The Pillow Book is filled with Sei Shōnagon’s appreciative observations of the world around her: “Whether it be plants, trees, birds or insects, I can never be insensible to anything that on some occasion or other I have heard about and remembered because it moved or fascinated me.” That desire to be “sensible” to things that “move” or “fascinate” is a key part of Sei’s experience in the Heian court. Central to that culture was a quality called okashi: an aesthetic experience of delight, cultivated through observation of small details of daily life that could be readily shared with others, as in poetry. Thus, though Sei’s frequent lists and anecdotes are loosely connected at best, Sei uses them not merely to express her personal likes and dislikes, but to specifically cultivate a sensitivity to the quality of okashi. Sei thereby draws upon and even contributes to a longstanding tradition, emphasizing the importance of aesthetic beauty and appreciating small instances of delight within Japanese culture.
Throughout The Pillow Book, Sei includes lists of closely observed phenomena or experiences that produce specific responses in her—things and experiences that, in her view, exhibit the quality of okashi and encourage an okashi sensibility. For example, Sei makes a list of “Things that make your heart beat fast.” These include “A sparrow with nestlings. Going past a place where tiny children are playing. Lighting some fine incense and then lying down alone to sleep. Looking into a Chinese mirror that’s a little clouded. A fine gentleman pulls up in his carriage and sends in some request.” The point of this list is not primarily to draw a connection between the different items; rather, the point is sharpening one’s awareness and appreciation (or sensibility) of things or experiences that elicit an emotional response (in this case, making one’s heart beat fast). Sei’s list of “Refined and elegant things” is much the same: “A girl’s over-robe of white on white over pale violet-grey. The eggs of the spot-billed duck. Shaved ice with a sweet syrup, served in a shiny new metal bowl. A crystal rosary. Wisteria flowers. Snow on plum blossoms. An adorable little child eating strawberries.” As before, Sei doesn’t elaborate on precisely what makes each of these details, in her view, “refined and elegant.” Rather, cataloguing these items is a practice of both displaying and deepening one’s sense of okashi. Simply observing and enjoying one’s surroundings (rather than analyzing them) is what’s valuable.
Sei’s cultivation of okashi is not merely an expression of her individual taste, but derives from the poetic tradition in which she’s immersed. When she makes a list of flowering trees, Sei notes that a certain species of orange tree is associated, according to poetic convention, with a type of bird, the hototogisu, whose song is revered. This suggests that Sei’s focus on okashi isn’t random, but is informed by her culture—that is, her culture (her immersion in poetry, for example) disposes her to especially value certain examples of okashi because of their occurrences in poetry. In fact, such poetic associations encourage Sei to seek out certain experiences of okashi. She reflects, “You wake during the brief nights of the rainy season and lie there waiting, determined to be the first to hear [the hototogisu] - then suddenly your heart is utterly transported with delight, as that dear, exquisite voice comes ringing through the darkness.” In other words, one is determined to hear “that dear, exquisite voice” both because of its beauty and because of its cultural significance—two things that are interconnected in Sei’s thinking.
Elsewhere, other comments show that Sei is aware of participating in a poetic tradition that conveys and reinforces an okashi sensibility. Again, listing non-flowering trees with special qualities, Sei remarks of camphor trees, “It’s quite creepy to imagine how all that thick dark growth must feel, but when you think of the way its ‘thousand branches’ are used in poetry to refer to the thousand tangled feelings of a lover’s heart, […] you wonder who first counted the branches to come up with that expression.” Sei recognizes that, somewhere within her cultural history, someone originated the camphor tree metaphor that has become conventional in poetry. They did so by connecting an observation of nature with an emotional experience, just as she does throughout her diary. Thus, by recording such aesthetic experiences, Sei recognizes the significance of the okashi tradition and engages with it herself, thereby ensuring that this important facet of Japanese culture will live on.
In fact, scholars have speculated that Sei’s collection of okashi-inspired details was meant to serve as a sourcebook for poets—they could study her lists and anecdotes in order to have their okashi sensibility refreshed, and in turn to instill their own poetic compositions with that sensibility for others’ enjoyment. There’s not enough historical evidence to confirm this hunch, but there’s plenty of evidence within The Pillow Book that Sei’s focus on okashi isn’t just an expression of personal delights, but a conscious participation in a tradition in which both she and her audience are meant to take delight.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Aesthetic Beauty, Delight, and Cultural Tradition ThemeTracker
Aesthetic Beauty, Delight, and Cultural Tradition Quotes in The Pillow Book
Her Majesty provided us with the inkstone. ‘Come on, come on,’ she scolded, ‘don’t waste time racking your brains. Just quickly jot down any ancient poem that comes to you on the spur of the moment. Even something hackneyed will do.’ I’ve no idea why we should have felt so daunted by the task, but we all found ourselves blushing deeply, and our minds went quite blank. Despite their protestations, some of the senior gentlewomen managed to produce two or three poems on spring themes such as blossoms and so forth, and then my turn came. I wrote down the poem:
With the passing years
My years grow old upon me
yet when I see
this lovely flower of spring
I forget age and time.
but I changed ‘flower of spring’ to ‘your face, my lady’.
