In the essentially dual religious system in Japan, ideologies and traditions play a heavy role in the everyday life of the Japanese people. Shintoism and Buddhism intertwine and complement themselves in Japanese culture, despite Buddhism coming in from mainland Asia. A particularly powerful idea from Buddhism is mono no aware, the realization and acknowledgment of the impermanence and its place in the world. This idea that nothing stays the same forever manifests itself heavily in Japanese literature, whether in personal writings or fictional works. Despite spanning hundreds of years, each work was shaped by and include manifestations of mono no aware. I intend to underline and pinpoint instances that mono no aware is influencing these works, and discuss similarities and differences between them. In this paper, I have three works that I will explore, each one corresponding to a different time period before the pre-industrial revolution; The Diary of Lady Murasaki comes from the classical period, Essays in Idleness from the medieval, and the immensely popular play Chushingura from the pre-modern era. Kenko, the Buddhist monk and author of Essays in Idleness, took great satisfaction in the idea of impermanence. A hefty amount of this work deals with Kenko talking about Buddhist values and the beauty of change. He felt that “if man was never to fade like the dews of Adishino, never to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama, but lingered forever in the world, how things would lose their power to move us!”(Essays in Idleness, 7). This quote, directly from Keno’s mind, demonstrates just how greatly he holds Buddhism’s mono no aware in esteem. If everything was to stay static in this world, nothing would seem beautiful. Kenko goes on to say that “nothing in life is more precious than uncertainty”(Essays in Idleness, 7). Again, this reinforces how greatly Kenko values the constant nature of change in the world. However, it is important to note that some aspects of mono no aware were not so greatly appreciated by this Buddhist monk. When it came to matters of aesthetics and matters of everyday life, Kenko felt that the Heian period was the pinnacle of Japanese culture; summed up, Kenko said that “in all things I yearn for the past” (Essays in Idleness, 23). This is a slight contradiction to his Buddhist teachings, as part of the path to reach Enlightenment, a Buddhist should try and cleanse all earthly attachments, including emotions. For as much as he cherished and praises the change of the natural world, Keno treats Japanese culture as though it should remain stagnant and unmoving. While Kenko treated mono no aware with bittersweet appreciation, Lady Murasaki held it in a more melancholic nature: “as I gazed out at them through the wraiths of morning mis