Historical Babes: Sei Shonagon's Pillowbook

Writing is a strange hobby, in that the people who most enjoy writing probably spend more time actively avoiding writing than people who hate it. I am one such person – hence the longer than intended hiatus. I have found it difficult over the last few weeks to resist the siren song of more passive activities than writing, such as reading, watching TV, mindlessly flipping through cookbooks, etc. But, I’ve made it back in the saddle, and to kick off the new year (belatedly) I bring you the story of other people who wrote for fun (and probably procrastinated less).

I like to remind my students that people have always been people – which means that people have always been weird. The diary of Sei Shonagon exemplifies the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of humankind. Like the babe from my last post, Sei Shonagon also hails from Heian Japan, a cultural milieu in which the elite women had more freedoms than you would typically expect among upper class pre-modern women but in which their status still rested precariously upon their relationship to men. If you recall from last time, women’s voices from the Heian period are unusually loud compared to other periods of history, due to the writing habit kept up by many bored, elite women. Last time, we dove into the fiction of Lady Murasaki Shikibu. This week: the capricious diaries of Sei Shonagon.

Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shonagon actually knew each other, because their time as Ladies in Waiting at the Heian court overlapped – although Murasaki Shikibu attended the younger Empress, and Sei Shonagon attended the older, probably more chill, retired Empress. Apparently, Murasaki Shikibu thought Sei Shonagon was frivolous and full of herself.

Sei Shonagon was the daughter of a poet who earned her appointment at court thanks to her quick wit. Although many found her entertaining and endearing, she could also be abrasive, particularly to those she considered to be simple, ignorant, or in any other way “ridiculous.” Certainly, the image she leaves behind of herself in the Pillowbook is of an opinionated woman.

The exact origins of the Pillowbook are not entirely certain, but it seems to have started as a diary of sorts and earned its name from the fact that the author might have kept it under her pillow. It is not the conventional diary, in that it is not a record of her daily activities, but reads more like notes and musings that she wrote down. Some of these entries are thoughtful or sensitive essays about experiences she had, or her wonder of the natural world. Some of it is poetry. But the most memorable parts, are the many lists that she kept. Lists such as “Depressing Things,” “Hateful Things,” “Squalid Things,” “Things that arouse a fond memory of the past.” Many of the lists include the irritating behaviors of her lovers – as well as what she views as the proper way for lovers to behave. The lists sometimes feel like the e-mail newsletter you might get from a lifestyle guru like Anabelle Porter.