We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us!

Internet Archive Audio

essays in idleness the tsurezuregusa of kenko

  • This Just In
  • Grateful Dead
  • Old Time Radio
  • 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
  • Audio Books & Poetry
  • Computers, Technology and Science
  • Music, Arts & Culture
  • News & Public Affairs
  • Spirituality & Religion
  • Radio News Archive

essays in idleness the tsurezuregusa of kenko

  • Flickr Commons
  • Occupy Wall Street Flickr
  • NASA Images
  • Solar System Collection
  • Ames Research Center

essays in idleness the tsurezuregusa of kenko

  • All Software
  • Old School Emulation
  • MS-DOS Games
  • Historical Software
  • Classic PC Games
  • Software Library
  • Kodi Archive and Support File
  • Vintage Software
  • CD-ROM Software
  • CD-ROM Software Library
  • Software Sites
  • Tucows Software Library
  • Shareware CD-ROMs
  • Software Capsules Compilation
  • CD-ROM Images
  • ZX Spectrum
  • DOOM Level CD

essays in idleness the tsurezuregusa of kenko

  • Smithsonian Libraries
  • FEDLINK (US)
  • Lincoln Collection
  • American Libraries
  • Canadian Libraries
  • Universal Library
  • Project Gutenberg
  • Children's Library
  • Biodiversity Heritage Library
  • Books by Language
  • Additional Collections

essays in idleness the tsurezuregusa of kenko

  • Prelinger Archives
  • Democracy Now!
  • Occupy Wall Street
  • TV NSA Clip Library
  • Animation & Cartoons
  • Arts & Music
  • Computers & Technology
  • Cultural & Academic Films
  • Ephemeral Films
  • Sports Videos
  • Videogame Videos
  • Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

  • Wayback Machine (iOS)
  • Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

  • Explore the Collections
  • Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

  • Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

Essays in idleness; the Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō

Bookreader item preview, share or embed this item, flag this item for.

  • Graphic Violence
  • Explicit Sexual Content
  • Hate Speech
  • Misinformation/Disinformation
  • Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
  • Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

[WorldCat (this item)]

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

1,224 Previews

49 Favorites

DOWNLOAD OPTIONS

No suitable files to display here.

EPUB and PDF access not available for this item.

IN COLLECTIONS

Uploaded by ttscribe11.hongkong on October 11, 2018

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

Columbia University Press

Site Content

Essays in idleness.

The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō, With a New Preface

Translated by Donald Keene

Columbia University Press

Essays in Idleness

Pub Date: May 1998

ISBN: 9780231112550

Format: Paperback

List Price: $32.00 £28.00

Shipping Options

Purchasing options are not available in this country.

ISBN: 9780231518949

Format: E-book

List Price: $31.99 £28.00

  • EPUB via the Columbia UP App
  • PDF via the Columbia UP App
A most delightful book, and one that has served as a model of Japanese style and taste since the seventeenth century. These cameo-like vignettes reflect the importance of the little, fleeting futile things, and each essay is Kenkō himself. Asian Student
If you enjoy things briefly told, if you want to try the prose equivalent of waka and haiku , if you already know Montaigne and would like to meet a spiritual kinsman, then you might want to take an evening and read Essays in Idleness .... [A] superb translation. Washington Post
A sensitive, personal reading. Journal of Asian Studies
The Tsurezuregusa is a key instrument in attempting to teach the classical Japanese tradition to the modern Western student.... This is indeed a welcome volume. Monumenta Nipponica

Your Amazon Prime 30-day FREE trial includes:

Unlimited Premium Delivery is available to Amazon Prime members. To join, select "Yes, I want a free trial with FREE Premium Delivery on this order." above the Add to Basket button and confirm your Amazon Prime free trial sign-up.

Important:  Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, you will be charged £95/year for Prime (annual) membership or £8.99/month for Prime (monthly) membership.