Her Majesty ran her eye over the poems, remarking, ‘I just wanted to discover what was in your hearts.’
There are also those times when you send someone a poem you’re rather pleased with, and fail to receive one in reply. Of course there’s no more to be done about it if it’s to a man you care for. Even so, you do lose respect for someone who doesn’t produce any response to your tasteful seasonal references. It also dampens the spirit when you’re leading a heady life in the swim of things and you receive some boring little old-fashioned poem that reeks of the longueurs of the writer, whose time hangs heavy on her hands.
Things that make your heart beat fast—A sparrow with nestlings. Going past a place where tiny children are playing. Lighting some fine incense and then lying down alone to sleep. Looking into a Chinese mirror that’s a little clouded. A fine gentleman pulls up in his carriage and sends in some request.
The uguisu is made out to be a wonderful bird in Chinese poetry, and both its voice and its appearance are really so enchanting that it’s very unseemly of it not to sing inside the grounds of our ‘nine-fold palace’. People did tell me this was so but I couldn’t believe it, yet during my ten years in the palace I did indeed never once hear it. This despite the fact that the palace is near bamboo groves and there are red plums, which would make it a fine place for an uguisu to come and go. Yet if you go out, you’ll hear one singing fit to burst in a nondescript plum tree in some lowly garden. […] In summer and right through to the end of autumn it maunders on and on in a wavery old voice, and lower sorts of people change its name to ‘flycatcher’, which I find quite unfortunate and ludicrous.
Unsuitable things—Snow falling on the houses of the common people. Moonlight shining into such houses is also a great shame. So is meeting with a plain roofless ox cart on a moonlit night, or seeing a cart of this sort being drawn by an auburn-coloured ox.
This is the final dance, and no doubt that’s why you feel particularly bereft when it draws to a close. As the nobles and others all get up and file out after the dancers, you’re filled with a frustrated longing for more, but this is assuaged in the case of the Provisional Kamo Festival by the Returning Dance. There’s a most moving and marvellous atmosphere then, with the slender ribbons of smoke rising from the courtyard watchfires and the wonderful wavering pure notes of the kagura flute lifting high, and the voices of the singers. It’s piercingly cold, the glossed silk of your robes is icy against the skin and your hand as it clutches the fan is chilled, but you notice none of this. I like the way the head dancer takes a terrific pleasure in performing the long-drawn-out call that summons the comic entertainers for the interlude.
Once, during the reign of the former Emperor Murakami, there was a great fall of snow. The moon was bright. His Majesty heaped snow in a bowl, stood a spray of flowering plum in it and gave it to the Lady Chamberlain, Hyoe, saying, ‘See what poem you can compose on this.’ Her response was to recite the words of the Chinese poem, ‘At times of snow, moonlight and blossom’, for which he praised her very highly. ‘There’s nothing unusual in producing a poem,’ he said, ‘but it’s far more difficult to say something that is so precisely apt for the occasion.’
‘You see me as some upstart then?’ I inquired, to which another lady responded, ‘More on the level of a stable boy.’ Nevertheless, it was a glorious moment, to have the honour of being permitted to watch from above. No doubt it’s unseemly for me to be boasting like this, and it may well redound unforgivably on Her Majesty’s reputation, by giving an opportunity to those who would set themselves up as shallow judges of worldly matters to wag their heads sagely and declare, ‘To think that Her Majesty should favour such a creature!’ - yet I can only write the facts as they stand, after all. I freely admit that I was of a quite unworthy station to be the recipient of Her Majesty’s special attentions in this manner. […] But these events, which seemed to us so splendid and auspicious at the time, all look very different when compared with the present, and this is why I’ve set it all down in detail, with heavy heart.
I set to work with this boundless pile of paper to fill it to the last sheet with all manner of odd things, so no doubt there’s much in these pages that makes no sense.
Overall, I have chosen to write about the things that delight, or that people find impressive, including poems as well as things such as trees, plants, birds, insects and so forth, and for this reason people may criticize it for not living up to expectations and only going to prove the limits of my own sensibility. But after all, I merely wrote for my personal amusement things that I myself have thought and felt, and I never intended that it should be placed alongside other books and judged on a par with them. […] Anyway, it does upset me that people have seen these pages.
