| This study centers on Zekkai Chushin (1336--1405) and Gido Shushin (1325--1388), along with their circle of disciples, including Gyokuen Bonpo (1348--after 1420), Seiin Shunjo (1358--1422), Isho Tokugan (1360--1437) and Kozei Ryuha (1375--1446). Its focus is the Kitayama period between the late 14th century and first few decades of the 15th century, generally considered the heyday of Five Mountains Literature (gozan bungaku).; Examined in detail are the manifold ways in which Chinese literary aesthetics, philosophy and religion are syncretically assimilated into the writings of these medieval Japanese monks. Specifically analyzed is how the monks, drawing allusively from the Chinese tradition, conventionally produced a literature that often exhibits an "unconventional" aesthetic with undercurrents of dissent and discord. The prominent, influential monks chosen for this study formed "friends societies" that paradoxically advocated "anti-authoritarianism" while enjoying the patronage of the shogunate. The research attempts to explain why these elite monks, who not only associated with the highest political and cultural figures of their day (such as the Ashikaga shoguns and renga master Nijo Yoshimoto), but also often themselves assumed positions of authority, wrote such "anti-authoritarian" literature. It delineates the ways that unconventionality, forming part of a greater tradition within Muromachi society, became quite conventional.; Also highlighted is the idealization by the gozan monks of aesthetic reclusion, and the inherent contradictions of an urban literature propounding the elegance of a life apart from mainstream society. Within the monks' writings, this "rhetoric of reclusion," via the power attached to various secular, patrician Chinese traditions and paradigmatic eremitic models, is shown to reveal a search for the Way and the practical principles by which humans should live. Also demonstrated is how often this "rhetoric of reclusion" was a way for the monks to legitimize and rationalize their own power.; Ultimately, this study illustrates that the ubiquity of eremitic models in the monks' writings suggests the frustrations that many felt in compromising their hermetic ideals. Conflict over their elite status contributed to the lyric power of their literature, which, with inherent religious value, champions withdrawal from the societal center for the purity of life on the periphery. |