.savingPriceOverride { color:#CC0C39!important; font-weight: 300!important; } .reinventMobileHeaderPrice { font-weight: 400; } #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPriceSavingsPercentageMargin, #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPricePriceToPayMargin { margin-right: 4px; } £25.00 £ 25 . 00 FREE delivery Monday, 3 June Dispatches from: Amazon Sold by: Amazon

Return this item for free.

Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. For a full refund with no deduction for return shipping, you can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition.

  • Go to your orders and start the return
  • Select the return method

.a-accordion .mobb-css .a-accordion-row h5 {font-weight: 700;} Willing to wait? .savingPriceOverride { color:#CC0C39!important; font-weight: 300!important; } .reinventMobileHeaderPrice { font-weight: 400; } #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPriceSavingsPercentageMargin, #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPricePriceToPayMargin { margin-right: 4px; } -14% £21.53 £ 21 . 53 FREE delivery 10 - 12 June Dispatches from: BOOKS etc Sold by: BOOKS etc

Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet or computer – no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Image Unavailable

Essays in Idleness – The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō (Translations from the Asian Classics)

  • To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the authors

Kenkō

Essays in Idleness – The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō (Translations from the Asian Classics) Paperback – 26 May 1998

Purchase options and add-ons.

  • Print length 240 pages
  • Language English
  • Publisher Columbia University Press
  • Publication date 26 May 1998
  • Dimensions 13.56 x 1.52 x 22.05 cm
  • ISBN-10 0231112556
  • ISBN-13 978-0231112550
  • See all details

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Essays in Idleness: and Hojoki (Penguin Classics)

Product description

About the author, product details.

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Columbia University Press; With a New Preface edition (26 May 1998)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0231112556
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0231112550
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.56 x 1.52 x 22.05 cm
  • 995 in History of Buddhism
  • 1,283 in Classical, Early & Medieval Poetry
  • 1,435 in Philosophy of Theology

About the authors

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Kenkō Yoshida

Customer reviews.

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings, help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyses reviews to verify trustworthiness.

  • Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from United Kingdom

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

essays in idleness the tsurezuregusa of kenko

Top reviews from other countries

Customer image

  • UK Modern Slavery Statement
  • Sustainability
  • Amazon Science
  • Sell on Amazon
  • Sell on Amazon Business
  • Sell on Amazon Handmade
  • Sell on Amazon Launchpad
  • Supply to Amazon
  • Protect and build your brand
  • Associates Programme
  • Fulfilment by Amazon
  • Seller Fulfilled Prime
  • Advertise Your Products
  • Independently Publish with Us
  • Host an Amazon Hub
  • › See More Make Money with Us
  • Instalments by Barclays
  • Amazon Platinum Mastercard
  • Amazon Classic Mastercard
  • Amazon Currency Converter
  • Payment Methods Help
  • Shop with Points
  • Top Up Your Account
  • Top Up Your Account in Store
  • COVID-19 and Amazon
  • Track Packages or View Orders
  • Delivery Rates & Policies
  • Amazon Prime
  • Returns & Replacements
  • Manage Your Content and Devices
  • Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
  • Amazon Mobile App
  • Customer Service
  • Accessibility
  • Conditions of Use & Sale
  • Privacy Notice
  • Cookies Notice
  • Interest-Based Ads Notice

(Stanford users can avoid this Captcha by logging in.)

  • Send to text email RefWorks EndNote printer

Essays in idleness [electronic resource] : the Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō

Available online.

  • ACLS Humanities E-Book

More options

  • Find it at other libraries via WorldCat
  • Contributors

Description

Creators/contributors, contents/summary, bibliographic information, browse related items.

Stanford University

  • Stanford Home
  • Maps & Directions
  • Search Stanford
  • Emergency Info
  • Terms of Use
  • Non-Discrimination
  • Accessibility

© Stanford University , Stanford , California 94305 .

essays in idleness the tsurezuregusa of kenko

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet or computer – no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera, scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle app

Image Unavailable

Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō

  • To view this video, download Flash Player

Follow the authors

Kenkō Yoshida

Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō Paperback – May 6 1998

Purchase options and add-ons.

