RELATED TOPIC:
MEDIEVAL JAPAN

RELATED TOPIC:
AN ACCOUNT OF MY HUT, BY CHÔMEI

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.

[Excerpt from Essays in Idleness]

There is a charm about a neat and proper dwelling house, although this world, 'tis true, is but a temporary abode. ... The man is to be envied who lives in a house, not of the modern, garish kind, but set among venerable trees, with a garden where plants grow wild and yet seem to have been disposed with care. ...

 

Donald Keene :: He says that in a house it is the worst thing to have too much furniture in it. It clutters up the place, and you feel claustrophobic. The best thing is to just have a few pieces of furniture, and that of course, is today, even today, true of Japanese aesthetics. A Japanese room has very little furniture in it.

[Excerpt from Essays in Idleness]

... A room with sliding doors is lighter than one with doors on hinges. ... As for construction, people agree in admiring a place with plenty of spare room, as being pleasing to the eye and at the same time useful for all sorts of purposes.

Donald Keene :: And so Buddhism, in a sense, negates this world. It says, this is not the permanent world; there's another world, which we will go to after we die, which will be the permanent world. But, at the same time, the fact that it is not permanent gives this world its beauty, and Kenkô in his Essays in Idleness captured that, I think, very beautifully.

Two excerpts from Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century, Donald Keene, ed. (New York: Grove Press, 1960), p. 231.