Kenko and the many meanings of his Tsure-Zure Gusa

 

 

At this year’s St Peter’s Book Fair in September, in Melbourne, amidst a table of turned-up spines: one small tattered green book, art nouveau decorations in gold on cover.

 Title page: ‘The Miscellany of a Japanese Priest : Being a Translation of Tsure-Zure Gusa by William N. Porter’, with an Introduction by Sanki Ichikawa. (London : Humphrey Milford, 1914)

 Only on page 4 of the Introduction, hidden in a paragraph, is the actual name of the author disclosed, “a fourteenth-century priest named Kenko, who lived the life of a recluse, without being able entirely to forgo the passions and desires of this world.” Hidden in his own book.

 Why William N. Porter prints his name and the name of Sanki Ichikawa on the title page, but not the name of Urabe Kenko (1283-1350), also known as Yoshida Kenko, or simply Kenko, is a matter of conjecture. Perhaps short essays on the conjectures are in order. Publishing sales. English manners. Self-importerance. The essays could be written in the style of Kenko and placed fastidiously in a seeming random sequence.

 The Introduction is dated ‘London, June 25, 1914’ (page 8) and the accession stamp of the State Library of Victoria’s Public Lending Library was swivelled to 23 JAN. 1915, which means the book came into being at the time of the outbreak of the First World War. It was a long way for Kenko’s words to travel from London to Melbourne by water. Accession number: 42347

 A cataloguer at some stage figured out who wrote the book, as the call number is S 895.6 Ke which, gauging roughly, means Stack Japanese Literature of the Kamakura Period, two-figure author number, Ke for Kenko. Keeping these things in order can take all day or half a lifetime, for some people. It is highly likely the cataloguer turned to the Introduction and started reading in order to establish the author’s name for the search purposes of future readers.

 This would be unnecessary today, when Kenko is a household name amongst readers of Japanese literature in English. Donald Keene published his translation in 1967 with Columbia University Press and Meredith McKinney hers in Penguin Classics in 2013. Both translators chose to render Tsure-Zure Gusa as ‘Essays in Idleness’, which when reading the book itself seems as unsatisfactory as calling it a Miscellany. Still, given that the author’s interest is in the Buddhist philosophy of impermanence, as well as acceptance of imperfection bundled up in the Japanese term wabi-sabi, perhaps it is in the nature of things for the translation to have several meanings, none of them exact.

 The organising principle, seemingly, is in the opening lines: “Leisurely I face my inkstone all day long, and without any particular object jot down the odds and ends that pass through my mind, with a curious feeling that I am not sane.” (page [9]) There follow 243 sections, or essays, on varied subjects, that a reader is led to believe are the “odds and ends”. ‘Leisurely’ suggests the essays were written in idleness, but were they? ‘Without any particular object’ suggests the essays could be judged a miscellany, or grab-bag, but were any of the essays written without an object?

 The reading experience contradicts these easy explanations. We find ourselves looking at the results of a society where customs and authority have changed significantly, though the author gives little clue as to how this happened or the historical context. Zuihitsu is the Japanese word for this genre, tradition or not, of literature: writing is poured out, the pages are then collected together without apparent structure.

 Who was the owner of the Tsure-Zure Gusa after it was withdrawn from the State Library of Victoria collection? Their name is even more noticeably hidden from view than Kenko in the Introduction. How come it bobbed up 110 years after accession at the Public Lending Library, in one logical next stop for books, the St Peter’s Book Fair held each Spring in East Melbourne? The book is possessed of the faded beauty Kenko himself admires in aged objects that have survived vicissitude and are still of some use.

 Although ‘idleness’ is the usual translation of the title, idleness is not a subject found in Porter’s Index. Nor is idleness itself at the forefront of Kenko’s mind, even when the subject at hand may be the outcome of an idle state. Readers may accept that his essays are the result of ennui, sitting in his chosen monkish seclusion and following his line of thought, but again his essays are compact distillations of experience, where every word is used meaningfully. Tedium has led to very exact expressions of thought, nudging the reader towards their own responses to what he is saying. His brevity has purpose; he is not wasting our time. Certainly, some of the essays hang on a joke or an anecdote that speak of the 14^th century, more illuminating notes perhaps being helpful, but in most cases his essays gather their wits about them, eager to say it well and needful of a reader to hear their wisdom.