In this fresh edition, Donald Keene's critically acclaimed translation is joined by a new preface, in which Keene himself looks back at the ripples created by Kenkō's musings, especially for modern readers.

  • ISBN-10 0231112556
  • ISBN-13 978-0231112550
  • Edition 2nd ed.
  • Publisher Columbia University Press
  • Publication date May 6 1998
  • Language English
  • Dimensions 13.56 x 1.52 x 22.05 cm
  • Print length 235 pages
  • See all details

Frequently bought together

Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Essays in Idleness and Hojoki

Product description

About the author, product details.

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Columbia University Press; 2nd ed. edition (May 6 1998)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 235 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0231112556
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0231112550
  • Item weight ‏ : ‎ 298 g
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.56 x 1.52 x 22.05 cm
  • #39 in Asian Literature Textbooks
  • #115 in Buddhism Textbooks
  • #150 in History of Buddhism in Religion

About the authors

Kenkō yoshida.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

  • Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from Canada

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

essays in idleness the tsurezuregusa of kenko

Top reviews from other countries

essays in idleness the tsurezuregusa of kenko

  • Amazon and Our Planet
  • Investor Relations
  • Press Releases
  • Amazon Science
  • Sell on Amazon
  • Supply to Amazon
  • Become an Affiliate
  • Protect & Build Your Brand
  • Sell on Amazon Handmade
  • Advertise Your Products
  • Independently Publish with Us
  • Host an Amazon Hub
  • Amazon.ca Rewards Mastercard
  • Shop with Points
  • Reload Your Balance
  • Amazon Currency Converter
  • Amazon Cash
  • Shipping Rates & Policies
  • Amazon Prime
  • Returns Are Easy
  • Manage your Content and Devices
  • Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
  • Customer Service
  • Conditions of Use
  • Privacy Notice
  • Interest-Based Ads
  • Amazon.com.ca ULC | 40 King Street W 47th Floor, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5H 3Y2 |1-877-586-3230

The Timeless Wisdom of Kenko

A 14th-century Japanese essayist’s advice for troubled times runs the gamut from quirky to prescient

Lance Morrow

essays in idleness the tsurezuregusa of kenko

Around the year 1330, a poet and Buddhist monk named Kenko wrote Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa) —an eccentric, sedate and gemlike assemblage of his thoughts on life, death, weather, manners, aesthetics, nature, drinking, conversational bores, sex, house design, the beauties of understatement and imperfection.

For a monk, Kenko was remarkably worldly; for a former imperial courtier, he was unusually spiritual. He was a fatalist and a crank. He articulated the Japanese aesthetic of beauty as something inherently impermanent—an aesthetic that acquires almost unbearable pertinence at moments when an earthquake and tsunami may shatter existing arrangements.

Kenko yearned for a golden age, a Japanese Camelot, when all was becoming and graceful. He worried that “nobody is left who knows the proper manner for hanging a quiver before the house of a man in disgrace with his majesty.” He even regretted that no one remembered the correct shape of a torture rack or the appropriate way to attach a prisoner to it. He said deliberate cruelty is the worst of human offenses. He believed that “the art of governing a country is founded on thrift.”

One or two of his essays are purely informational (not to say weird). One of my favorites is essay 49, which reads in its entirety: “You should never put the new antlers of a deer to your nose and smell them. They have little insects that crawl into the nose and devour the brain.”

A sailor in rough seas may grip the rail and fix his eye on a distant object in order to steady himself and avoid seasickness. I read Kenko’s essays for a similar reason.

Kenko lived on a different planet—planet Earth in the 14th century. But if you proceed on the vertical from the 14th century to the 21st, you become aware of a time-flex in which his intimations of degeneracy and decline resonate with our own. A kind of sonar: from Kenko our own thoughts bounce back across time with an alienated charm and a laugh of recognition.

