The Pillow Book

The Pillow Book is a collection of reflections written by Japanese gentlewoman Sei Shonagon as a kind of journal during the 990s and early 1000s. Though her world would have been familiar to her audience, which experienced her reflections only after they were unintentionally released, parts of The Pillow Book may seem opaque to 21st-century readers unfamiliar with Japan’s 11th-century Heian court.

Even so, Shonagon’s vivid descriptions of nature, her fascination with royal spectacle, and her tendency to gossip, have a timeless quality. Some reviewers have remarked that parts ofThe Pillow Book feel uncannily similar to a Tumblr account, a listicle, or Twitter feed a young woman might write in our own century.

Shonagon describes a deep interest in the art of poetry. Many of her delicately crafted poems describe relationships with the Empress Teishi, who presides over the Heian court, as well as many male courtiers. Literacy is a mark of class in the Heian court, and nothing is more elegant and respectable than writing, memorizing, and reciting both Chinese and Japanese poems with ease. Shonagon earns a reputation, and many close relationships, through her skillful attention to language. She also expresses, privately in The Pillow Book, a significant disdain for those who use language ineloquently.

Language reaches beyond the barriers that seem prominent in Shonagon’s society. In Buddhist temples, at court, and even between family members, screens and walls separate higher-ranking people from lower, men from women, and outsiders from insiders. Yet those on the outside constantly peek in: Shonagon peeks at visiting nobles; men peek into women’s homes; those with complaints seek a listening ear among the gentlewomen. Gaining access to private spaces adds intrigue, both to the real events that Shonagon describes and to the theoretical tales that she tells about lovers and friends.

Throughout The Pillow Book, Shonagon offers rich access to the world around what is now called Kyoto, the land upon which she lived. By naming bridges, rivers, waterfalls, and more, she gives a sense of the space that she occupied; by describing plants and insects in painstaking detail, she brings that world to life. Similarly, her intimate connection to the light of day and night casts that world in a deeply poetic life. Her book of reflections reads like a study for poetry, in which Shonagon probes the depths of the world around her, her own spiritual attachment to that world, and the questions that arise from those critical connections.

The Pillow Book has been translated into English several times since it was first translated in 1889. Most reviewers recommend Meredith McKinney’s 2006 translation, which is more complete and livelier to read than earlier translations.