court. Emperor Go-shirakawa’s son, Emperor Go-toba, attempted one last military effort to restore the power of the Imperial court in the Jōkyū War, but the samurai class centered around Yoritomo’s widow, the powerful Hojo Masako, and Go-toba’s efforts were doomed. He was exiled until his death.
Ironically, Minamoto no Yoritomo would end his life as little more than a figurehead himself as the Hojo family he married into (ironically a branch of the Taira he defeated) manipulated marriages and increasingly held power.
In the end, the new “Kamakura Period” of history was the first of several military regimes in Japan until 1868 (arguably 1945) where the Imperial court still held nominal power, but true power rested with the military class. The old Confucian-style bureaucracy still existed, people including power warlords still held rank in the Court, but it was a shadow of its former power, and was mainly used to legitimatize the ruling shogun and little else.
On the Ground
Amitabha Buddha rising over the mountain to welcome the believer to the Pure Land
Reading this history is one thing, but to people on the ground, as one crisis after another affected Japan during the end of the Heian Period both political and physical, it certainly felt like the End Times.
Millenarian Buddhist movements among the provinces sprang up in great number, as people were convinced that the era of Dharma Decline, the era mentioned in Buddhist scriptures when the Buddha-Dharma had utterly faded from the world, had come and that they were all doomed. This is why the Pure Land Buddhist movement started by Honen became so widespread and popular. By this point, people were so convinced that it was all over, they focused on escaping the endless cycle of birth and death to be reborn in the Pure Land of Amitabha Buddha instead. Pure Land Buddhism had been popular before this, but it took on a new sense of urgency under the collapse of the old society. Thus Honen’s disciples, such as Shinran, carried this message further out into the provinces and Pure Land Buddhist movements sprang up everywhere.
Nichiren Buddhism, which came slightly, was a similar millenarian movement, but instead Nichiren blamed society’s ills ironically on the Pure Land movement itself for leading society away from the True Dharma (e.g. the Lotus Sutra). Like many others in society, including Honen a couple generations earlier, Nichiren was appalled by the death, warfare and disasters affecting Japan and felt there had to be a reason for it all.
This may seem odd to us in the 21st century, but for people who grew up that the world around them was governed by the Buddha-Dharma (or lack of it), this is the only conclusion that would make sense. We in our time believe the world is governed by science, so when something happens, we tend to look for a scientific-analytical explanation. When the Byzantines in the 8th century saw their world collapse due to the Plague of Justinian followed by invasions from the new Muslim Arabs, they saw felt that their world that had been governed by God as approaching the End Times too, culminating with the siege of Constantinople itself. Thus, Iconoclasm sprang up soon after.
In each case, people are faced with a cataclysm and are using reason to try to come to grips with what’s going on, and how to fix it. We can look back and laugh and people for their “backward views”, but what will people say about us 1,000 years in the future, I wonder?
The Aftermath
In any case, once the war between the Taira and the Minamoto ended and the capital was moved to Kamakura, life in Japan was simply never the same. Generations had lived with the trauma of last years of the Heian Period, the warfare and so on, and much of the literature of the time including the Hojoki and the Essays in Idleness carry a sense of “paradise lost”. It was over. Everyone knew it, and there would be no going back.
And yet, for all the sadness and sense of loss, Japan did carry on through many subsequent generations to be the country it is today. The court life of the Heian Period is still remembered in things such as the Hyakunin Isshu poetry anthology, doll displays on Girls’ Day, woodblock art, and so on. And of course, historical dramas.
P.S. A scene from the Illustrated scroll of Tale of Genji (11th cent.), depicting the Azuma-ya (“East Wing”). Imperial court in Kyoto, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Since the kids were very young, the family and I subscribe to Terebi Japan, a cable channel that allows us to watch Japanese TV. The cable channel mostly shows TV from the public channel, NHK (roughly analogous to the BBC), and not other content, but it does allow us to watch Japanese TV legitimately and not through some shady third-party service. NHK has a famous series of historical dramas called Taiga Dorama (大河ドラマ) which change every year, but feature some aspect of Japanese history. I usually don’t watch these because they’re not that interesting, and the Japanese dialog is particularly archaic and difficult for me.
However, lately, I’ve gotten sucked into the latest Taiga Dorama series: Kamakura-dono no Ju-san-nin (鎌倉殿の13人) which translates to the Thirteen Lords of Kamakura. The opening theme alone is pretty epic and worth a watch. I always love seeing the rain of arrows at sea during the climactic final battle of Dan-no-ura in particular.
