Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa)
The second great zuihitsu text. 243 numbered fragments on impermanence, beauty, boredom, and the proper way to live. A Zen sensibility before Zen was a word Westerners used.
One essay singles out women as devious and lacking reason, and it's the passage several reviewers say they can't get past before recommending the rest. The essays on court customs, precedent, and Heian-era names go dry fast without background in the period, offering little to readers outside Japan. The reputation promises more than some find on the page: “Don't read this for earthshaking philosophical insights. There aren't any,” one warns, adding that what's here reads as narrow, sometimes classist opinion. More reviewers land on “this monk comes across a lot more like a curmudgeon” than on sage, and one admits, “Shocked to discover that a monk held so much contempt for others.” The loose, associative ordering strikes some as genuinely directionless rather than deliberate.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
