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
One day Sei is chatting with the Secretary Controller of the Office of the Empress’s Household, Yukinari. Sei and Yukinari are good friends. Sei appreciates that he’s plain-spoken and doesn’t flirt. Yukinari depends upon Sei to carry messages to Her Majesty. The two of them quote Chinese literature to each other—poetry and even the Analects of Confucius. At one point, Yukinari admits that he couldn’t love an ugly woman, so Sei jokes that she’s horribly ugly and must never show him her face. He takes her seriously. One day, Yukinari accidentally catches sight of Sei’s face through a curtain and teases her in return, saying that he’s now gazed to his heart’s content.
Although women were generally cloistered within the court, that didn’t preclude friendships between men and women. The friendship between Sei and Yukinari seems to have been of an especially intellectual bent (albeit lighthearted as well), suggesting that the male and female courtiers held mutual respect for each other despite their separation and differing roles.
Themes
Each night there’s a roll call of the senior courtiers. The ladies cluster at the edge of the Empress’s quarters to overhear as much as they can. When a lady hears the name of a man who’s dear to her, she feels “that familiar, sudden clutch of the heart.” Afterward the ladies discuss the men’s voices and whether they sound attractive or not.
Sei finds it “disgusting” when a young man of standing addresses a lower-ranked woman by name, making it obvious that he’s been paying her visits at night. It’s better for such a man to get the name wrong, or send someone else altogether. But it doesn’t matter if the woman is “inconsequential.”
Strict social hierarchies also governed male and female relationships at court—it was regarded as embarrassing for a man to admit to an affair with women of a certain rank. Yet if a woman was “insignificant” enough, she was regarded as unworthy of concern.
Themes
Sei wishes that when men were taking their leave from the lady they’ve visited at night, they wouldn’t spend so much time fussily rearranging their clothes—after all, no one will mock him for walking home looking disheveled. It’s better if a lover’s departure is “tasteful,” with lingering affection and endearments before he finally slips out the doors.
Sei doesn’t reveal much about her own romantic liaisons, so it’s unclear how much she’s speaking from personal experience, from others’ accounts, or merely according to fashionable conventions. But it’s obvious that some degree of secret romance flourished behind the scenes of the imperial court.
Themes
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On the other hand, there are men who leave in a great bustle when they suddenly remember that there’s somebody else they need to visit. After fumbling for his possessions in the dark, he finally says, “Well, I’ll be off then,” and leaves.
Not all liaisons were worthy of lush, romantic tales—Sei injects a romantic note with her description of bumbling, awkward lovers. Clearly, men and woman sometimes had casual and poorly-planned encounters during this time despite strict social and moral codes.
Themes