Kenko had been a poet and courtier in Kyoto in the court of the emperor Go-Daigo. It was a time of turbulent change. Go-Daigo would be ousted and driven into exile by the regime of the Ashikaga shoguns. Kenko withdrew to a cottage, where he lived and composed the 243 essays of the Tsurezuregusa . It was believed that he brushed his thoughts on scraps of paper and pasted them to the cottage walls, and that after his death his friend the poet and general Imagawa Ryoshun removed the scraps and arranged them into the order in which they have passed into Japanese literature. (The wallpaper story was later questioned, but in any case, the essays survived.)

Kenko was a contemporary of Dante, another sometime public man and courtier who lived in exile in unstable times. Their minds, in ways, were worlds apart.  The Divine Comedy contemplated the eternal; the Essays in Idleness meditated upon the evanescent. Dante wrote with beauty and limpidity and terrifying magnificence, Kenko with offhand charm. They talked about the end of the world in opposite terms: the Italian poet set himself up, part of the time, anyway, as the bureaucrat of suffering, codifying sins and devising terrible punishments. Kenko, despite his lament for the old-fashioned rack, wrote mostly about solecisms and gaucheries, and it was the Buddhist law of uncertainty that presided over his universe. The Divine Comedy is one of the monuments of world literature. The Essays in Idleness are lapidary, brief and not much known outside Japan.

Kenko wrote: “They speak of the degenerate, final phase of the world, yet how splendid is the ancient atmosphere, uncontaminated by the world, that still prevails within the palace walls.” As Kenko’s translator Donald Keene observed, there flows through the essays “the conviction that the world is steadily growing worse.” It is perversely comforting to reflect that people have been anticipating the end of the world for so many centuries. Such persistent pessimism almost gives one hope.

There is consolation in knowing, too, that Kenko was a sailor at the rail, fixing his eye across the water: “The pleasantest of all diversions is to sit alone under the lamp, a book spread out before you, and to make friends with people of a distant past you have never known.” Kenko is like a friend who reappears, after a long separation, and resumes your talk as if he had left the room for just a moment.

Kenko is charming, off-kilter, never gloomy. He is almost too intelligent to be gloomy, or in any case, too much a Buddhist. He writes in one of the essays: “A certain man once said, ‘Surely nothing is so delightful as the moon,’ but another man rejoined, ‘The dew moves me even more.’ How amusing that they should have argued the point.”

He cherished the precarious: “The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty.” He proposed a civilized aesthetic: “Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth.” Perfection is banal. Better asymmetry and irregularity.

He stressed the importance of beginnings and endings, rather than mere vulgar fullness or success: “Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless? To long for the moon while looking on the rain, to lower the blinds and be unaware of the passing of the spring—these are even more deeply moving. Branches about to blossom or gardens strewn with faded flowers are worthier of our admiration.”

At a time when flowers have been wilting, when assets dwindle and mere vulgar fullness may suggest something as unpromising as a portfolio managed by Bernard Madoff, the eye might appreciate a moon obscured by clouds.

Of houses, Kenko says: “A man’s character, as a rule, may be known from the place where he lives.” For example: “A house which multitudes of workmen have polished with every care, where strange and rare Chinese and Japanese furnishings are displayed, and even grasses and trees of the garden have been trained unnaturally, is ugly to look at and most depressing. A house should look lived in, unassuming.” So much for the McMansion.

In a time of traumatic change, some writers or artists or composers may withdraw from the world in order to compose their own universe—Prospero’s island.

That is how Montaigne, in the midst of France’s 16th-century Catholic-Protestant wars, came to write his Essaies , which changed literature. After an estimable career as courtier under Charles IX, as member of the Bordeaux parliament, as a moderating friend of both Henry III and Henry of Navarre during the bloody wars of religion, Montaigne withdrew to the round tower on his family estate in Bordeaux. He announced: “In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, his birthday, Michel de Montaigne, long weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned virgins, where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life, now more than half run out.... he has consecrated [this sweet ancestral retreat] to his freedom, tranquility and leisure.”

