In our upcoming January circular, we print the second part of Essay XIX through Essay XXI of Yoshida Kenkō’s Essays in Idleness. These passages cover the sights of Autumn and Winter, the hermit's grief at leaving the sky, and the aesthetic debate between lovers of the moon and lovers of the dew. To prepare for these reflections, it is worth looking at how the seasons of decay and impermanence invite us to cultivate a refined, contemplative attention.
Kenkō writes that the changes of the seasons are deeply moving, but none more so than Autumn and Winter. While Spring's cherry blossoms and Summer's lush leaves celebrate the arrival of life, Autumn's fading reeds and Winter's frost speak of its inevitable departure. There is a distinct, quiet beauty in the chilly winds, the grey skies, and the bare branches of a winter garden. This aesthetic is rooted in mono no aware—the deep, sympathetic awareness of the transience of all things. When nature is stripped of its color and excess, we are forced to confront the bare structure of reality, finding a solemn grace in the very temporality of our lives.
A central theme in these essays is the hermit's quiet grief at the passage of time—specifically, the realization of how few seasons we have to look up at the sky. Kenkō describes a classic debate in Japanese aesthetics: is the full, bright moon of an autumn night more beautiful, or is it the morning dew on the grass, which vanishes almost before we can see it? The lover of the moon seeks a remote, stable beauty, while the lover of the dew embraces the most fragile and fleeting form of existence. To love the dew is to accept that the value of an experience is not diminished by its transience, but rather heightened by the certainty that it will soon be gone.
This January, we will explore how to find meaning in the winter of our own attention. We will consider how to step away from the loud, continuous consumption of modern life and tune our senses to the quiet, fragile "dew" of these readings, learning to appreciate the beauty of what is small, fleeting, and deeply considered.