Japanese · 1155–1216
Chōmei was born to the hereditary priests of the Kamo shrines in Kyoto and expected to inherit a post there. He did not get it. He was a good enough poet to be appointed to the Bureau of Poetry by a retired emperor and a good enough lute player to be accused of playing a secret piece he had not been taught. At fifty he took Buddhist vows and moved out of the capital, ending in a hut ten feet square on Mount Hino that he could take apart and cart away on two carts. He had lived through the great fire of 1177, a whirlwind, a famine that killed tens of thousands, an earthquake, and the wars that destroyed the world he was born into. In 1212 he wrote a thousand-word essay about all of it and about the hut. It is one of the three great works of classical Japanese prose.