Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Pillow Book, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Court Life vs. Common Life
Poetry and Social Relationships
Aesthetic Beauty, Delight, and Cultural Tradition
Romance and Official Duty
Summary
Analysis
Anxiety-producing things include a horse-race, a hair-binding cord, or an ailing parent when there’s been a rumor of plague. One’s heart also lurches upon hearing a lover’s voice in an unexpected place, or when a hated person shows up for a visit. “Indeed,” remarks Sei, “the heart is a creature amazingly prone to lurching.”
The “anxiety” of the hair-binding cord is that it might snap at any moment, much as someone might die suddenly, or appear when someone isn’t expecting them. Whereas these anxiety-producing things Sei lists might seem unrelated, the fact that she is able to draw a comparison among them speaks to her attunement to the underlying aesthetic qualities of different experiences.
Themes
“Endearingly lovely things” include a sparrow returning to a nest full of cheeping babies, a toddler showing adults a worthless object he finds precious, a tiny lotus leaf, or, in fact, “absolutely anything that’s tiny.” Likewise endearing are small children in long robes, children reading aloud, and baby chicks running around. Sei lists some “things with terrifying names,” and then muses that “robbery is terrifying in every way,” as are violent monks, spirit possession, and certain plants which are named after snakes or demons.
Though there’s no discernible order to many of Sei’s diary sections, sometimes it appears to be a matter of simple contrast—like that between adorably endearing things and violent, frightening things. In this way, Sei’s writings are more emotional and sensorial in quality than prosaic, which hearkens to the Japanese okashi tradition of conveying aesthetics through poetry and art.
Themes
Things which appear ordinary “but become extraordinary when written” include strawberries, the dew plant, and chestnuts.
Sei singles out these items because of the meanings of the Japanese characters used to write them. For example, these three items, respectively, are written using the characters for “overturned tray child,” “sole of duck’s foot grass,” and “barbarian peach.” In other words, she finds an additional level of beauty and whimsy in the characters, besides the objects themselves.
Themes
“Enviable people” include those who can memorize sutras seemingly effortlessly, while one keep stumbling over one’s words. Others include people who are cheerfully going about their lives while one is sick, and people who pass by on their pilgrimage while one is still making one’s way laboriously up the mountain. This prompts Sei to recall an occasion when she tried climbing the mountain on an oppressively hot day. As she sat down to rest, another woman walked by who appeared to be past 40, remarking to a companion that currently she’s on the fourth of seven pilgrimages, and that it's all been quite easy. Sei longed to be that woman.
Sei refers especially to a pilgrimage to the Inari Shrine, which was a mountaintop shrine just outside of Kyoto and only accessible after a rigorous hike. Although Sei usually portrays herself as a gentlewoman with a great deal of poise and pride, it seems that even she is subject to self-doubt and envy, seen here as she longs to climb the mountain with the same ease as the older women.
Themes
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“Occasions for anxious waiting” include expecting the birth of a child once the due date is past, opening the seal on a letter from a distant admirer, or trying to thread a needle for an urgent sewing job while it’s dark (especially if a flustered friend is trying to do this on one’s behalf). Another is trying to make a quick response to somebody’s poem.
Poetry is often associated with anxiety for Sei because of the pressure to produce something acceptable on a moment’s notice—rather like trying to thread a needle in the dark.
Themes
