The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon

Written by Sei Shōnagan (966-1017), a lady of the Japanese court of Empress Fujiwara Teiji (Sadako), this is a journal which covers court life and her personal musings from about 991-1000. Shōnagan writes cleverly and with beautiful descriptions. She loves a good list (lists of Very Tiresome Things, lists of Things That Make One Happy), and is said to be history’s first blog writer. She is sharp-witted, observant, and somewhat capricious and cantankerous. She loves beautiful things, a good gossip, an illicit late-night meeting with a lover-provided he leaves quickly enough and not too quickly, with the appropriate amount of poetry exchanged first. She’s not fond of the lower classes, boring people and has many other irritations show more and personal peeves. This book would have been a lovely insight into court life in medieval Japan if I had not made the mistake of reading the translation by the pompous, over intrusive Arthur Waley. Many of the beautiful quotes I have read in other reviews are absent as he rather arrogantly decided to exclude anything he considered “dull, unintelligible, repetitive.” He even has the nerve to interrupt her writing, with something pretty much equivalent to “blah, blah” and go back to his own commentary. I just wanted him to get out of the way with his patriarchal, colonialistic crap (he describes the “intellectual passivity” of the Japanese and berates an “absence of mathematics, science, philosophy”) and let me read Sei Shōnagan. I would like to read another translation to enjoy more of her quirky lists and musings. show less

An unexpectedly lovely book. Full of details about life at the Japanese imperial court more than a thousand years ago, beautiful imagery, court gossip, anecdotes, poetry. Sei Shōnagon must have had an amazing visual memory - the descriptions of clothes are wonderfully detailed.
At times the author comes across as an obnoxious snob. A few pages later, there is a paragraph that is personal and poignant.
My favourite part of the book: the lists! Did I mentions the lists? "Things that make the heart beat faster". "Things that give a comfortable feeling." Etc... Give me more, please.

It's a scrapbook of observations and lists kept near the writer's pillow, not a book of erotica. Sei Shonagon was a lady in waiting at the Heian court of Imperial Japan (not a courtesan, as some editions say - I'm outraged by this and think she would be too.) She's a snob, can't stand poor people, old people, incorrectly dressed people, and is vain about her ability to quote classical poetry and make witty retorts. None of that made me dislike her at all - she's like the bitchy friend you sit in the corner with to make snide remarks at all the other partygoers - and it's all the more astonishing that she wrote this around the year 990 - 1000. She's a great writer. Her descriptions of weather, court ceremonies, court attire, etc., are show more beautiful. The descriptions of clothes and the flowers or seasons they evoke, especially, fascinated me. The details of the clothes are like Story of O without the spankings.

With a lot of footnotes and several appendices about Heian court life, which add a lot. show less

A compilation of observations, anecdotes, sentiments, scenarios and lists authored by a lady-in-waiting to Empress Teishi in late 10th century Japan. This book is a window into the values, leisure pursuits and love lives of Heian society, and should be of interest to both historians and the literary minded. The author herself, though arrogant, elitist and often a bully, reveals in her writing a refinement of wit, good taste, and charisma that maintains its appeal over the centuries and translation into English. In her reminiscences she never misses an opportunity showcase her erudition or favour with the Empress, but this, and her feigned humility, are in themselves entertaining for the modern reader. The book is also notable for what show more we don’t read about, such as political intriguing in the palace or the famines and epidemics affecting the Japanese populace at the time.

In producing this translation, Ivan Morris’s starting position is that the subtly of classical Japanese, with its poetic inferences and double meanings, cannot be directly replicated in English. His approach is one of free translation, with the intention of conveying the meaning of the text as it would have been understood by its audience at the time and does not attempt to literally reproduce each word or maintain sentence structure – which would often render passages incomprehensible, awkward or “falsely exotic”. Supporting this approach, are Morris’s endnotes which supply abundant contextual information including identification of historical persons, explanations of court protocol, decoding of poetry, and alternative translations of difficult passages. In fact, these notes are so valuable for full enjoyment of the text that it would have been preferable to have them as footnotes or on alternating pages side by side with the text, to facilitate parallel reading and obviate flicking back and forth between two sections of the book. His translation of the Sarashina Nikki is similarly annotated.

Overall, I have enjoyed this text enough to re-read and will at some point seek out the unabridged two volume edition published by the Oxford and Columbia university presses. I would also be interested to compare McKinney’s more recent (and reportedly more literal) translation. show less

The first book I read on my Kindle! Possibly not a great choice, considering the (unnecessarily) large number of footnotes, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. This book was written in Heian Japan, by one of the Empress's serving women. It contains lists of poetic placenames, good colour combinations and things which are better at night ("Someone whose appearance is rather unattractive but who has a pleasant personality."), anecdotes mostly about people apparently conversing entirely in witty references to poems, accounts of festivals and a whole jumbled collection of other things. Sei Shonagon is pretty sarcastic and things very poorly of anyone of "low rank", and I feel like I know a lot about her personality just from her descriptions of show more court life.

