Sections 1–201~20단

With nothing to do, I sit all day long facing the inkstone, and as I set down without order the idle things that rise and fade in my heart, strangely it makes my mind feel wild.

Well then, once a person is born into this world, there seem to be many things one might wish for. The throne of the emperor is most awesome. Down to the last leaves of the bamboo garden, the imperial house, they are said not to be of human seed, and that is noble. The station of the regent and chancellor goes without saying, and even an ordinary man, if his rank is such that he may be granted toneri, warriors of his own, looks impressive. His children and grandchildren, even fallen low, are still elegant. Below that, those who according to their station meet their moment and wear a proud face may think themselves great, but it is a sorry sight.

Nothing can be less to be envied than a priest. "To others he is thought of as a chip of wood" — what Sei Shonagon wrote is truly so. Even when one sees a priest fierce in power and loud of voice, he does not look great. As the holy man Zoga is said to have put it, they are harried by fame and seem to go against the Buddha's teaching. One who has wholly cast the world away may, after all, have something to be wished for.

In a person, it is to be wished that face and bearing be excellent. One whose speech is not unpleasant to hear, who has charm and yet does not use many words — such a one I would face without ever tiring. When someone I had thought splendid shows the true nature that lowers my heart, it is a pity.

Rank and looks are born with us, but as for the heart, if one would move it from wise to wiser, why should it not move? Even a person of good looks and good heart, once learning is gone, falls in rank, is mixed in among hateful people and pressed down as of no account, and that is a rueful thing.

What one would wish to have is the way of true learning, the making of Chinese verse, waka, and the way of strings and winds; and to be versed in court usage (有職) and in the affairs of the court, so as to become a mirror for others, is splendid. To write a running hand that is not clumsy, to have a good voice and keep the beat, and, while making a show of refusing, not to be unable to drink — this is good in a man.

A man who forgets the government of the holy rulers of old, who does not know the sorrow of the people or the harm done to the country, who spares no splendor in anything and thinks himself great and carries himself as though the place were too small for him — sadly, he looks like a man with no thought in him.

"From robes and caps to carriages and horses, use what you have. Do not seek beauty." So it stands in the testament of the Kujo Lord, Fujiwara no Morosuke. In what Juntoku In wrote down about the affairs of the palace, too, it says, "For offerings to the court, the plain is held to be good."

However excellent in all things, a man who knows nothing of love is a bleak thing, and it feels like a jeweled cup with no bottom.

Wet with dew and frost, wandering about with no place fixed, with no leisure of heart for hiding a parent's reproof and the world's blame, his heart in disorder as he meets and parts, and for all that sleeping alone most nights, with never a night when he dozes off — that is what is fine.

Yet not to be wholly given over to wantonness, and not to be thought an easy thing by women — that is the conduct one should wish for.

One who does not forget in his heart the matter of the life to come, and who is not far from the Buddha's way, has depth.

A man sunk in misfortune and grief, who has not shallowly made up his mind to shave his head and the like, but lives as though he were there and not there, his gate shut fast, passing night and day with nothing to wait for — that is in its way to be wished for.

The words Akimoto, the Middle Counselor, is said to have spoken — "I would see the moon of the place of exile without a crime" — seem likely enough.

Whether one's own station is exalted, or still more if one counts for nothing, it is better to have no children.

The former Prince of the Secretariat, Prince Kaneakira, the Kujo Chancellor, and the Hanazono Minister of the Left all wished their lines to end. The Somedono Minister, too, said it was good to have no descendants. That the descendants should fall short is a bad thing, so says the tale of the old man Yotsugi in the Okagami.

When Prince Shotoku had his tomb built beforehand, too, he is said to have commanded, "Cut here, sever there. It is because I would have no descendants."

If it were our way to live on to the end, with the dew of Adashino never vanishing and the smoke of Toribeyama never lifting, how could anything move us? It is because the world is not fixed that it is beautiful.

Looking at living things, nothing lasts as long as a human being. The mayfly waits for the evening and dies, and the summer cicada knows neither spring nor autumn. Even the span of a single year lived out thoughtfully is generous beyond measure. If one thinks it never enough and grudges it, then a thousand years would feel like the dream of a single night.

In a world one cannot live out to the end, what use is it to wait and gain an ugly form? A long life brings much shame. To die before forty, at the longest, is the seemly thing.

Once past that age, a man has no heart left to be ashamed of his own looks, thinks of going out among people, in the evening of his days dotes on his children and grandchildren and hopes to live until he has seen the end of their flourishing; only his greed for the world grows deep, and he comes to know nothing of the pity of things. It is a wretched sight.

Nothing bewilders the hearts of the people of the world like lust. How foolish a thing the human heart is. Scent is only a passing thing, and though a man knows that the robes have been perfumed for a while, a fragrance beyond description never fails to set his heart beating.

