Yoshida Kenko

(c. 1283 - c. 1351)

Born into a family of Shinto priests, Yoshida Kenko secured a place at court as a poet before taking Buddhist orders in 1324. He once reflected on his writing life, “What a strange, demented feeling it gives me when I realize I have spent whole days before this ink stone, with nothing better to do, jotting down at random whatever nonsensical thoughts have entered my head.” It is believed that Kenko’s famed Essays in Idleness did not circulate in his lifetime, but by the seventeenth century they had become popular texts in Japanese education.