Sei Shōnagon Character Analysis

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.

The nightly roll call of the senior courtiers is a very fine thing. […] We ladies place ourselves at the eastern edge of Her Majesty’s quarters and strain our ears to listen for the hammering footsteps of the men as they come tumbling out, and a lady will feel that familiar, sudden clutch of the heart as she hears the name of someone particularly dear to her. But imagine what thoughts go through her head when it’s the name of a man who no longer bothers even to let her know he exists. It’s fun the way we all discuss the men’s voices, and pass judgement on how attractive or otherwise each one sounds.

There was nothing in [the letter] to justify my nervousness. He had written the line from Bo Juyi, ‘You are there in the flowering capital, beneath the Council Chamber’s brocade curtains’, and added, ‘How should it end, tell me?’

‘What on earth shall I do?’ I wondered. ‘If Her Majesty were here I’d most certainly show this to her. It would look bad to parade the fact that I know the next line by writing it in my poor Chinese characters.’ […]

[S]o I seized a piece of dead charcoal from the brazier and simply wrote at the end of his letter, in Japanese script,

Who will come visiting this grass-thatched hut?

The messenger duly carried it off, but there was no response.

A Chamberlain of the sixth rank. He’s a quite splendid sight in those special green robes he’s allowed to wear, and he can wear damask, which even a high-ranking young nobleman is forbidden. Subordinate officials in the Chamberlain’s office […] look quite inconsequential at the time, but if they become Chamberlains they undergo an astonishing transformation. When they appear as bearer of an imperial pronouncement, or present the imperial gifts of sweet chestnuts and so forth at one of the great ministerial banquets, from the magnificent way they’re received you’d think they were heavenly beings descended to earth!

[A messenger] made his way over discreetly to where the ladies were seated and apparently asked in a whisper why nothing was forthcoming. I was sitting four people away from Kohyoe, so even if I’d been able to come up with some response it would have been difficult to say it, and besides, how could you offer some merely average poem in reply to one by Sanekata, who was so famous for his poetic skills? Still, I thought, it’s no good being bashful and hesitant when it comes to poetic composition. Where does that ever get you? Though your poem might not be so very wonderful, the important thing is that it must be something you come out with on the spur of the moment.

‘Whenever there’s an occasion when people are composing, and Your Majesty instructs me to make a poem, my only impulse is to flee. Not that I don’t understand the rules of syllable count, or that I make winter poems in spring, or write about plum blossom or cherry blossom in autumn, or anything of that sort. But after all, I come from a line of people with a name for good poetry, so I’d like it to be said that my poems are a bit better than the average. When I compose something, I want people to say later, “This was a particularly impressive poem composed on that occasion - just what you’d expect, considering her forebears.” It’s an offence to my late father’s name, to fancy myself as a poet and put myself forward to make some plausible-sounding poem, when in fact what I write has nothing special to recommend it at all.’

I must say I’m ashamed for any woman who’s taken in by some man who is privately thinking, ‘How depressing! She’s not at all what I hoped she’d be. She’s full of irritating faults’, but when he’s with her will fawn and flatter and convince her to trust him. […] I must say, if ever I do come across a man who seems to feel for me at all, I immediately assume he’s actually quite shallow-hearted, so I have no need to expose myself to potential embarrassment.

I really do find it astonishing the way a man will fail to be in the slightest bit affected by the moving nature of a woman’s deep unhappiness, when he considers abandoning her. […] And then there’s the man who takes advantage of a lady at court who has no one to protect her interests, wins her over, and when she falls pregnant, repudiates the affair completely.

When I went out to meet him, he said admiringly, ‘I would have expected the person who received that to respond with some half-baked poem, but your reply was brilliant. A woman who fancies herself as a poet generally leaps at the chance to compose, but I much prefer someone who doesn’t behave like that. For the likes of me, a person who loves to reply with a poem comes across as actually having a much poorer sensibility than someone who doesn’t.’

[…] It’s very unseemly of me to boast like this, I know, but on the other hand I do think it’s an entertaining story.

