The Pillow Book

Sei lists various types of clothing: gathered trousers, hunting costumes, shifts, formal robes, and accessories such as fans. She also names various deities. She then moves into a reminiscence of Captain Narinobu, a handsome and delightful courtier. However, she loses respect for Narinobu when he turns up at the palace on a rainy night to visit her. Sei sees Narinobu’s visit as calculated—an attempt to convince her that he really cares for her, despite long neglect. She thinks it’s always better for a man to come calling on a moonlit night, even if there’s been a long lapse in his visits. After all, there is nothing “to match a moonlit night for sending your thoughts winging to distant places […] and recalling past moments.”

By contrast, Sei finds rain totally “unpoetic” and an occasion for despair, so she can’t imagine why anyone would “feel thrilled to have some sodden fellow turn up feeling sorry for himself.” On the other hand, visits on windy and snowy nights are welcome. She remembers an occasion when a lady received a message from a lover—it contained an allusion to a poem about looking at the same moon. “That’s not a scene you could have if it was raining, is it?” Sei concludes.

Sei imagines having a lover who always sends a “next-morning poem,” but neglects to do so after a quarrel. But after a day of heavy rain, one receives a message—a single poetic allusion, “the rising floods of rain,” and one is delighted. Or maybe one is disconsolate on a snowy day, but then watches as a lady receives a letter on beautiful paper which elicits a slight smile, and one wonders what it contains. It’s also charming when a lady receives a letter in a dark room and is too impatient to light a lamp, so she reads by the glow of a piece of coal.

One day, when the snow is piled high, Empress Teishi asks Sei, “Shōnagon, what do you make of the snow of Koro Peak?” Sei responds by ordering that the blinds be lifted, which delights Her Majesty. Another lady remarks that she would never have thought of that line, and that Sei “[epitomizes] the sort of person who belongs in this court.”

Sei discusses the peril of boat crossings, which can begin so charmingly and quickly descend into terror as the water suddenly grows choppy. Men who routinely travel by boat are “awe-inspiring” in their nonchalance. And fisher girls who dive for shells must face far greater fears—at least the men stay above, cheerfully rowing the boat, while the women dangle in the water, attached only by a thin rope. The contrast is astonishing between the lazy men and the gasping women being hauled aboard between dives.

One day, Grand Counsellor Korechika is giving a talk to the Emperor on Chinese poetry. The talk continues until very late at night, and the Emperor falls asleep. Everyone is startled awake when a serving girl brings in a hen, which is noisily chased by a dog. Korechika quotes a line from a poem about a wise king being awakened, and everyone is delighted by the aptness of the quotation.

On another occasion, Sei is sitting on the veranda with another courtier, when a woebegone man approaches with the tale of his house burning down. He tells the story in a comically elaborate manner, prompting Sei’s companion to burst out laughing. Sei writes down a poem, which is passed to the man with instructions to open it at home. He thinks the paper is a promissory note for damages, and the women leave, laughing, without correcting him. Sei follows this anecdote with some other poems she sent or recited on occasions she deemed especially fitting.