The wood over his doorway was inscribed to read, “Que sais-je?” —“What do I know?”—the pre-eminent question of the Renaissance and Enlightenment. So, surrounded by his library of 1,500 books, he began to write.

Montaigne followed a method of composition much like Kenko’s. In Japanese it is called zuihitsu , or “follow the brush”—that is, jot down the thoughts as they come to you. This may produce admirable results, if you are Kenko or Montaigne.

I find both to be stabilizing presences. A person’s sense of balance depends upon the inner ear; it is to the inner ear that such writers speak. Sometimes I get the effect by taking a dip in the Bertie Wooster stories of P. G. Wodehouse, who wrote such wonderful sentences as this description of a solemn young clergyman: “He had the face of a sheep with a secret sorrow.” Wodehouse, too, would eventually live in exile (both geographical and psychological), in a cottage on Long Island, remote from his native England. He composed a Bertie Wooster Neverland—the Oz of the twit. The Wizard, more or less, was the butler Jeeves.

Wodehouse, Kenko, Dante and Montaigne make an improbable quartet, hilariously diverse. They come as friendly aliens to comfort the inner ear, and to relieve one’s sense, which is strong these days, of being isolated on an earth that itself seems increasingly alien, confusing and unfriendly.

It is a form of vanity to imagine you are living in the worst of times—there have always been worse. In bad times and heavy seas, the natural fear is that things will get worse, and never better. It’s a jolt to a Western, instinctively progressive mind, trained to think of history as ascendant—like the stock market, like housing prices—to find trends running in the other direction.

Still, I remember once going to Kyoto, the scene of Kenko’s exile, and after that I took the bullet train to Hiroshima. The memorial park was there, and the memorial museum with its terrible record of what happened in August 1945—hell itself—and there was the charred skeleton of the dome of the city’s prefecture, preserved as a reminder. But otherwise...a bustling, prospering city, with a thousand neon signs flashing familiar corporate logos. And when you crossed a busy intersection, the “Walk” signal played a tinkling little Japanese version of “Comin’ Through the Rye.”

Those who say the world has gone to hell may be right. It is also true that hell, contra Dante, may be temporary.

Dante, Kenko and Montaigne all wrote as men exiled from power—from the presence of power. But power, too, is only temporary.

Every moment readjusts the coordinates of hope and despair—some of the readjustments are more violent than others. We live now in a validation of Bertrand Russell’s model of “spots and jumps.” In 1931, the philosopher wrote:  “I think the universe is all spots and jumps, without unity, without continuity, without coherence or orderliness or any of the other properties that governesses love...it consists of events, short, small and haphazard. Order, unity and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as are catalogues and encyclopedias.”

Kenko in one essay wrote: “Nothing leads a man astray so easily as sexual desire. The holy man of Kume lost his magic powers after noticing the whiteness of the legs of a girl who was washing clothes. This is quite understandable, considering that the glowing plumpness of her arms, legs and flesh owed nothing to artifice.”

That, too, sends a strange little echo back to our time. The magic power the holy man lost was his ability to fly. Our world regained the magic, and it gave us Charles Lindbergh, Hiroshima, global travel, 9/11 and the Nigerian terrorist who, coming into Detroit one Christmas Day, set his underpants on fire.

We are surrounded by magic, some good, some evil and some both at once—an excess of magic, a confusion of it. Solitary Kenko brushed his cranky, acerbic thoughts onto scraps of paper that survived through the centuries only by luck; they might just as well have rotted on the walls or gone out with the trash. But look at our magic now: you can Google Kenko, and if you have a Kindle or Nook or iPad or some other e-reader, you can reassemble all of Kenko or Dante or Montaigne electronically upon a thin, flat screen—from which it may also vanish at a touch, in a nanosecond.

A trompe l’oeil universe: creation and un-creation—poof! Precious writers are miraculously diffused through the Web, you fetch them out of the air itself. And they may disappear more quickly than Kenko’s vanishing blossoms or shrouded moons. The universe is not a solid thing.