 He writes: “However wise a man may seem to be, he is ever inclined to criticize others, though he has little knowledge of himself; but never should he pretend to understand another, while he is ignorant of his own state. He who knows himself may indeed be regarded as a well-informed man.” (Page 102, Section 134) Hardly the thoughts of someone who spends his time in idleness. His essays have the cumulative effect of overhearing someone testing ideas and tossing views about in his mind, usually landing on a position of certainty while leaving space for further consideration. 

 Having removed himself from the world, Kenko is still living in the world and with his memories. His shifting attention is in keeping with the shifting nature of the world as he knows it. Section 189 puts it this way: “You may propose to do a certain thing to-day, but some unforeseen matter of importance crops up and you spend the time wrongly on it; or perhaps somebody you had expected cannot come, and some unexpected visitor arrives instead. At all events you fail to do what you had planned, and it is only the unlooked for that actually happens. What was to have been a trouble turns out to be not so, and what looked as if it would be easy proves to be quite heart-breaking; so the events of each passing day are very different from what you had expected. The same applies also to each year, nor is the whole of life’s span any different.” (page 146-7)

 Kenko concludes: “In truth the one thing we may be sure of is that nothing is certain but (life’s) uncertainty.” (page 147, Section 189) How this book itself came into being, how the translation made its way into this world and across it, how this rare copy found its quiet way onto a second hand book sale table, these and other amusing arrivals and departures are likewise brought to mind, as the book is read again in the Australian springtime of 2025, a blessed solace from current absurd distractions of the rest of the world, and a way to understand oneself in this world.

 William N. Porter gives chapter headings to each Section, unlike Meredith McKinney who simply numbers them, his headings lending weight to the sense that idleness is not one of Kenko’s biggest interests, or even a cause for much guilt. ‘The Imperial Messenger’, ‘On Official Carriages’, ‘On the Death of the Emperor’ tell of his life at court, a life he cannot forget even as he removes himself physically and in time from court life. ‘On Godliness’, ‘The Notices on a Sacred Mountain’, ‘The Origin of a Certain Prayer’ and like headings above a Section of maybe one paragraph or several pages, describe the religious life he adopts at a certain stage of life. These worlds vie for attention, and the readers, as their respective pluses and minuses are spelt out, frequently without any sort of attempt at resolution.

 ‘The Kaiko Shell’ itemises the source of a special incense, without further explanation. ‘The Goblin Cat’ tells the fable of a man-eating beast in the forest, which McKinney leaves in its Japanese nekomata, while Porter dates his version with the Victorian word goblin. ‘On the Tone of Temple Bells’ dwells upon “the note of mutability” that all bells should sound. Set out through the book, these many small aspects of his world are identified, pondered, and let pass on, while for us they speak from a deep past that is now lost except in words. Although not listed in the style of Sei Shonagon, an admired inspiration of Kenko’s, the Sections contain many valued elements in his eyes, both real and transient, even as life is transient. Their special beauty and quality of difference motivate him to talk about them in his “idleness”, which sometimes seems to be that state of reflection where their presence is known to be essential.

 Kenko’s life of noble service is evident in such headings as ‘On Building His Majesty’s Fire’ while his subsequent civilised existence as a secluded contemplative is denoted in such headings as ‘A Cultivated Man at Home’, or Porter’s somewhat judgemental heading for Section 44, ‘On Refinement even in the Country’. On the one hand he indulges in freedoms as he finds them, but then can write on moral questions (‘Against Presumptuous Conduct’) from experience and with force. Indeed ethics emerges as a central concern, giving one to wonder if some of the writing was not in fact collected for instruction purposes.      

 Like looking at the world before 1914, we notice the translator’s own worldview and terminology in this reconstruction of essays describing an even more remote world in flux, that of ancient Japan around 1330. The date due slip states “This Book must be returned WITHIN A FORTNIGHT (Sundays and Holidays included) from the latest date stamped below.” Only one date has ever been stamped into the book: DEC. 18. Amongst several severe instructions in the Notice to Borrowers pasted inside the back cover is the warning: “Lending Library Books must be immediately returned in the event of the outbreak of any infectious disease in the house in which a borrower is dwelling.” Which infectious disease does the Library have in mind? And its final word would also have amused Kenko with his awareness of impermanence: “Change of residence by a borrower must be notified to the Librarian without delay.”