Literature of the Five Mountains

[citation needed] Five Mountains literature or gozan bungaku (五山文學) is used collectively to refer to the poetry and prose in Chinese produced by Japanese monks who were active mostly during the 14th and 15th centuries.

Notable writers of the genre include Musō Soseki, Ikkyū Sōjun, Zekkai Chūsin (絶海中津), Sesson Yūbai, Gidō Shūshin, Jakushitsu Genkō, Chūgan Engetsu and Kokan Shiren.

The first of them, Yishan Yining, arrived in Japan in 1299 as a Yuan emissary and wrote in the Zen literary style of the Southern Song dynasty.

[2] Another monk from the early Yuan, Kurin Seimu (古林清茂, Gulin Qingmao) was a member of the Rinzai school who initiated a different Zen style in China.

Gulin never went to Japan but was nevertheless influential in the country through his Chinese and Japanese students, including Seisetsu Shōchō, Jikusen Bonsen and Sesson Yūbai.

But they could bloody the back of an ox made of iron!The image in the final line of Mosquitoes reminds the reader of one of the custom in Zen establishments of slapping on the head with a stick those practitioners of meditation who have momentarily dozed off.