Writing is—we have always thought—a solitary and even covert labor. Of course a great writer need not be a hermit. (Shakespeare was not.) I have wondered whether Montaigne or Kenko or (God help us) Dante would have been on Facebook or Twitter, gabbing and texting away in the gregarious solidarities of new social forms. Are there such things as exile or retreat or solitude in the universe of Skype, the global hive? Does the new networking improve the quality of thinking and writing? It undoubtedly changes the process—but how, and how much? We don’t know yet.

Sometimes, oddly enough, it’s easier to write in a noisy room than in silence and solitude; for a time I liked to write while riding up and down Manhattan on the Lexington Avenue IRT—the rattling of the cars and screeching of the rails improved my concentration, and I liked having company as I scribbled away. I was fascinated and strangely soothed by the protocol of the subway, which requires that the faces of all those diverse riders—Asians, Africans, Latinos, Europeans—should, for the duration of the ride, be impassive and unreadable: no eye contact, perfect masks.

Lance Morrow ’s books include the essay collection Second Drafts of History .

Get the latest Travel & Culture stories in your inbox.

Lance Morrow | READ MORE

essays in idleness the tsurezuregusa of kenko

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Image Unavailable

Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko

  • To view this video download Flash Player

Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko Tankobon Hardcover – January 1, 1981

  • Print length 213 pages
  • Language Japanese
  • Publisher Charles E Tuttle
  • Publication date January 1, 1981
  • ISBN-10 4805304766
  • ISBN-13 978-4805304761
  • See all details

The Amazon Book Review

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Charles E Tuttle (January 1, 1981)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ Japanese
  • Tankobon Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 213 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 4805304766
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-4805304761
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8 ounces
  • Best Sellers Rank: #8,546,584 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books )

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

No customer reviews

  • Amazon Newsletter
  • About Amazon
  • Accessibility
  • Sustainability
  • Press Center
  • Investor Relations
  • Amazon Devices
  • Amazon Science
  • Sell on Amazon
  • Sell apps on Amazon
  • Supply to Amazon
  • Protect & Build Your Brand
  • Become an Affiliate
  • Become a Delivery Driver
  • Start a Package Delivery Business
  • Advertise Your Products
  • Self-Publish with Us
  • Become an Amazon Hub Partner
  • › See More Ways to Make Money
  • Amazon Visa
  • Amazon Store Card
  • Amazon Secured Card
  • Amazon Business Card
  • Shop with Points
  • Credit Card Marketplace
  • Reload Your Balance
  • Amazon Currency Converter
  • Your Account
  • Your Orders
  • Shipping Rates & Policies
  • Amazon Prime
  • Returns & Replacements
  • Manage Your Content and Devices
  • Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
  • Conditions of Use
  • Privacy Notice
  • Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
  • Your Ads Privacy Choices

RELATED TOPIC: MEDIEVAL JAPAN

RELATED TOPIC: AN ACCOUNT OF MY HUT , BY CHÔMEI

essays in idleness the tsurezuregusa of kenko

Celebrate Pride with Great Books

  • Discussions
  • Reading Challenge
  • Kindle Notes & Highlights
  • Favorite genres
  • Friends’ recommendations
  • Account settings

Facebook

Essays in Idleness Quotes

Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō

All Quotes Quotes By Yoshida Kenkō

Welcome back. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account.

