Chōmei, Hōjōki, or how to respond when the world is collapsing
Reflections on the classic of Japanese literature
When the world around you is collapsing and you are gripped by fear of its demise, four responses are available to you, or at least so modern psychology says: fight, fawn, freeze, or flight. But the world has been collapsing for a long time now, and, despite our ingrained fears, we might yet recover, in the burning archive of world literature, some wiser responses to the suffering of the world. Kamo no Chōmei’s essay Hōjōki ("An Account of a Ten-Foot-Square Hut") is one such case. You may be surprised at the way this text from 800 years ago speaks to us compassionately today.
Kamo no Chōmei (鴨 長明, 1153 or 1155–1216) was a Japanese poet and essayist. He lived at a time of civil strife in Japan at the end of the Heian period. At this time, there were intense power struggles within the ruling elites, while the centuries long grip on power of the Fujiwara family collapsed. The samurai class emerged, and towards the end of the 12th century the first shogunate was installed. The old world of the court was crumbling, and at the same time there had been a great blossoming of Japanese culture and the influence of Buddhism. Still, dynastic struggles led to relocating the capital in the year 1180 to Fukuhara-kyō (Kobe), and then back again to Kyōto six months later. Chōmei recalled these events at the start of Hōjōki.
“the capital was suddenly relocated, confounding everyone… It should never have been moved arbitrarily on a casual whim like that, and it was only too natural that everyone was so distressed and anxious.”
Chōmei, Hōjōki
Chōmei was the son of an official, but not well favoured within his home. He was a poet and enjoyed moderate success in patronage from the imperial court. But while he pursued a career at court, this court was breaking down, and Chōmei’s own status in his family was disappearing. His world appeared to be crumbling, if not collapsing, amidst the upheaval. He could find no secure home in the world, in both a real and metaphorical sense.
“It is said that changes in customs presage times of upheaval, and indeed it was so, for as the days passed all grew increasingly disturbed and restive, until at length the people’s grievances bore fruit, and in the winter of that year the capital was returned to its former site. Who knows what happened to all the houses that were taken down there, however, for many were never restored.”
Chōmei, Hōjōki
This 12th century populist revolt in Japan may have reversed one unwise decision, but it was not in itself capable of establishing a regime or governing class that met Chōmei’s standards of virtue. He saw no virtue among the leadership class, overthrown or rising, even if he indulged some myths of ancient virtue.
“It is told that in the days of the wise rulers of old the land was governed with compassion… This was because these rulers were given to benevolence and service to their people. We need only compare our present age to theirs to see the difference.”
Chōmei, Hōjōki
How many people today, when confronted by a degraded political system and failing leadership class, surrounded by social strife and looming war, confounded by disastrous decisions and political folly, express similar sentiments to Chōmei?
What is to be done? Fight, fawn, freeze, or flight? Or something more dignified, thoughtful, and compassionate?
Chōmei had the courage not to freeze, and the insight, and commitment through his Buddhist practice, not to fawn. He was primarily a poet, and as many such dreamers, including myself, have discovered, often slowly and too late, engagement in the political fight is not a poet’s greatest skill. It might seem, at first glance, that not to fight, not to engage with the world, to make it better and to offer a better alternative, is the coward’s choice. This is the ideal of the modern engaged intellectual who believes that political commitment can change the world. But Chōmei was a Buddhist; and he saw the world more clearly. He came from a different tradition than Western Enlightenment. He never knew its common illusions, followed by so many generations of true believers and committed thinkers later in the West: that the intelligent can bring wisdom to the powerful by ‘speaking truth to power’ while secure in the modern imperial court.
“All human undertaking is folly, but it is most particularly futile to spend your wealth and trouble your peace of mind by building a house in the perilous capital.”
Chōmei, Hōjōki
Chōmei chose flight; but he made of this retreat from the world a path to greater wisdom, to enlightenment, detached from fear and yet rooted in compassion. His decision was personal, as well as political. His father died. He was passed over for promotion. He was tripped by a string of bad luck. The world did not welcome him.
He also observed a series of tragic disasters: fire, typhoon, earthquake, famine, and plague. He recalled these disasters simply and compassionately later in Hōjōki. They evoke memories of our own times, and how disaster and disease can bring out the best in people, and then treat that goodness with cruelty. Chōmei described the heartbreaking things he observed during an outbreak of plague in which “all despaired, and we were like fish in a fast-drying pond as calamity tightened its grip on the world from day to day.” Some people starved and begged in the streets. Others looted the temples for firewood. Yet others cared for their sick loved ones, with a compassion that history would not reward.
“Where a man could not bear to part from his wife, or a woman loved her husband dearly, it was always the one whose love was the deeper who died first - in their sympathy for the other they would put themselves second, and give their partner any rare morsel that came their way. So also, if parent and child lived together the parent was always the first to die; a baby would still lie suckling unaware that its mother was dead.”
Chōmei, Hōjōki
In response to these events, Chōmei chose the path of the literary recluse and the example of Buddhist detachment from the world. He emulated a tradition from China and Japan of the hermit monk. In 12th century Japan there was a particular tradition of this non-monastic monk known as suki no tonsheisha, which “combined pursuit of a spiritual calling with an equal dedication to the arts, most particularly that of poetry.”1
At the age of fifty, having spent 30 years engaging with “the vagaries of this world” Chōmei followed the path of these non-monastic monks. He left his home and turned his back on the world. He lived simply in a small hut in the mountains near Ohara. But this home, after some time, no longer served him, and so he moved again.
“Now at sixty, with the dew of life about to fade, I have fashioned for myself another dwelling to hold me for these final years. I am, if you will, like a traveller who throws up a shelter for the night, or an old silkworm spinning its cocoon.”
Chōmei, Hōjōki
The second half of Hōjōki describes the life Chōmei led in this ten-foot square hut. It resembled in some ways the ideals of many people today who practise simple, slow, or minimalist living in our cluttered world. Chōmei’s manner of simple living, however, was imbued with deep reading of the Buddhist sutras in which leaving the home is a symbol of detachment from the self. Impermanence is the way of all things, even the idyllic serene life of a literary recluse, as Chōmei came to realise by the end of writing Hōjōki.
This classic work of Japanese recluse literature (sōan bungaku) is not a rant of a privileged recluse, nor a manifesto for simple living. It is itself a perfect symbol of impermanence, and a deep, compassionate reflection on history, that most changeable of all stories. As such, Hōjōki speaks to us in our own time, and in ways they may even help us, when we despair at the troubles of the contemporary world, to find a more finessed response than fight, fawn, freeze, or flight.
“On flows the river ceaselessly, nor does its water ever stay the same. The bubbles that float upon its pools now disappear, now form anew, but never endure long. And so it is with people in this world, and with their dwellings.”
Chōmei, Hōjōki
I read Kamo no Chōmei, Hōjōki in the Penguin Classics edition of Essays in Idleness and Hōjōki (translator, Meredith McKinney). It is a short text of 12-13 pages and is widely available.
I did a gentle, slow reading of Hōjōki on my YouTube channel, which you can watch or listen to here. My reading of Hōjōki will also be coming out on the Burning Archive podcast on Monday evening. It is a perfect meditative text to listen to on a daily walk, or even while sitting in your own personal place of retreat from the troubles of this world. Please enjoy.
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It explored similar themes of detachment and impermanence, and how I have learned from Asian literature and history. It also set out the main themes that I am writing on this year. If you have joined the Burning Archive since the New Year, this piece is a good one to look back on to understand my story and perspective a little more.
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‘Introduction’, Essays in Idleness and Hōjōki, p. viii.