Japanese Literature of the Five Mountains

The literature of the Five Mountains is the literature produced by the principal Zen (禅) monastic centers of the Rinzai sect in Kyoto and Kamakura, Japan. The term also refers to five Zen centers in China in Hangzhou and Ningpo that inspired zen in Japan, while the term "mountain" refers to Buddhist monastery.

Five Mountains literature or gozan bungaku (五山文學) is used collectively to refer to the poetry and prose in Chinese produced by Japanese monks during the 14th and 15th centuries. Included are works by Chinese monks residing in Japan. The period witnessed a widespread importation of cultural influences from Song and Yuan period China that in many ways transformed Japan.

The literature of the Five Mountains highly prized a sense of humor and sympathy with life’s ordinariness. A Five Mountains poet might write about anything, in contrast to the proscribed themes of the aristocratic court poets.Kokan Shiren (d. 1346) for example would write about a mosquito.

Snouts sharp as drill bits!

Buzz like thunder as they circle the room.
They sneak through the folds of my robe,

The image in the final line of Mosquitoes reminds the reader of one of the custom in Zen establishments of slapping on the head with a stick those practitioners of meditation who have momentarily dozed off. In contrast, a courtier might write about the cicada and celebrate seasonal associations connected to them. To write about the mosquito would violate the courtier’s strict sense of literary decorum.

In a poem entitled "Sailing in the Moonlight", Kokan focuses on the incongruous humor of life.

We monks boat in moonlight, circle through the reeds.

The boatman shouts the tide recedes; we must return.
The village folk mistake us for a fishing boat

Five Mountains literature was not entirely concerned with the rustic cloistered world. Often the principal historical events of the day found their way into the works of the monks. Zen clerics themselves often served as advisers to the leading political figures. In a poem, "Written Suddenly While Feeling Remorse Over the Passage of Time" Chugan Engetsu (d. 1375) relates his feelings about the fall of the Kamakura shogunate a year earlier.

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