essays in idleness the tsurezuregusa of kenko

IMAGES

  1. Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō by Yoshida Kenkō

    essays in idleness the tsurezuregusa of kenko

  2. “Tsurezuregusa of Kenko” published in Persian

    essays in idleness the tsurezuregusa of kenko

  3. Illustrated Essays in Idleness (Ehon tsurezuregusa), vol. 2

    essays in idleness the tsurezuregusa of kenko

  4. Essays in Idleness

    essays in idleness the tsurezuregusa of kenko

  5. ESSAYS IN IDLENESS BY YOSHIDA KENKO (EXCERPT)

    essays in idleness the tsurezuregusa of kenko

  6. Donald Keene (tr.): Essays in idleness: the Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō

    essays in idleness the tsurezuregusa of kenko

VIDEO

  1. Four elements of Japanese Philosophy

  2. Essays in Idleness by Yoshida Kenko

  3. ESSAYS IN IDLENESS BY YOSHIDA KENKO (EXCERPT)

  4. Essays in Idleness Part One, 徒然草 1

  5. Essays in Idleness

  6. Four elements of Japanese Philosophy

COMMENTS

  1. Tsurezuregusa

    Kenkō. Tsurezuregusa (徒然草, Essays in Idleness, also known as The Harvest of Leisure) is a collection of essays written by the Japanese monk Kenkō (兼好) between 1330 and 1332. The work is widely considered a gem of medieval Japanese literature and one of the three representative works of the zuihitsu genre, along with The Pillow Book and the Hōjōki.

  2. Essays in idleness; the Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō

    Essays in idleness : the Tsurezuregusa of Kenk� Author (alternate script) 吉田兼好 . xxii, 213 pages 23 cm Includes bibliographical references (page 203) commitment to retain 20151204 Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2018-10-11 06:44:53 ...

  3. Essays in Idleness

    As Emperor Go-Daigo fended off a challenge from the usurping Hojo family, and Japan stood at the brink of a dark political era, Kenkō held fast to his Buddhist beliefs and took refuge in the pleasures of solitude. Written between 1330 and 1332, Essays in Idleness reflects the congenial priest's thoughts on a variety of subjects.

  4. Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō

    Just before the brief Kenmu Restoration, between 1330 and 1332, Kenko wrote the Tsurezuregusa (available in Donald Keene's wonderful translation Essays in Idleness), regarded as one of the finest gems of Japanese literature and forming with Sei Shonagon's Makura no Sōshi (The Pillow Book) and Kamo no Chomei's Hōjōki(*) the classic ...

  5. Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō

    Essays in Idleness. : Kenkō Yoshida. Columbia University Press, 1967 - Education - 213 pages. Despite the turbulent times in which he lived, the Buddhist priest Kenkō met the world with a measured eye. As Emperor Go-Daigo fended off a challenge from the usurping Hojo family, and Japan stood at the brink of a dark political era, Kenkō held ...

  6. Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko

    Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko [Keene, Donald] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko

  7. Yoshida Kenkō

    Yoshida Kenkō was a Japanese poet and essayist, the outstanding literary figure of his time. His collection of essays, Tsurezuregusa (c. 1330; Essays in Idleness, 1967), became, especially after the 17th century, a basic part of Japanese education, and his views have had a prominent place in

  8. Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō

    Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō. Translated by Donald Keene. New York: Columbia University Press, 1967. xxii, 213 pp. Index, Selected Bibliography. $6.50. - Volume 28 Issue 3

  9. Essays in Idleness

    Buy Essays in Idleness - The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō (Translations from the Asian Classics) With a New Preface by Keene, Donald (ISBN: 9780231112550) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

  10. Essays in idleness [electronic resource] : the Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō

    Essays in idleness [electronic resource] : the Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō. Responsibility translated by Donald Keene Uniform Title Tsurezuregusa. English Edition 2nd pbk. ed Imprint New York : Columbia University Press, c1998 Physical description xxvi, 213 p. : ill. ; 22 cm Series

  11. Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō

    As Emperor Go-Daigo fended off a challenge from the usurping Hojo family, and Japan stood at the brink of a dark political era, Kenkō held fast to his Buddhist beliefs and took refuge in the pleasures of solitude. Written between 1330 and 1332, Essays in Idleness reflects the congenial priest's thoughts on a variety of subjects.

