Twice ToldGaun nikkenroku, 1449, 7th month, 26th day
- Language
- Japanese
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 18 October 2026
The Gaun nikkenroku is the diary of Zuikei Shuho (1392 to 1473), a Zen monk of the Rinzai school in Kyoto. The diary itself, in 74 volumes, is lost; the text we have is a one-volume abridgement made in 1562 by Ishō Myoan, here in a Meiji printing. The entry is headed only with the day, the 26th; the month heading is on an earlier page, and on p. 42 the next heading is 寶德元 at the 10th of the 8th month, so the entry falls in the 7th month of that year. The print carries small punctuation and reading marks beside the characters, which are left out here, and uses old forms (歲, 錢).
廿六日。赴清水定水菴。點心。 … 菴主曰、近時八百歲老尼、自若州入洛、々中爭覩、堅閉所居門戸、不使人容易看、故貴者出百錢、賤者出十錢、不然則不得入門也。曹源曰、昔時青岩寺側有七百歲僧、入城乞食、所謂雖魚肉皆掛于錫頭、持來食之。一日來于東福寺、告平生來往之蹟、曰某日吾當死矣、果如其言、人皆異之。
Translation
26th. I went to the Josui hermitage by Kiyomizu. We took a light meal. … The hermitage master said: “Lately an old nun of eight hundred has come into the capital from Wakasa, and the city is scrambling to see her. She keeps the gate of her lodging firmly shut and does not let people look at her easily. So the high-born pay a hundred coins and the low ten. Otherwise there is no getting through the gate.” Sogen said: “Long ago, beside Seigan-ji, there was a monk of seven hundred who came into the city to beg. Whatever they gave him, even fish and meat, he hung on the head of his staff and carried back to eat. One day he came to Tofuku-ji, told of his comings and goings through his life, and said that on a certain day he would die. It came about just as he said, and everyone found it strange.”
Notes
The omitted stretch (marked …) is talk over the meal about a portrait inscription and some calligraphy. The “I” is Zuikei. 菴主 is the master of the hermitage and 曹源 a monk named Sogen who was there; neither is identified further here. 入洛 means “entered the capital” (Kyoto). 貴者出百錢、賤者出十錢 is the fee scale; the diary does not say what the coins were. The 700-year-old monk of Seigan-ji is Sogen’s own story, told after the nun’s, and the diary does not say when he lived. The nun’s name does not occur: she is 八百歲老尼, “an old nun of eight hundred”. The text is an abridgement, so the wording around the entry is not known. Togashi Akira’s quotation of the entry (Kokugakuin Daigakuin kiyo 54, p. 173) agrees with this reading.