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A Masterpiece Written in a Ten-Foot Square Hut — Kamo no Chomei and the Hojoki

In a ten-foot-square hut on Mt. Hino near Kyoto, Kamo no Chomei wrote the Hojoki. 'The flowing river never stops' — this meditation on impermanence has been read for 1,000 years.

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From a ten-foot-square hut on Mt. Hino, Kamo no Chomei wrote the Hojoki — Japan’s meditation on impermanence. ‘The flowing river never stops, yet it is never the same water.’ He catalogued the disasters of his age — great fires, tornadoes, earthquakes, famine — and concluded that a life without attachment, however small, is the wisest life.

Jigoku Zoshi (Hell Scroll), Kamakura period — a visual representation of the era of great fires, famines, and epidemics that Chomei recorded in the Hojoki

Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Sanjusangendo — built in the same era as Chomei by Emperor Goshirakawa, architecture from the era when Chomei experienced impermanence

Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

Jufukuji, Kamakura — a Zen temple from Chomei's era conveying Kamakura Buddhist culture, where the aesthetic of impermanence resonates

Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

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Key Figures

Kamo no Chomei

Author of Hojoki & Poet