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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 describes “women without prospect” as leading “dull earnest lives” and enjoying “petty little pseudo-pleasures.” She finds such women “despicable” and believes that people of standing should allow their daughters to become exposed to society by serving in palace positions.
Sei is prejudiced against ordinary commoners, an opinion that will emerge repeatedly throughout the book. She generally believes that the only life worth knowing about is that of a courtier—possibly reflecting discontentment with her own provincial upbringing.
Themes
Sei makes a list of “dispiriting things,” including a dog howling in midday, a scholar who has lots of daughters, an inhospitable host, and an undelivered letter. Others include a man whose lover fails to visit him, a failed exorcism, and a man who’s failed to receive a court appointment, especially when all his former retainers have gathered at his home in anticipation of the happy news.
Most of Sei’s “dispiriting things” are self-explanatory, though the scholar’s daughters reflect the social structure of the time: girls were not trained to become scholars. Appointments were the chief ambition of most male courtiers, a source of much campaigning and currying of favor.
Themes
According to Sei, it’s also dispiriting when one sends another person a good poem and doesn’t receive anything in reply. This is especially the case when the recipient is a man for whom one has feelings. It’s also dispiriting to send someone a poem and receive a boring one in reply.
Failure to reciprocate with a poem of one’s own would signal rejection (especially in a romantic context). Even between friends, a mediocre poem would be received as something of a slight.
Themes
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It’s infuriating when an exorcist is summoned to conduct rites for someone who’s fallen sick, but the exorcist is so tired from his previous call that he becomes drowsy on the job. An ordinary person “who beams inanely as she prattles on” is also infuriating. Sei feels the same way about “great men” who behave like children while drinking saké, or a lover one has concealed who begins to snore.
Sei’s objections seem to focus on people who don’t behave in accordance with their roles—including the “ordinary person,” whom Sei would likely prefer to neither see nor hear. This suggests that in Japanese culture at this time (an particularly within court life), it was unacceptable for people to act outside of their prescribed social role.
Themes
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“Things that make your heart beat fast” include a sparrow with nestlings, seeing tiny children at play, looking into a slightly cloudy Chinese mirror, and putting on makeup and incense-scented clothes, even if no one special will see these things. Nostalgic things include children’s dolls, finding a touching old letter on a rainy day, and “last year’s summer fan.”
The things that “make [one’s] heart beat fast” evoke a special tenderness, or a sense of dreamlike anticipation. This speaks to the Japanese tradition of okashi, which encourages an enjoyment of everyday delights and snippets of beauty.
Themes
Sei’s list of “things that make you feel cheerful” include a well-done painting in the “female style,” a carriage overflowing with ladies on their way back from an expedition, a dice-matching game with lots of matches, being rid of a curse by a Yin-Yang master, and hearing a temple monk recite one’s prayer request beautifully at the altar.
The “female style” of painting refers to a softer, “Japanese” style of painting as distinguished from a bolder, “Chinese” form. Dealing with curses was normally a Shinto practice, but sometimes Chinese practitioners of Yin-Yang (a complex system of divination) would do this, too. At the same time, the temple monk would have been Buddhist, showing how various religious traditions intermingled in Japanese court life during the Heian period.
Themes