This series covers a period of Japanese history that I find particularly fascinating ever since I first studied it in college: the Genpei War in the 12th century. I’ve touched upon the Genpei War before, but to summarize again, this was a four-year country-wide conflict between two powerful samurai clans: the Heike (a.k.a. the Taira) and the Genji (a.k.a. the Minamoto). During this time in Japanese history, the last days of the Heian Period, the samurai class were socially inferior to the noble families of Kyoto (known as Heian-kyo back then) and were subject to manipulation by them. However, the Heike clan turned this around by manipulating the Imperial throne under one Taira no Kiyomori. Having effectively seized the throne, Taira no Kiyomori began to drive out his rivals, including the Minamoto.
The Minamoto were savagely defeated and driven to remote provinces where they were eventually able to rally allied clans (including a Heike off-shoot, the Hojo clan)1 and push the Heike back in defeat after defeat until the battle of Dan-no-ura where the Heike made their last stand, and Kiyomori’s grandson, the two year old Emperor Antoku drowned.
From this point on, the power of the nobility, who had stirred up so much conflict in the first place, was greatly curtailed for centuries, and the samurai class became the true power in Japan until the late 19th century. Minamoto no Yoritomo, who led the Minamoto clan to victory, was the first shogun (generalissimo) of the new military government based in Kamakura, not Kyoto.
This period of warfare was incredibly disruptive to Japan, as evinced in such works as the Hojoki, and is still remembered as the end of Japan’s cultural “golden age”, and the ascendancy of the Samurai. The epic Tales of the Heike (heike monogatari, 平家物語) is a later retelling of what happens, but there are numerous cultural references to the people and places of the War such as ghost stories of the Heike, “Heike crabs“, Kabuki dramas, artistic works in the 19th century, and so on.
One of my personal favorite is a famous duel between the Genji-clan soldier named Kumagai Naozane (熊谷直実) against the Heike prince named Taira no Atsumori (平敦盛) at the beach-side battle of Ichi-no-tani. Because Naozane was old enough to be Atsumori’s father, and because Atsumori was such a refined youth, Naozane hesitated to kill him at first, but with the other Minamoto soldiers arriving, Atsumori was obviously doomed no matter what. Naozane gave him a quick, merciful kill.
A wax recreation of the death of prince Taira-no-Atsumori at the hands of Kumagai Naozane, courtesy of Takamatsu Heike Monogatari Wax Museum, Takamatsu city, Kagawa pref, Japan.. Photo by Motokoka, CC BY-SA 4.0, ウィキメディア・コモンズ経由で and Wikipedia Commons
After the war, Naozane felt remorse for slaying Atsumori, and retired to the Buddhist clergy as a monk and a devotee of Honen of the Pure Land sect where he took the ordination name of Hōrikibō Rensei (法力房 蓮生) and was a fervent devotee until his death.2
As for the Taiga drama, it’s pretty awesome. The Japanese is still archaic and difficult for me to follow, but they do try to use modern Japanese more, and the cast are celebrities I am more or less familiar with. Matsudaira Ken (of Matsuken Samba fame) plays Taira no Kiyomori, too. 😋
It’s not the first Taiga drama that NHK has done about the Genpei War (another famous one about 10 years ago made the villain, Taira no Kiyomori, the main character), but this drama is particularly well done, and my language skills have finally reached the point where I can appreciate it in Japanese, rather than filtered through limited Western media. But also, as someone who avidly studied Japanese history in college, the War between the Genji and the Heike is something I’ve imagined for half my life and now I can see not just in my imagination, but vividly in a powerful drama.
P.S. The featured image is a 19th century woodblock painting of Heiki general Taira no Tsunemasa (平経正) in a scene from the Tales of the Heike by Yoshitoshi.
P.P.S. Burton Watson’s abridged translation of the Tales of the Heike is a good read if you are interested.
1 The title of the drama “Thirteen Lords of Kamakura” is, I believe, in reference to the various samurai clans who are allies or enemies of the Genji, and each one jockeying for power. I might be wrong though.
2 This also debunks a tired old myth about samurai and Zen Buddhism. The reality was quite a bit more nuanced.
Life in Japan was especially hard during the last half of the twelfth century to the first half of the thirteenth. The historical transition from the aristocratic Heian Period to the militaristic Kamakura Period was a time of tremendous political upheaval, nationwide warfare between the Heike and Genji samurai clans, and finally good ol’ fashioned plagues, famines and natural disasters. In time, Japan did rebuild, and life moved on, but within a couple generations a great deal in Japan had changed.
