Kamo no Chomei

(1155 - 1216)

Born around 1155 into the instability of late Heian Japan, Kamo no Chomei planned to take a inherited post as a Shinto priest until his father’s death stripped the family of its status when Chomei was a teenager. He became a poet instead. At the age of fifty, tired of imperial politics, he chose the way of shukke, “to leave the home,” embracing Buddhist impermanence and deciding to live a life of remote asceticism.