Some quotes I apparently felt the need to highlight while reading:

"Everything that cries in the night is wonderful. With the exception, of course, of babies."
"Embarrassing things – The heart of a man."
"It’s terribly depressing to discover some quite worthless person blithely reciting a poem that you yourself had particularly liked and carefully copied down in a notebook." show less

The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon is a collection of remarks, observations, memories and lists written down by a lady in waiting to the Japanese Empress Sadako in the Heian period in Japan. It is a thousand years old. And it is lovely.

Sei Shonagon is not the real name of the author. Shōnagon means "Minor Councillor", which I think must have been her father's position (from what I understand, ladies at court were known by nicknames and the positions of their father rather than their actual name); Sei refers to the family of Kiyowara, apparently. She was the daughter of a poet (Kiyowara no Motosuke) and a contemporary of the more famous Murasaki Shikibu (author of Tales of Genji, whose name, incidentally, is the name of a flower plus her show more father's position), who did not like her one bit (she thought her arrogant, frivolous and presumptuous). The rivalry may be founded in the fact that they served two different Empresses: when Sadako's father (Michitaka) died, his position at court was taken by his brother (Michinaga), who had the Emperor marry one of his daughters as well in order to secure his position -- court intrigues are fun. Shikibu served the second Empress.

Her real name may have been Kiyowara Nagiko, but no one really knows. Nor is it known what became of her. The Pillow Book therefore has the strange air of providing an intimate opening into a life that is otherwise inaccessible -- the exact opposite of what history normally provides: the dates and facts are missing, but the everyday observations, the preferences, dislikes and passing thoughts are somehow there to be read.

It is also not clear to what extent the Pillow Book was originally intended to be circulated -- Murasaki Shikibu suggests that it was, but the explanation given in the text (and supported by the writer of the introduction to my edition) is that it started as a private journal which then became public.

It is not structured as a coherent story, and in that lies much of its charm. In fact, there does not appear to be a consensus as to how it should be ordered. The anecdotes of court life are interspersed with lists of "depressing things", "splendid things", "things without merit", "things that fall from the sky" and a number of others. And I do like the lists. They not only provide an (albeit randomly structured) insight into the preferences of a woman who lived a millennium ago on the other side of the world, they are also strangely lyrical. And I confess I am very fond of a random structure.

But the anecdotes are what I love. They are moments in a life. That bit of the past that history books do not provide. In fact, it makes sense to me to see this book as the antithesis of conventional history. It does not provide the coherent sequence of pivotal events and orderly presentation of their connection which one would get from a history book. Instead the book focuses on the moments, with a lot of space dedicated to the colours and cuts of clothes, witty repartee and good and bad behaviour. Because I am a history nut I found the hints of court intrigue and power shifts fascinating, but they are always in the background.

No explanation is provided, for example, for why Sei Shōnagon would support Michinaga, the man who not only made the life of the Empress she served hell, but was also the main rival of a man I would swear was one of her lovers: the Empress' brother, Korechika. They certainly flirt shamelessly

She seems to have had a number of lovers. She never specifies who they are, but some of her finest episodes are on the proper way for a man to leave his lover in the morning (before sunrise, to appreciate the dew). And while the extensive end-notes of my edition offered some opinions as to who had been these lovers, I felt quite free to speculate, and ascribed the position to all the marvellous men who flirted with her over poetry and visited her at night.

You see, the poetry is central to all this. Sei Shōnagon is obsessed with it, and I believe the whole culture was (albeit to a lesser extent). They send each other a middle line from a poem, and the recipient is expected to respond with a first and a last line; when confronted with a tricky situation, the highest praise follows an apt allusion to a famous poem; men send poetry to lovers, the women respond. Mixed with a real fondness for puns in the extreme, there is a genuine love for language, and mixed up with it a love for men who love language and can use it right.

It is observant, intelligent, poetic and haughty. I would catch myself nodding along with her rants on the bad manners of people in general (although I must admit our particular grievances are different: I have never had cause to be annoyed that someone referred to themselves in the first person singular while in the company of the Japanese Emperor and Empress). The illusion that people are the same everywhere and everywhen is powerful, but does sometimes shatter. Her treatment and views of "commoners" are occasionally shocking to modern sensibilities. But I remain fascinated by a book that allows me to observe the things taken as universally understood, as obvious, by someone so far from my own time and place.

The endnotes helped, of course. Ivan Morris' edition is from the 60s, and belongs to the tradition where notes could include very subjective positions. He speaks of the "vile" tradition of tying paper flowers to trees, for example. But I enjoy that. And they are in general very enlightening.

I recommend the book without reservations. show less

Sei Shōnagon was a terrible snob! I enjoyed the passages describing events at court, conversations, and love affairs. The lists of what is and isn't good were dull. Shōnagon's attitude to those of lower rank grated on me. She seems to embody all that is worst in the rich and vacuous. Perhaps something was lost in translation, but I didn't see how she came to have a reputation as a wit. I preferred the Diary of Lady Murasaki for its observations on court life and for its intelligence.