It was under this backdrop that a man named Kamo no Chōmei (鴨長明, 1155-1216), a former poet of the Imperial court turned Buddhist renunciant, composed a small work in 1212 around the age of 60 detailing the dramatic and painful changes in society, and his subsequent self-imposed hermitage in a tiny hut titled the Hōjōki (方丈記). The term hōjō (方丈) is a unit of measure meaning 10 square shaku which is very close to 10 square feet, and “ki” (記) just means a record of something. So, it’s reasonable to translate this as “A Record of [my] Ten Square Foot Hut”.
The inspiration for the hut, which was in the hills southeast of Kyoto (photos here), was from the legendary Buddhist figure Vimalakirti who practiced the Buddhist path from a similar hut in India.
Kamo no Chōmei spends much time in the Hojoki explaining the numerous disasters and tragic tales that befell the capital, Heian-Kyo (now modern Kyoto) during the 1180’s (the Yōwa era), and the social upheaval of the time. For this blog post, I am using Dr Meredith McKinney’s translation from the the book Three Japanese Buddhist Monks, published by Penguin Random House.
All this drove people throughout the provinces to leave their land and migrate elsewhere, or desert their homes and simply take to the hills. Various prayers to the gods were instigated and fervent Buddhist ceremonies performed at the palace, but to no avail….People [in the capital] were driven to offer all their treasured possessions to buyers for a song, but no one would so much as glance at them. And if any exchange did happen to be made, money meant almost nothing, while grain was everything. Beggars crowded the roadsides, and the sound of wailing filled the ears.
Pages 9-10
Kamo no Chōmei then continues on with a series of disasters that came after: a pandemic, scarcity of basic goods, an earthquake, and so on. Starvation and illness were rampant, and Kamo no Chōmei saw many heart-breaking sights:
….In their sympathy for one another they [husband or wife] would put themselves second, and give their partner any rare morsel that came their way. So also, if parent and child lived together the parent was always the first to die.; a baby would like suckling, unaware that its mother was dead.
Page 11
He summarizes all this with the words:
Yes, take it for all in all, this world is a hard place to live, and both we and our dwellings are fragile and impermanent, as these events reveal.
Page 13
Then, the Hojoki shifts gears, and Kamo no Chōmei discusses his own failed career in the Court bureaucracy, and eventual hermitage.
All told, I spent some thirty troubled years withstanding the vagaries of this world. At each new setback, I understood afresh how wretched my luck is. And so, in the spring of my fiftieth year, I came to leave my home and take tonsure, and turned my back on the world. I had never had a wife and children, so there were no close ties that were difficult to break. I had no rank [in the imperial court] and salary to forgo. What was there to hold me to the world? I made my bed among the clouds of Ōhara’s mountains…
page 15
He describes his hut in detail, discussing the garden, water system, farming he does to make ends meet, and his relations with a father and son living nearby. He talks about his small Buddhist altar, and his devotion to Amitabha Buddha, with whom he hopes to be reborn in the Pure Land after death.
Finally, he reminisces about the capital and how much things have changed:
When news of the capital happens to come my way, I learn of many people in high places who have met their end since I retired to this mountain, and other lesser folk besides, too many to be told. And how many houses too, have been lost in all those fires? In all this, my mere passing shelter has remained tranquil and safe from fears.
page 19
and contrasts it with his own life:
I love my tiny hut, my lonely dwelling. When I chance to go down to the capital, I am ashamed of my lowly beggar status, but once back here again I pity those who chase after sordid rewards of the world.
page 21
In the final page though, he begins to doubt his own progress along the Buddhist path due to his attachment to his quiet life and hut, and whether he’s simply traded one set of delusions and attachments for another. To this he ends the text with these words:
When I confront my heart thus, it cannot reply. At most, this mortal tongue can only end in three faltering invocations [the nembutsu] of the holy, unapproachable name of Amida.
page 22
Throughout the Hojoki, there is a strong sense of Buddhist impermanence, things coming and going, the pointlessness of attaining ephemeral benefits in this world, the empty decadence, and bittersweet nostalgia for the good old days in the Capital (Kyoto) before the war. Anyone who’s read The Great Gatsby might appreciate a common thread between the two books, even if separated by almost 1,000 years and totally different cultures.
I highly recommend anyone reading the Hojoki if they have an hour or two to spend. This is a good online translation in particular, but I also think Meredith McKinney’s is also excellent and worth picking up. The Hojoki is short, about 20 pages in a modern book, but a fascinating look at the last days of the historical “Heian Period” of Japan, the passing of a golden age in Japan, and life since then. Plus, it is a reminder that the powerful do not last very long anyway. It’s pretty grim at times, somewhat bittersweet in others, but I think there’s something for everyone.
Edit: updated blog post with Meredith McKinney’s translation as I like her style more.
Gleanings in Buddha-Fields 
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