Another example of how times change is to be found in different English versions of Yoshida Kenko’s ‘Tsure-Zure Gusa’. William N. Porter’s translation, published in 1914 under the title ‘The Miscellany of a Japanese Priest’ contains many explicit accounts of fourteenth century Japanese life, however two of the 243 Sections of Kenko’s book, nos. 61 and 90, are censored from the text with the briefest explanation: “Omitted as unsuitable for English translation”. No correspondence can be entered into, and if we are not conversant in Japanese must rely on other sources for further explanation of these deliberate omissions. Meredith McKinney’s 2013 translation, under the conventional English title of the book, ‘Essays in Idleness’, helps reveal what we may have already guessed. Porter lives in the quaint world of Victorian prudery. Whether it was he or his publisher, or both, who decided to leave out 61 and 90, we may never know. But the reader turns the pages to find that ...