![]() People of both genders were fascinated by what they could see through the holes in a lattice or the gap in a hedge-a man’s cherry-red hunting cloak, say, or a woman’s hazy but elegant figure bent over a scroll. In the Heian era, aristocratic women lived in a kind of purdah, hidden behind curtains and screens, an arrangement that didn’t blunt the male gaze so much as intensify it to the point of shared obsession, saturating court life. It’s possible to wonder whether the author’s mode of life was an influence on the book’s construction. Instead, it makes the writerly argument for the emotional resonance of surfaces. As such, it somehow manages to feel intensely intimate without ever becoming particularly introspective. ![]() ![]() Not quite a diary or journal, not really a memoir, The Pillow Book stubbornly refuses to fit a ready-made category-refuses to be anything other than what it is: an unapologetic emanation of Sei Shonagon’s personality. ![]() It’s been an acknowledged classic for centuries, and yet readers still struggle with its unusual form, a nonlinear structure combining many different types of personal writing, including anecdote, memoir, essay, aphorism, and reverie. The Pillow Book was written over a thousand years ago by Sei Shonagon, a lady-in-waiting to Japan’s Empress Teishi. ![]()
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