That the hermit of Kume lost his powers when he saw the white shins of a woman washing clothes — truly, when the hands and feet and the skin are clean and plump and glossy, it is not a color laid on from outside, so it may well be so.

In a woman it is beautiful hair that catches the eye. Her quality and her disposition can be known even through a screen, from the manner in which she says a word.

By what she does without thinking, at any chance, she bewilders a man's heart. That a woman in general lets herself go, does not sleep, does not count her own body dear, and bears well even what cannot be borne, is only because she is thinking of love.

Truly the way of attachment has deep roots and a far source. The desires of the six dusts (六塵) are many, but all of them can be wearied of and left behind. Among them only that one bewilderment is hard to stop, and in it the old and the young, the wise and the foolish appear to be no different.

And so it is handed down that a rope twisted from a woman's hair will hold even a great elephant, and that a flute made from the clogs a woman has worn will surely draw the deer of autumn. What one must guard against in oneself, and fear, and take care of, is this bewilderment.

That a house should suit its owner and be as one would wish it is a thing of interest, though we think of it as a lodging for a while.

In a place where a good person lives at ease, even the color of the moon shining in looks the more deeply moving. It is not bright and modern, but the trees are old, the grasses of a garden nobody has arranged look as though they had a heart of their own, the veranda and the openwork fence are pleasingly set, and the furnishings lying here and there look old and restful. That is what seems to have depth.

Where many craftsmen have polished with all their care, where rare and indescribable furnishings of China and Japan are set out in rows, and even the plants and trees of the front garden are trained so that they may not have their own way, it is painful to look at and very dreary. However long could one live so? In a moment it will all turn to smoke. That is what one thinks at the first sight of it.

On the whole, one can measure what a man is by the house he lives in.

When Saigyo saw that the Gotokudaiji Minister had stretched cords over his sleeping hall so that kites should not settle there, he said, "What harm is there if a kite settles? This lord's heart is no more than that," and after that, I have heard, he never called on him again.

Now cords were once stretched over the ridge of the Kosaka Hall where the Ayanokoji Prince lives, and that example came back to me. But someone told me, "In truth, crows were flocking there and taking the frogs from the pond, and he saw it and pitied them, and that is why." If so, I thought, it is truly admirable. Perhaps the Gotokudaiji Minister, too, had some reason of his own.

About the tenth month I passed a place called Kurusuno and went in search of a certain mountain village. I made my way along a far stretch of narrow mossy path, and there was a hermitage where someone lived in loneliness. There was no sound at all but the drops from a bamboo pipe buried in fallen leaves.

On the shelf for water offerings, chrysanthemums and red leaves had been broken off and scattered, so someone must have been living there after all. I was looking at it with feeling, thinking that one could live even like this, when in the garden beyond stood a great tangerine tree, its branches bending with fruit, with a stern fence built all around it. That cooled my pleasure a little, and I felt it would have been better if the tree were not there.

To talk quietly with a person of like heart, and to be comforted by speaking without reserve of amusing things and of the fleeting things of the world, would be a joy; but there can be no such person, and to sit facing one who never differs from you in the least would be to feel that you were alone.

It is with a person worth listening to, one who says "Just so" to what you say and yet differs a little, that you may quarrel and fall out — "I do not think that at all" — and then talk again, "Well, if that is how it is, then so it is" — and the idle hours would be comforted.

But in truth one who is not like me, even if there is a little to complain of, will do only for the small idle talk; as a true friend of the heart there will surely be a place where we are far apart, and that is a sad thing.

To open a book alone by lamplight and make a friend of a person of an age one has not seen is a comfort beyond all others.

The books are the moving volumes of the Wen xuan, the Bai shi wenji, the words of Laozi, and the chapters of the Nanhua, that is, the Zhuangzi. Among the writings of the scholars of this country, too, the old ones have much that moves one.

Waka is still a fine thing. Even the doings of a poor woodcutter or a man of the hills become interesting when they are put into a poem, and the fearsome boar grows gentle when we say "the bed of the lying boar."

Among the poems of our day there are some that seem to have caught one turn of phrase well, but there is none in which, as in the old poems, some feeling is somehow felt beyond the words.

It is handed down that what Tsurayuki wrote, "though it is not a thing twisted of thread," is the dregs of the poems in the Kokinshu; but it does not look like a phrase the people of today could compose. In the poems of that age, forms and words of this kind are many. Why this poem alone should be singled out is hard to know. In the Genji monogatari it is written, "though it is not a thing at all."

In the Shin kokinshu they say it is the poem that goes, "even the pine that remains is lonely on the peak," and truly its form may look a little broken. Yet of this poem too, at the time of the joint judging, there was a ruling that it was good, and afterwards a special word of admiration was handed down, so Ienaga's diary says.

There are those who say that the way of poetry alone is unchanged from the old days; but I wonder. Even the same words and the same poem-places that people compose with now are not the same thing at all when the people of old composed them. Theirs look easy and straight, clean in form, and deep in feeling.

