Kamo no Chmei (or Nagaakira) claims an eminent place in the history of Japanese letters despite his relatively small oeuvre. He was a respected poet at a fairly early age; wrote a valuable treatise on poetry, poetics, and poetic lore; and compiled an important collection of Buddhist tales. The chronicle of his life, however, is sparse: apart from scattered evidence of his participation in poetry contests and similar events, only a handful of the events in his life can be pinned down with a precise date. Yet, in a certain sense Chmei is better known than any of his contemporaries, and if in letter one might object, it is no error in spirit to call his the voice of the first male subject in Japanese prose.

His fame rests primarily on his brief and brilliant essay Hjki (The Record of a Ten-foot Square Hermitage, 1212), in which scholars have...