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    Why I like old things*

    It’s common for first-year students of classical Japanese to use the 方丈記 (Houjouki: “Written from a Modest Hut”) by 鴨長明 (Kamo no Chomei: lit., “duck” + “long” + “bright”) as a text. You memorize its first paragraph, which was frequently quoted after the Kobe earthquake:

    ゆく河の流れは、絶えずして、しかも、もとの水にあらず。淀みに浮かぶうたかたは、かつ消え、かつ結びて、久しくとどまりたる例なし。この世にある人とすみかとまたかくの如し。

    The flow of the running river is uninterrupted, and its waters are constantly changing. The froth that floats up in its pools now vanishes, now gathers into foam, but there is not a single instance of its enduring for long. So, too, are the men of this world and their dwellings.

    Like learning Latin through Caesar or Old English through The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, studying the language of the ancient Japanese is, in many ways, learning it through their suffering. Chomei’s famous introductory paragraph has a tone of philosophical ruefulness, but there are times when he uses very similar wording to achieve a much more piercing and personal effect:

    すべて、世の中のありにくく、わが身とすみかとのはかなく、あだなるさま、また、かくの如し。いはんや、所により、身のほどに随ひつつ、心を悩ます事は、あげて計ふべからず。

    Existence in this world is wholly a hardship, with one’s body and one’s dwelling fleeting and not to be relied on, as this [my previous discussion of the great fire] indicates. Beyond that, depending on one’s environment and station in life, the things that immiserate the heart can hardly be exhaustively cited and enumerated.

    Chomei had status as a writer and poet in his lifetime, but there was plenty to immiserate his heart: he recounts Heian Period disasters from the aforementioned fire to a great earthquake to the ill-advised movement of the capital.





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