Yoshida Kenkō

Yoshida Kenko (Japanese吉田 兼 好), whose real name Urabe no Kaneyoshi (卜 部 兼 好) (* around 1283, probably in Kyoto, † around 1350, probably in the province of Iga, today's Mie prefecture ), was a Japanese courtier, poet and Buddhist monk.

Life

Urabe no Kaneyoshi is described as a descendant of the Vice Minister of the Ministry of Civil Administration, Urabe no Kaneaki (卜 部 兼 顕) from Kyoto. Kaneyoshi was first deputy commander of the palace guard to the left (左 兵卫 佐, sahyōe no suke ), but was after the death of the ruler Go- Uda on to 1324 his life at the imperial court of Kyoto to become a Buddhist priest of the Tendai sect and under the new name Yoshida Kenko but not in too great seclusion to lead a life as a monk. He remained the everyday life and poetry connected and found his poetic work even input into an official imperial poetry anthology.

Tsurezuregusa

His best-known work today is the prose collection Tsurezuregusa (徒然 草; Engl. "Reflections from silence "), which was built around 1334 to 1339 and was published posthumously by 1352. It was an indispensable educational heritage of many generations of Japanese as well as classics of Japanese literature. It was also viewed as a prime example of the popular in Japan Zuihitsu genus (ie Miszellenliteratur, essays ). The 243 sections follow the aesthetic concept of wabi -sabi, the incomplete, the imperfect, improvised, and the ephemeral, impermanent. Kenkōs prose is beyond - also typical of the genre - marked by melancholy, individualism, and nostalgia for the past. The distribution of the Tsurezuregusa in public took to the print versions, especially in the late 16th century.

Famous Quotes

• "Would you not pine away like the dew on the Adashi field and non-volatile vanish like the smoke on the Toribe Mountain, but have eternal life - how could you capture the magic as full of melancholy that weaves in all things? Especially their instability makes the world so beautiful. "
• "Nothing gives greater comfort when alone, to sit quietly for themselves, in the lamplight before a book and in this way to make friends with people from days gone by. "
• " How painful to me to think that all the things that one has to constantly, one unconcerned survive, as if nothing had happened. "
• " Youth is the time when you ruined yourself ... The age exceeds the youth while in wisdom, the youth but the age of grace. "
• " One should never be so, as if you were penetrated deep into an art or science. If an educated man, even if he has mastered one thing to speak, with a connoisseur of it? There are always people from the province, the answer a, as if they had all deeply recognized ... "
• " The moon in the autumn nights is incomparably beautiful. How poor is the man who knows there is no difference and believes this star was the same in all seasons! "

Reviews on his person

• "... A world experienced gentleman with a keen sense of what is beautiful in this world of change, and with a deep nostalgia for the golden days of court life during the Heian period. His moods are well worth it, than to be reading this, than what they are in Japan knows to this day as expressions of good taste. His religious views are less exciting, he urged not to answers about the problems of our existence. "
• " Yoshida Kenko ..., ... the court nobility spiritually close standing, observed in his essay work Tsurezuregusa the reality of the society in which he affirmed as human nature and the pursuit of the material and the circumstances of time and time runs analyzed, but without his longing to hide by the culture of the setting nobility. Kenko seems to have been familiar with the life of the samurai. "