  12. Essays in Idleness

    In Japanese literature: Kamakura period (1192-1333). 1330; Essays in Idleness); instead, he looks back nostalgically to the happier days of the past.Kenkō's aesthetic judgments, often based on a this-worldly awareness rather surprising in a Buddhist priest, gained wide currency, especially after the 17th century, when Tsurezuregusa was widely read.

  13. Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō

    About the Title. Essays in Idleness refers to Zen Buddhist monk Yoshida Kenkō's (c. 1283-1350) collection of short passages about a wide variety of topics both practical and philosophical. While idleness is often associated with being lazy or lacking activity, Kenkō's use of the term refers to his humble, meditative life as a Zen Buddhist monk.

  14. Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō Paperback

    Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō: Keene, Professor Donald: 9780231112550: Books - Amazon.ca ... These essays are Kenko's opinion, yet they can be taken as the opinions of Japan's society at the time of the writing. Therefore there is a great deal of interesting cultural information and meaning behind Kenko's words.

  15. Asian Topics on Asia for Educators || Essays in Idleness, by Yoshida Kenko

    ESSAYS IN IDLENESS (TSUREZUREGUSA) by Yoshida Kenkô (c. 1283-c. 1350) The Beauty of Simplicity. Donald Keene :: The Japanese love of simplicity, again, is found in his [Kenkô's] work when he talks about the beauty of a room which is not overly furnished, where there's plenty of space to move around. There is a charm about a neat and proper ...

  16. Essays in Idleness, by Yoshida Kenko

    ESSAYS IN IDLENESS (TSUREZUREGUSA) by Yoshida Kenkô (c. 1283-c. 1350) Development of a Buddhist Aesthetic. and Influence on Japanese Culture. Essays in Idleness was written around 1330 by Yoshida Kenkô. Buddhist beliefs were spreading in Japan at this time and are reflected in the literature—such as this work by Kenkô—written during this ...

  17. Essays in idleness: the Tsurezuregusa of Kenko

    Essays in idleness: the Tsurezuregusa of Kenko - UNESCO ... book

  18. The Timeless Wisdom of Kenko

    Around the year 1330, a poet and Buddhist monk named Kenko wrote Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa)—an eccentric, sedate and gemlike assemblage of his thoughts on life, death, weather, manners ...

  19. Amazon.com: Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko

    Amazon.com: Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko: 9784805304761: Kenko, Donald Keene: Books. Skip to main content.us. Delivering to Lebanon 66952 Sign in to update your location Books. Select the department you want to search in. Search Amazon. EN. Hello, sign in. Account & Lists ...

  20. Asian Topics on Asia for Educators || Essays in Idleness, by Yoshida Kenko

    ESSAYS IN IDLENESS (TSUREZUREGUSA) by Yoshida Kenkô (c. 1283-c. 1350) The Desirability of Impermanence. Donald Keene :: For example, he [Kenkô] speaks of the desirability of impermanence. Are we to look at flowers in full bloom, at the moon when it is clear? Nay, to look out on the rain and long for the moon, to draw the blinds and not be ...

  21. Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō

    Zen Buddhist monk Yoshida Kenkō (c. 1283-1350) considers practical and philosophical matters great and small in Essays in Idleness which is a collection of fragmentary thoughts and musings. Idleness can mean laziness or inaction. For Kenkō it refers to the quiet life of a monk spent in contemplation and writing his thoughts as they occur to ...

  22. Essays in Idleness Quotes by Yoshida Kenkō

    Essays in Idleness Quotes Showing 1-30 of 45. "To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is pleasure beyond compare.". ― Yoshida Kenko, Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō. tags: books , contemplation , reading.

  23. Yoshida Kenkō

    Essays in Idleness. Urabe Kenkō (卜部 兼好, 1283-1350), also known as Yoshida Kenkō (吉田 兼好), or simply Kenkō (兼好), was a Japanese author and Buddhist monk. His most famous work is Tsurezuregusa ( Essays in Idleness ), [1] one of the most studied works of medieval Japanese literature. Kenko wrote during the Muromachi and ...