Hōjōki

About “Hōjōki”

Hōjōki is a short work from the early Kamakura period in Japan, written by Kamo no Chōmei in March 1212. It explores the Buddhist idea of impermanence through descriptions of disasters that affected Kyoto, including earthquakes, famine, whirlwinds, and fires. Chōmei, who previously worked as a court poet and played the biwa and koto, became a renunciant in his fifties and lived in a small hut on Mt. Hino. The text is classified as part of the zuihitsu genre and as Buddhist literature. It is now considered a Japanese literary classic and is included in the school curriculum. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.)