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HOJOKIVisions of a Torn Worldby Kamo-no-Chomei
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Japan's capital city of Kyoto was devastated by earthquake, storm, and fire in the late 12th century. Retreating from "this unkind world," the poet and Buddhist priest Kamo-no-Chomei left the capital for the forested mountains, where he eventually constructed his famous "ten-foot-square" hut. From this solitary vantage point Chomei produced Hojoki, an extraordinary literary work that describes all he has seen of human misery and his new life of simple chores, walks, and acts of kindness. Yet at the end he questions his own sanity and the integrity of his purpose. Has he perhaps grown too attached to his detachment? "This version of the Hojoki has been worked by the translators with care - both for the sense and the poetry of the original - so that each completes theother. It is as immediately readable as one could wish in the face of an ancient classic - without compromising any element in it. Finally." "[Chomei's incomparable Hojoki [is] as relevant today as it was eight hundred years ago. . . . A luminous translation." |
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| The flowing river never stops and yet the water never stays the same. Foam floats upon the pools, scattering, re-forming, never lingering long. So it is with man and all his dwelling places here on earth.
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The illustration shows a reproduction of text from the first section of Hojoki. |
| This is the prelude to Hojoki, the great work of literary witness of medieval Japan by the recluse Kamo-no-Chomei (1155-1216). These lines are, together with the portentous tolling of the Gion bell at the start of the contemporaneous Heike Monogatari, the most familiar opening lines in Japanese literature. Supple and melodious, they prefigure the language and substance of the entire piece that follows. | Yaushiko Moriguchi and the late David Jenkins collaborated on two previous translations of classical Japanese verse.
Illustrator Michael Hofmann is an accomplished painter who has lived in Kyoto since 1972. |
