Kamo no chomei biography definition

Kamo no Chomei's works represent the best poetry of his age, a time when Japan produced a number of great poets. He was thoroughly trained as a poetic artist, and his abilities soon won him grudging recognition from the court and eventually, an official post, in spite of his humble origins. Inhe took Buddhist orders, but was denied an appointment as priest at the Kamo Shrine and lost the political support of his sponsors.

Chomei remained in contact with the court and the literary world after his retirement from society. Inhe was delighted when ten of his poems were included in the Shin kokin-shuthe eight imperial anthology of court poetry. His poetry was difficult, but possessed great resonance and depth of tone. Kyoto experienced the Great Fire of ; a windstorm in that flattened much of the city; a two-year famine that devastated the area and left the streets littered with corpses and starving residents wandering aimlessly; the moving of the capital; and a disastrous earthquake in ; all while the Taira and Minamoto clans were fighting a bitter civil war.

In the midst of this, Kamo no Chomei experienced his own personal disappointment and decided to turn his back on the world and retreat into Buddhism. Kamo no Chomei regarded at the violence and chaos of his lifetime with Buddhist insight, and wrote lyrically and reflectively about the tragedy of human life. Hojoki opens with these words:.

Kamo no Chomei goes on to describe all the calamities he has seen, and what he has observed of human nature. Chomei is specifically interested in how society in distress is just a continuum of everyday human behavior. Powerful men are filled with greed, but those who have no supporters are despised.

Kamo no chomei biography definition: Kamo Chōmei (born , Japan—died July

Possessions are accompanied by many worries, but in poverty there is sorrow. If one person asks another for help, he becomes his slave through obligation; if he takes care of another person, he becomes enslaved by bonds of affection. If a person does not take care of others who ask for help, society views him as deranged. No matter where one lives, or what work one does, there is no peace of mind.

Kamo no Chomei describes how he renounced the world to become a monk-hermit, "Not having any family, I had no ties that would make abandoning the world difficult. I had no rank or stipend. What was there for me to cling to? It is a bare ten feet square and less than seven feet high. I laid a foundation and roughly thatched a roof. I have added a lean-to on the south and a porch of bamboo.

Along the west wall I built a shelf for holy water and installed an image of the Buddha. The light of the setting sun shines between its eyebrows. On the wall that faces the north I have built a little shelf on which I keep three or four black leather baskets that contain books of poetry and music and extracts from the sacred writings.

Beside them stand a folding koto and lute. My bed on the east wall is a straw mat and fern fronds. There, too, is a window, desk, and brazier. Outside the hut is a fenced garden to the north and a rock pool to the south, with a bamboo pipe draining water. The woods are close, providing plenty of brush-wood, and only to the west is a clearing beyond vines and overgrown valleys.

In his forest retreat, Chomei watches the seasons change; wisteria blossoms in spring, cuckoos sing in the summer, autumns insects chirp, and in the winter it snows. Since he has no visitors, he takes his idle ease.

Kamo no chomei biography definition: Kamo no Chōmei (鴨長明, –) was

When not reaing or in prayer, he reflects on places he has visited or strums the lute. I stir up the buried embers and make them companions in solitude. Knowing myself and the world, I have no ambitions and do not mix in the world. I seek only tranquility; I rejoice in the absence of grief. The spiritual crisis of medieval Japan twelfth-fourteenth centuries witnessed the emergence of a new genre, the literature of reclusion, which sought through poetryessays and stories to find the best means of separating oneself from the evils of society and its false values, and therefore from the impermanence of human existence.

His account coincides with the spread of Buddhism to the general populace; and his careful depictions of the natural surroundings of his hut and of the natural and social disasters in the capital form a unique microscopic and macroscopic view of life during a violent period of transition.

Kamo no chomei biography definition: Kamo no Chōmei (鴨 長明, or

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Kamo no chomei biography definition: Kamo Chōmei was a poet and

Life as a poet [ edit ]. Life as a recluse [ edit ]. Works [ edit ]. See also [ edit ]. Notes [ edit ]. A History of Japan to Stanford University Press.