The Pillow Book: Sections 72–77 Summary & Analysis

The ladies’ apartments in the Empress’s quarters are a wonderful place. Ladies can chat with their male visitors over a standing curtain that’s been set up. It’s also a pleasant place to watch musicians and dancers passing through the gardens on their way to a festival performance.

One morning at dawn, some of the ladies join the Empress in a moonlit walk through the garden. Then they hear some courtiers chanting a Chinese poem nearby, so they rush back inside and talk with the men from inside. Impressed that the ladies had been moon-viewing, some of the courtiers compose poems on the spot.

On the day after the Litany of Buddha Names, screens decorated with paintings of hell are taken to the Empress’s quarters for a viewing. Sei is so horrified by the screens that she can’t look, so she hides in a nearby room. It’s raining that day, so the Empress brings some musicians to perform. When Sei eventually comes out of hiding, everyone teases her that she’s afraid of hellfire, yet she can’t resist such delights as music.

At one point, Secretary Captain Tadanobu hears “certain baseless and ridiculous rumours” that are being spread about Sei, and he begins speaking ill of her. Sei laughs it off, figuring he will learn the truth eventually. Some weeks later, having ignored her all this time, Tadanobu decides to make amends and sends a letter to Sei, urging a reply. Sei finds that he has written a line from Bo Juyi, “You are there in the flowering capital, beneath the Council Chamber’s brocade curtains,” and has asked her to complete the poem.

Sei isn’t sure what to do, knowing it would look bad if she showed off the fact that she knows the next line in Chinese, but the messenger is nagging her. So she quickly scrawls in Japanese, “Who will come visiting this grass-thatched hut?” She gets no response that night.

The next morning, Sei hears a captain crying, “Is ‘Grass-thatched Hut’ present?” As he tells her what happened last night, he looks “shamefaced.” He explains that many people were gathered in Tadanobu’s room after they got Sei’s message. They declared her a “clever rogue” and spent the night trying to add the first three lines to the poem, but they finally had to give up. Now Sei’s nickname is “Grass-thatched Hut.”

Just as Sei is reflecting on her “dreadful” new nickname, Norimitsu arrives. He breathlessly repeats the whole story, grateful that Sei gave such a clever response to Tadanobu, since if she’d failed, it would have reflected poorly on him as “elder brother.” He admits that he has no appreciation for poetry himself, but that it’s still great news for him. Sei finds out that even the Emperor is impressed with Sei’s response, and her relationship with Tadanobu is on good terms again.