In our upcoming September circular, we print Essays VI through VIII of Yoshida Kenkō’s Essays in Idleness, covering the meditation on impermanence (mono no aware), a woman’s hair, and the legend of the flying Kume hermit. To prepare for these passages, it is helpful to look at the history of hermitages in medieval Japan and the constant, gravitational pull of the physical world.
During the Kamakura period, many Japanese scholars, poets, and nobles chose to "abandon the world" (tonsei), fleeing the political violence and decay of the capital to live in simple huts in the mountains. They sought a pure, quiet life of meditation, free from the entanglements of human society. Yet, the literature of the era—including Kenkō’s own writing—is filled with a persistent tension: the hermit who flees the world almost always carries the world with him. In the quiet of his hut, he finds himself longing for the cherry blossoms of Kyoto, remembering the scent of incense, or feeling the sudden, intense ache of loneliness.
This tension is what Kenkō addresses in the story of the Kume hermit. The hermit had achieved the ultimate spiritual victory over physical constraints—the ability to fly. Yet, the simple sight of a young girl's legs washing clothes by the river immediately shattered his years of ascetic discipline, pulling him straight out of the sky. The legend is a reminder that we are physical, biological beings anchored in a material world. We cannot achieve a weightless, frictionless spiritual existence by simply building walls or escaping to the mountains. The gravity of our desires, our biology, and our relationships will always find us.
This September, we will explore how to live with this gravity rather than pretending it does not exist. We will consider how Kenkō's concept of impermanence offers a middle way: not a sterile refusal of the world, but a deep, poignant appreciation of the fleeting beauty that lives only because it is bound to fall.