Yoshida Kenkō

Yoshida Kenkō, born Urabe Kaneyoshi about 1283 in Kyoto into a family of hereditary Shinto priests, served at court as a young man and moved among nobles and poets. At about thirty he took Buddhist vows under the name Kenkō and lived thereafter in retreat at Shugakuin, at Yokawa on Mount Hiei and elsewhere around Kyoto; he was known in his day as a poet, one of the 'Four Heavenly Kings of waka'. His Essays in Idleness were little known in his lifetime and became widely read only in the Edo period.