I never intended this book to be seen by others, so I’ve written whatever came into my mind, without worrying about whether people would find it strange or unpleasant.

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.’

When I first went into court service, everything seemed to overwhelm me with confusion and embarrassment, and there were times when I could barely hold back my tears. I attended Her Majesty each night, behind her low standing curtain, and she would bring out pictures and so on to show me, but I was so hopelessly nervous that I could scarcely even stretch out a hand to take them. She described what was in each picture, asked what I thought was happening and generally tried to set me at ease with her talk. […] It was a fearfully cold time of year, and the glimpse of her hands emerging from the wonderful, glowing pale plum-pink sleeves filled me with deep awe. I remember gazing at them in astonishment, still fresh from home and new to all I saw, and thinking, ‘I never knew someone so marvellous could exist!’

I particularly despise people who express themselves poorly in writing. How horrible it is to read language that rides roughshod over manners and social conventions. It’s also very poor to be over-polite with people who should rightly be treated less formally. It’s bad enough to receive poorly written letters oneself, and just as disgraceful when they’re sent to others.

Generally speaking, even when you hear someone use language in this sort of slovenly way when talking face to face, you wince and wonder to yourself how they can say such things, and it’s even more appalling when it’s directed to someone eminent. Though when it’s some country bumpkin who’s speaking like this, it’s actually funny, and therefore quite appropriate to them.

One young man, who married into the household of a man at the height of his fame and fortune, was never very diligent in calling on his new wife, and ceased coming altogether after a mere month. He was roundly condemned on every front […] Then in the New Year he was made a Chamberlain. […] In the sixth month of that year, everyone gathered to attend the Lotus Discourses that a certain person was dedicating, and there was this son-in-law the Chamberlain, dazzlingly attired in damask skirted trousers, black hanpi jacket and so forth, seated so close to the carriage of his neglected wife that his jacket cord might well have snagged on the tailpiece of her carriage. All the people in the other carriages who knew the details of the situation were thinking, ‘Poor thing, how must she be feeling to see him there?’ […] It does seem that men don’t have much sympathy for others, or understanding of how they’re feeling.

‘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.

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.

The nightly roll call of the senior courtiers is a very fine thing. […] We ladies place ourselves at the eastern edge of Her Majesty’s quarters and strain our ears to listen for the hammering footsteps of the men as they come tumbling out, and a lady will feel that familiar, sudden clutch of the heart as she hears the name of someone particularly dear to her. But imagine what thoughts go through her head when it’s the name of a man who no longer bothers even to let her know he exists. It’s fun the way we all discuss the men’s voices, and pass judgement on how attractive or otherwise each one sounds.

There was nothing in [the letter] to justify my nervousness. He had written the line from Bo Juyi, ‘You are there in the flowering capital, beneath the Council Chamber’s brocade curtains’, and added, ‘How should it end, tell me?’

‘What on earth shall I do?’ I wondered. ‘If Her Majesty were here I’d most certainly show this to her. It would look bad to parade the fact that I know the next line by writing it in my poor Chinese characters.’ […]

[S]o I seized a piece of dead charcoal from the brazier and simply wrote at the end of his letter, in Japanese script,

Who will come visiting this grass-thatched hut?

The messenger duly carried it off, but there was no response.

A Chamberlain of the sixth rank. He’s a quite splendid sight in those special green robes he’s allowed to wear, and he can wear damask, which even a high-ranking young nobleman is forbidden. Subordinate officials in the Chamberlain’s office […] look quite inconsequential at the time, but if they become Chamberlains they undergo an astonishing transformation. When they appear as bearer of an imperial pronouncement, or present the imperial gifts of sweet chestnuts and so forth at one of the great ministerial banquets, from the magnificent way they’re received you’d think they were heavenly beings descended to earth!

[A messenger] made his way over discreetly to where the ladies were seated and apparently asked in a whisper why nothing was forthcoming. I was sitting four people away from Kohyoe, so even if I’d been able to come up with some response it would have been difficult to say it, and besides, how could you offer some merely average poem in reply to one by Sanekata, who was so famous for his poetic skills? Still, I thought, it’s no good being bashful and hesitant when it comes to poetic composition. Where does that ever get you? Though your poem might not be so very wonderful, the important thing is that it must be something you come out with on the spur of the moment.

