Page:A History of Japanese Literature (Aston).djvu/208

192 with aching heads, and unable to eat, as if far removed from life, taking no thought for the next day, and too ill to attend to important business, public or private.

"It is not kindly or even courteous to treat people in this way. If we were told that such a custom existed in some foreign country (being unknown in Japan) we should think it most strange and unaccountable."

Here follows a description of a drunken debauch which is somewhat too graphic for transference to these pages. Kenkō goes on to say—

"In this world strong drink has much to answer for. It wastes our means and destroys our health. It has been called the chief of the hundred medicines, but in truth it is from strong drink more than aught else that all our diseases spring. It may help us to forget our miseries, but, on the other hand, the drunken man is often seen to weep at the remembrance of his past woes.

"As for the future world, strong drink is pernicious to the understanding, and burns up the root of good within us as with fire. It fosters evil, and leads to our breaking all the commandments and falling into hell. Buddha has declared that he who makes a man drink wine shall be born a hundred times with no hands."

It must not be supposed from this that Kenkō was a total abstainer, as he ought to have been if he kept his vows as a Buddhist monk. On the contrary—

"There are times when wine cannot be dispensed with. On a moonlight night, on a snowy morning, or when the flowers are in blossom and with hearts free from care we are conversing with a friend, it adds to our pleasures if the wine-cup is produced."

Kenkō goes so far as to allow that with intimate friends it is permissible occasionally to drink deeply.