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
Men have “most peculiar and unlikely feelings.” It’s astonishing when a man abandons a lovely woman in order to pursue an “unpleasant” one. Sometimes a man becomes obsessed with a girl on the basis of rumor alone, even if he’s never seen her. And it’s “outrageous” when a charming, sensitive girl, clearly heartbroken, sends a beautiful poem, only to be held at a distance by the man, who appears undisturbed.
Sei muses further on the inscrutable character of men, which she finds lacking in general. Though Sei is reticent regarding her own romantic life, at the very least her observations of other courtiers’ love lives likely inform her opinions.
Themes
Sei doesn’t understand why gossip is considered to be wrong—“how can you not discuss other people?” Is there anything more appealing? Naturally, if the gossip concerns someone one is close to, one might refrain—but if it’s not, “you’d no doubt go ahead and say it, and have a laugh at their expense.”
Sei’s rather amusing asides on gossip suggest that “discussing others” occupies a significant part of the entertainment among the ladies at court. They also reinforce the impression that Sei isn’t always sensitive to the feelings of those outside her immediate circle.
Themes
Things that give Sei pleasure include reading the first volume of a tale one hasn’t read before, and then finding the other volume; successfully piecing together a letter that’s been torn up; discovering that a puzzling dream doesn’t portend anything harmful; or having one’s poem talked about. It’s also pleasing when one hears people talking about a poem or story one doesn’t know, and then one comes across it later in one’s reading. Additionally, it’s satisfying to get the better of an overconfident person, especially a man.
Sei moves from the pleasures of gossip to more harmless sources of enjoyment, many of which involve literary delights. The fact that Sei is able to draw a connection among these different experiences speaks to her ability to notice the common emotional and aesthetic threads among otherwise disparate things.
Themes
One day Sei tells Empress Teishi that when Sei is depressed, she is cheered by discovering things like beautiful, fresh paper, or beautifully woven green matting. Her Majesty replies, “The simplest trifles console you, don’t they.” Some time later, Sei is feeling distraught during a visit home, and then she receives a gift of “twenty bundles of magnificent paper,” throwing her into “delighted confusion.” She sends back a message which puns on kami, the word for both “god” and “paper.” Sei is excited to create a bound book from this paper.
Scholars have identified this bundle of paper as one possible origin of The Pillow Book, although an episode near the end of the book is a more likely candidate. This occasion shows the Empress’s esteem for Sei and her understanding of what pleases her, and Sei’s response is characteristically clever.
Themes
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Early in Sei’s court service, Empress Teishi moved into another palace during a dedication ceremony. The surroundings are beautiful, with an artificial cherry tree “blooming” at the foot of the stairs. The artificial tree begins to look more dismal after nights of dew and rain. The morning after the rain, a group of servants is sent to dismantle the tree quietly before anyone notices. When the Regent, Michitaka, comes later that morning, Sei murmurs a line from a poem to signal to him that she had witnessed the dismantling of the tree, which was done at his orders. He pretends to be upset that Sei saw this, while being delighted at her poetic allusions.
Sei returns to some memories from earlier in her life at court. At this point, Sei appears to have gained greater confidence in her new surroundings, given her subtle teasing of the Regent (the Empress’s father).
Themes
On the night that Empress Teishi moved into this palace, everyone scrambled frantically to get into the carriages, to Sei’s disgust. She and a friend wait for a quieter opportunity, until an officer scolds them for lingering. When they finally arrive at the new palace, the Empress, too, scolds them for taking so long and for causing her to worry. When the Empress figures out that many of the ladies pushed and shoved to arrive more quickly, she is cross, but Sei intervenes in their defense, suggesting that the other ladies had rushed out of eagerness to enter Her Majesty’s presence.
Still referring to events relatively early in her life of service, Sei remembers an occasion when she found other gentlewomen’s behavior unseemly (perhaps highlighting the fact that Sei was in her twenties, while many would have still been in their teens), but nevertheless stands up for them—showing that she’s diplomatic when she has to be.
Themes
Sei describes the great preparations and elaborate ceremony surrounding Empress Teishi’s attendance at the Sutra Ceremonies. Twenty carriages full of ladies arrive first and wait for Her Majesty’s arrival—a moment which “overawes” Sei “at actually being in her service.” When the Empress’s palanquin pulls up to the temple, the “outburst” of music and dances makes Sei feel faint, wondering if she’s “arrived in the Buddha’s heavenly realms.” The Empress invites Sei to join her in the imperial viewing area—a simple fact, and not something she means to boast about. Sei savors her proximity to the imperial household and the pageantry of the processions, sutra reading, sermon, and dancing. The day is glorious but exhausting. However, at the time of writing, Sei looks back on all these events “with heavy heart.”
Both Teishi and her father were dead by the time Sei recorded the memory of these events; power had shifted to the new Regent, Michinaga. This is perhaps why Sei recalls these particular Ceremonies with notable passion and detail—they represent Teishi’s court at its height of splendor. Sei’s melancholy tone reflects how rapidly political fortunes could shift and suggests that such turmoil was always churning beneath the surface of court life, though Sei seldom alludes to it from her sheltered position as a gentlewoman.
Themes
