In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful. As the light creeps over the hills, their outlines are dyed a faint red and wisps of purplish cloud trail over them.
In summer the nights…
In autumn the evenings…
In winter the early mornings…

Thus begins The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon (枕草子), a prose collection written by Sei Shonagon around the year 1000. Some of you may be asking, what’s a pillow book? Well, we’re still not sure. Pillow may refer to a writer’s handbook with topics for poetry and prose composition. It may be that the book was actually used as a pillow, or it may have been that the book was kept in a small drawer in a pillow. Now you might be asking, a drawer in a pillow? If you’ve ever seen an old Japanese ‘pillow,’ you may have noticed that they look suspiciously like wooden blocks. Well, I’ll have you know that some of them were actually made of rock. A wooden pillow could easily be fitted with a drawer or other nifty devices. I bet you’re asking now, what other sorts of nifty devices? Man, you’re inquisitive. Either way, the pillow book is a collection of Sei Shonagon’s observations, probably written late at night when she couldn’t get to sleep, because she was using a wood block for a pillow. Good for your neck, my feathers.

Sei Shonagon was a court lady who served the empress Teishi around the turn of the millenium. She was a contemporary of Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji. As the two ladies served differing, and thus competing, empresses, there was quite the rivalry between the two (those of you who just made the catfight noise are grounded. Stop reading). Each often took subtle, lofty jabs at the other in their diaries, which were closer to gossip magazines, widely circulated and read by everyone. However, of the two literary greats, Sei Shonagon was the queen of quick wit with a wicked tongue. She was well read, skilled in music, poetry, and dance, and was quick to look down upon and mock those who did not meet her standards, often with disregard for station. She was the kind of lady to whom you would say, “Oh, my god. You did NOT go there.” And she’d be like, “Oh, you know I did, girlfriend.”

The Pillow Book is the earliest great collection of a style of Japanese literature known as zuihitsu (literally, “following the pen”). Zuihitsu is light discourse on any topic that happens to pop in to the writer’s mind at the time, very similar to an informal essay. Imagine going on a ten-minute diatribe to a friend about how you could never understand why someone would name a kid “Jughead.” Write out the monologue word for word and you’ve got yourself a nice example of a zuihitsu. The Pillow Book contains various anecdotes of courtly encounters and lists with such headings as “hateful things” and “things that fall from the sky.”

The Pillow Book is enjoyable for it’s universality as well as Sei Shonagon’s never-withering wit. You may adore her acumen or abhor her haughtiness, but what she writes is interesting to read, either way. Despite having died almost a millennium ago, you get the feeling that Sei Shonagon would have no problem snobbing it up with other high brows in modern society. There are a couple of English translations out there, the most well know of which is the partial translation by Arthur Waley, written in the twenties.

Written by Kevin Singleton, originally appearing in The Tombo Times.