With nothing to do, giving in to idleness, I sit all day before my inkstone, jotting down without purpose the trivial things that pass through my mind and vanish, and strangely, I feel my heart stirred almost to madness.
Essays in Idleness is a book of essays by the monk Kenko. He was born into a family of priests of Yoshida Shrine in Kyoto, and when young served at court, going in and out of the palace as a chamberlain to Emperor Go-Nijo. He took vows around thirty, and afterward is said to have lived at Yokawa on Mount Hiei, at Shugakuin, and at Narabigaoka near Ninnaji.
Narabigaoka is a small hill west of Kyoto, south of Ninnaji, made up of three knolls: the First, Second and Third Hills. Kenko is said to have built a hut here and spent his last years, and at Chosenji at its foot there is a mound said to be his grave, where a stone marked "Former Site of the Monk Kenko" still stands. Kenko himself left a poem: "I have prepared a place for the impermanent on Narabigaoka."
Many stories of the monks of Ninnaji appear in Essays in Idleness, probably because Kenko lived near Ninnaji and heard their gossip close at hand.
This sentence of the preface stands with "In spring, the dawn" of The Pillow Book and "The flowing river" of An Account of My Hut as one of the most famous openings in Japanese classics. "Monoguruhoshi" means a heart stirred so that one can hardly control it. As he writes down idle thoughts, his brush cannot stop. In the 243 sections written this way, everything is talked about freely: impermanence, worldly wisdom, taste, blunders, strange tales.