The words of the songs in the Ryojin hisho have much in them that moves one. How is it that even the words the people of old tossed off without thinking all sound splendid?

To set out on a journey for a while, no matter where, is a thing that makes one feel wide awake.

Walking about here and there in those parts, in a country place or a mountain village, there is much that is unfamiliar to the eye. One looks for someone going to the capital and sends a letter: "This matter and that — do not forget them when the chance comes." That too is a pleasure.

It is in such places that one takes care over everything. Even the furnishings one carries, the good ones look good; a person of talent and a person of good looks alike seem finer than they usually do.

To shut oneself away in secret in a temple or a shrine is also good.

Kagura (神樂) is elegant and delightful. Among the sounds of instruments in general there are the flute and the hichiriki (篳篥); what one always wants to hear are the biwa and the wagon (和琴).

To shut oneself away in a mountain temple and serve the Buddha is a thing that leaves no idle hours, and it feels as though the muddiness of the heart were cleared.

It is splendid for a man to keep himself frugal, to put pride aside, to hold no wealth, and not to be greedy for the world. From of old it has been rare for a wise man to be rich.

In China there was a man called Xu You who had no store of anything about him at all, and drank water by lifting it in his hands. Seeing this, someone gave him a thing called a gourd dipper. Once he hung it on the branch of a tree, and when the wind blew it and it made a sound, he threw it away, saying it was noisy. After that he drank the water again from his cupped hands. How cool his heart must have been within.

Sun Chen had no quilt in the winter months, but he had one bundle of straw; in the evening he lay down on it, and in the morning he put it away. The people of China thought this splendid, and that is surely why they wrote it down and handed it on to the world. The people of this country could not even pass such stories on.

Every turn of the season moves the heart in everything.

People all seem to say, "The pity of things is deepest in autumn," and that is true enough; but what lifts the heart one degree higher is the look of spring. The voices of the birds too grow springlike beyond measure, and from the time when the grasses by the fence put out shoots in the quiet sunlight, spring deepens little by little, mist spreads over everything, and just as the blossoms begin to show signs of opening, rain and wind follow one upon another and, while the heart is still fluttering, they scatter and are gone. Until the green leaves come, one does nothing but ache in the heart over everything.

The orange blossom is famous in name, but it is still the scent of plum that brings the old days back and makes one remember them with longing. The kerria so fresh and clean, the wisteria with its uncertain look — there is much in all this that is hard to cast off.

"The time of the Buddha's Bathing, the time of the Aoi Festival, the time when the young leaves grow thick and cool at the treetops — that is when the pity of the world and the longing for people are deepest." What that person said is truly so.

In the fifth month, the time when sweet flag is laid on the roofs, the time of taking up the rice seedlings, the water rail knocking as though at a door — how should these not make the heart lonely? About the sixth month, a moonflower showing white at a shabby house, and the smoke of a mosquito fire smoldering, are moving too. The purification at the end of the sixth month is good as well. The keeping of Tanabata is elegant.

As the nights grow cold little by little, the time when the wild geese come crying, the time when the lower leaves of the bush clover take color, the reaping and drying of the early rice — gathered together, such things are most of them in autumn. And the morning after a great wind is fine.

If I write on like this, it is all long since worn out in the Genji monogatari and the Makura no soshi; but that is not to say I will refuse to speak of the same things again. Not to say what one thinks makes the belly swell, so I let the brush run, and this is an idle amusement that ought to be torn up and thrown away, not a thing for anyone to see.

And yet the look of the winter waste is hardly inferior at all to autumn. On a morning when red leaves have fallen and stayed on the grasses at the water's edge, and the frost lies very white, it is fine to see the steam rising from the garden stream. When the year is quite at its end and everyone is hurrying about, that is moving beyond anything. The moon that people call bleak, and that no one looks at, cold and clear in the sky past the twentieth day, is a lonely thing.

The Buddha's Names (御佛名), and the setting out of the envoys of the first offerings, are moving and noble. The affairs of the court are many, and the sight of them carried out heaped together with the preparations for spring is impressive. The passing from the demon-driving (追儺) on to the Worship of the Four Quarters is delightful.

On the night of the last day of the year, when it is very dark, people light pine torches and until past midnight run about knocking at other people's gates, shouting over something or other with a great to-do, their feet never touching the ground; and then from toward dawn the sound dies away after all, and the last of the year feels lonely.

The rite of calling the souls, on the night when the dead are said to come, is no longer done in the capital these days; but in the eastern provinces they still do it, and that moved me.

The look of the sky as it brightens does not seem changed from yesterday, and yet it feels new and utterly different. The look of the great street, with pines set up all along it, bright and glad, is moving too.

A man who had cast the world away, someone called such and such, said, "To this body there is nothing left that binds it to the world; only the lingering hold of the sky is hard to give up." That seems truly likely to be so.