Japanese Literature of the Five Mountains

The term Five Mountains refers to the principal Zen (禅) monastic centers of the Rinzai sect in Kamakura, Japan and to an additional five in Kyoto. In addition, the term refers to five Zen monastic centers in China in Hangzhou and Ningpo that inspired the religious and cultural organization in Japan. The term "mountain" is a general term for Buddhist monastery. The term 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 medieval period in the 14th and 15th centuries. Included are works by Chinese monks in residence in Japan as well. The period witnessed a widespread importation of cultural influences from Song and Yuan period China that in many ways transformed Japan. In the literature of the Five Mountains informality, sense of humor and sympathy with life’s ordinariness were highly prized. 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 the humble mosquito:

Snouts sharp as drill bits!

Buzz like thunder as they circle the room.

They sneak through the folds of my robe,

But they could bloody the back of an ox made of iron!

A courtier might write about the cicada and celebrate seasonal associations connected to them. To write about the humble if troublesome 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

And scramble to the beach to buy our catch.

The almost grotesque image in the final line of “Mosquitoes” strikes the reader abruptly and forcefully, reminding one of the custom in Zen establishments of slapping on the head with a stick those unlucky practitioners of mediation who have momentarily dozed off. The point of Gozan literature, and particularly of poetry, is often to surprise and to jolt into a heightened awareness. Five Mountains literature was not entirely concerned with the cloistered world in a rustic setting. 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 government a year earlier:

A year ago today the Kamakura fell.

In the monasteries now, nothing of the old mood remains.

The peddler girl understands nothing of a monk's remorse-

Shouting through the streets, selling firewood, selling vegetables.

BOOKS

*Martin Collcutt, "Five Mountains: The Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan", 1981.
* Marian Ury, "Poems of the Five Mountains: An Introduction to the Literature of the Zen Monasteries", Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies, No 10, 1992.

ARTICLES

*Bruce E. Carpenter, 'Priest-Poets of the Five Mountains in Medieval Japan', in "Tezukayama Daigaku ronshū", no. 16, 1977, Nara, Japan, pp. 1-11. ISSN 0385-7743.