![]() The process is further complicated by the stylized imagery Ryokan inevitably borrowed from Chinese models. Gogo-an is so non-descript that we must glean clues from Ryokan’s poems to learn about it. He saw the poverty of his hut as a projection of his own voluntary station. A gogo is half a sho, the amount of rice necessary for daily sustenance. Ryokan remained twenty years, leaving reluctantly upon bad health, moving to quarters close to town. After the death of his master, Ryokan traveled as a pilgrim for five years, returning to his native village after his father’s death, and settling himself in a nearby mountain hermitage. He became a Buddhist monk at the local Zen temple, and left to train twelve years with a master, cultivating as well the study of Chinese poetry and calligraphy. Ryokan’s quiet childhood included both literature and religion, and his reticent nature rebelled at the notion of succeeding his father in business and politics. His father was well off, a merchant and the village elder, who passed on to his son a love of poetry. Ryokan was born in the cold and isolated Chigo (now Nigata) province in the village of Izumozaki. I sit quietly, listening to the falling leaves– ![]() This is hardly a coincidence for the little hermitage is an obvious metaphor for life itself: ![]() Ryokan was a poet, not a chronicler, but in his poetry, his hut is the setting and context of his life and practice. Unlike some Chinese and Japanese chroniclers who wrote accounts of their hermit huts, the celebrated Japanese poet and Zen monk Ryokan did not compose anything so specific. Gogō-an, the cottage where Ryōkan lived from 1804 to 1816 ![]()
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