‘Whenever there’s an occasion when people are composing, and Your Majesty instructs me to make a poem, my only impulse is to flee. Not that I don’t understand the rules of syllable count, or that I make winter poems in spring, or write about plum blossom or cherry blossom in autumn, or anything of that sort. But after all, I come from a line of people with a name for good poetry, so I’d like it to be said that my poems are a bit better than the average. When I compose something, I want people to say later, “This was a particularly impressive poem composed on that occasion - just what you’d expect, considering her forebears.” It’s an offence to my late father’s name, to fancy myself as a poet and put myself forward to make some plausible-sounding poem, when in fact what I write has nothing special to recommend it at all.’

I must say I’m ashamed for any woman who’s taken in by some man who is privately thinking, ‘How depressing! She’s not at all what I hoped she’d be. She’s full of irritating faults’, but when he’s with her will fawn and flatter and convince her to trust him. […] I must say, if ever I do come across a man who seems to feel for me at all, I immediately assume he’s actually quite shallow-hearted, so I have no need to expose myself to potential embarrassment.

I really do find it astonishing the way a man will fail to be in the slightest bit affected by the moving nature of a woman’s deep unhappiness, when he considers abandoning her. […] And then there’s the man who takes advantage of a lady at court who has no one to protect her interests, wins her over, and when she falls pregnant, repudiates the affair completely.

When I went out to meet him, he said admiringly, ‘I would have expected the person who received that to respond with some half-baked poem, but your reply was brilliant. A woman who fancies herself as a poet generally leaps at the chance to compose, but I much prefer someone who doesn’t behave like that. For the likes of me, a person who loves to reply with a poem comes across as actually having a much poorer sensibility than someone who doesn’t.’

[…] It’s very unseemly of me to boast like this, I know, but on the other hand I do think it’s an entertaining story.

I never intended this book to be seen by others, so I’ve written whatever came into my mind, without worrying about whether people would find it strange or unpleasant.

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.’

When I first went into court service, everything seemed to overwhelm me with confusion and embarrassment, and there were times when I could barely hold back my tears. I attended Her Majesty each night, behind her low standing curtain, and she would bring out pictures and so on to show me, but I was so hopelessly nervous that I could scarcely even stretch out a hand to take them. She described what was in each picture, asked what I thought was happening and generally tried to set me at ease with her talk. […] It was a fearfully cold time of year, and the glimpse of her hands emerging from the wonderful, glowing pale plum-pink sleeves filled me with deep awe. I remember gazing at them in astonishment, still fresh from home and new to all I saw, and thinking, ‘I never knew someone so marvellous could exist!’

I particularly despise people who express themselves poorly in writing. How horrible it is to read language that rides roughshod over manners and social conventions. It’s also very poor to be over-polite with people who should rightly be treated less formally. It’s bad enough to receive poorly written letters oneself, and just as disgraceful when they’re sent to others.

Generally speaking, even when you hear someone use language in this sort of slovenly way when talking face to face, you wince and wonder to yourself how they can say such things, and it’s even more appalling when it’s directed to someone eminent. Though when it’s some country bumpkin who’s speaking like this, it’s actually funny, and therefore quite appropriate to them.

One young man, who married into the household of a man at the height of his fame and fortune, was never very diligent in calling on his new wife, and ceased coming altogether after a mere month. He was roundly condemned on every front […] Then in the New Year he was made a Chamberlain. […] In the sixth month of that year, everyone gathered to attend the Lotus Discourses that a certain person was dedicating, and there was this son-in-law the Chamberlain, dazzlingly attired in damask skirted trousers, black hanpi jacket and so forth, seated so close to the carriage of his neglected wife that his jacket cord might well have snagged on the tailpiece of her carriage. All the people in the other carriages who knew the details of the situation were thinking, ‘Poor thing, how must she be feeling to see him there?’ […] It does seem that men don’t have much sympathy for others, or understanding of how they’re feeling.

‘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.