ESSAYS IN IDLENESS AND HOJOKI

Both of these works on life’s fleeting pleasures are by Buddhist monks from medieval Japan, but each represents a different worldview. In Essays in Idleness, his lively and sometimes ribald collection of anecdotes, advice, and observations, Kenko displays his fascination with earthly matters. In the short memoir Hojoki, or The Ten Foot Square Hut, however, Chomei recounts his decision to withdraw from worldly affairs and live as a hermit.

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Kamo no Chōmei was born into a family of Shinto priests in around 1155, at at time when the stable world of the court was rapidly breaking up. He became an important though minor poet (in the waka form) of his day, and at the age of fifty, withdrew from the world to become a tonsured monk. He died in around 1216.
Yoshida Kenkō was born around 1283 in Kyoto.He probably became a monk in his late twenties, and was also noted as a calligrapher. Kenko wrote during the Muromachi and Kamakura periods. Today he is remembered for his wise and witty aphorisms, 'Essays in Idleness', one of the most studied works of medieval Japanese literature.