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
Sei includes several more lists, such as “things that are better at night,” “things that look worse by firelight,” “things whose Chinese characters make no sense,” and “things that look lovely but are horrible inside.” She also recounts a scene in which a handsome priest is chanting mantras on behalf of a lady who’s suffering from spirit possession. A young girl is serving as medium, and she soon falls into a trance, “the awesome power of the Buddha then [revealing] itself.” The medium’s writhing is a pitiable sight. After she recovers, tea is brought to her. The spirit begs for forgiveness and is dismissed.
The following sections are marked as “supplementary” in certain manuscripts of The Pillow Book, not appearing in all of them, though they are in much the same style as the main part of the book. Here Sei describes the practice of exorcism. Spirits were believed to cause illness, so a Buddhist priest would draw the spirit into a medium in order to relieve the suffering individual.
Themes
Once, during a pilgrimage, Sei is offended to encounter a row of “rough commoners.” The roaring of the river and the long climb to the temple also shake her “pious resolution.” When she and her companions finally reach the Kannon, Sei is still annoyed by the “scruffy commoners, looking like ragged bagworms,” who fill the worship hall—“I wanted to simply shove them over!”
By now, Sei’s attitudes toward commoners are no great surprise, though her forceful disdain in a religious setting is rather striking—she seems to regard the commoners’ very presence as an unsavory disruption of her piety.
Themes
Sei says that she has “written in this book things I have seen and thought,” at idle moments, without expecting anyone else to read them. She’d tried to keep the book private, but it’s become public knowledge despite her best intentions.
In this concluding section, Sei offers a defense of the Pillow Book, claiming that she never intended it to be publicly read—though this could also be a gesture of modesty.
Themes
One day, Korechika presents the Empress with a bundle of paper. Her Majesty asks Sei what she might do with the paper—over at the Emperor’s court, they’re copying Records of the Historian. Sei suggests that this paper ought to be a “pillow.” “Very well, it’s yours,” the Empress replies, giving Sei the bundle.
Korechika’s gift of paper was probably given sometime between 994 and 996, during the years that he served as Palace Minister. The Empress hopes that Sei might produce something to rival the men’s efforts, suggesting that a publishable work was the goal. With the word “pillow,” Sei might be making a pun of some sort, though the precise reference is unclear.
Themes
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Sei began filling the paper with various things, knowing that much of it would make no sense to anyone else. She’s mostly chosen to write about “the things that delight, or that people find impressive,” as well as poems. People might say that the book only “[proves] the limits of my own sensibility,” but Sei argues that she was writing primarily for her own amusement and not for others’ judgment.
Sei defends her okashi emphasis throughout the book, arguing that although she has written about things that she believes are delightful in general, she cannot account for the sensibility of others.
Themes
Sei is upset that people have seen her pillow book. Once, when Tsunefusa was serving as a provincial governor, and he visited Sei at home, her book happened to be sitting on the mat that had been placed out for him. She tried to grab her book, but too late—Tsunefusa took it with him, and Sei didn’t get it back for a long time. “That seems to have been the moment when this book first became known—or so it is written.”
Tsunefusa’s visit would have been between 995 and 997, according to his term of office. The final sentence is written as though by someone else, which was a convention in Japanese literature when The Pillow Book was written. Again, it’s impossible to know for sure if the book’s discovery occurred as Sei reports it, or if her embarrassment over its publication is an attempt to appear modest, in keeping with the values of her time.
Themes
