Every age has its eccentrics, and its characteristic attitudes toward them ¡ª bemusement, contempt, tolerance, secret (sometimes open) admiration and various mixtures in varying proportions.
Typically, what seems eccentric to one age is conventional to another. Supposing a strange man of the Heian Period (794-1185) and a strange man of the Edo Period (1603-1868) met, what would they say to each other? Would their common strangeness unite them, or their different forms of strangeness estrange them?
¡°If a man conforms to society, his mind will be captured by the filth of the outside world,¡± wrote Yoshida Kenko (1283-1350) in the classic ¡°Tsurezuregusa¡± (¡°Essays in Idleness¡±). Who has not felt this? Those who act on the feeling bid society farewell and become ¡°strange.¡± The author himself, a somewhat worldly priest, did not; he was not strange enough, perhaps. He remained in society.
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