An Account of Mappo: The Significance of the Disasters in Kamo no Chomei's Hojoki

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2014-01-15

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University of Hawaii at Manoa

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At the age of fifty, Kamo no Chomei (1155-1216) left behind the troubled world to live in seclusion as a Buddhist priest, and he detailed his hermitage in the short prose work, Hojoki. The essay opens with a dramatic recounting of the disasters that befell the Japanese capital between 1177 and 1185. This first half is generally seen as establishing the theme of the impermanence of humans and their houses, and scholars have traditionally focused their attention on the allusion­ rich latter half that addresses Chomei's life in solitude. In turning his back on the troubled world, Chomei was clearly influenced by the models of Yoshishige no Yasutane in Chiteiki and Vimalakirti, but he does not follow their methods of reconciling the secular and the religious. I will argue that by demonstrating mappo in the disaster section, Chomei justifies his deviation from the models of Yasutane and Vimalakirt, while providing a basis for the more extreme form of reclusion he presents in the second half.

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59 pages

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