The Pillow Book Themes

The Pillow Book is a diary composed by Sei Shōnagon, a young woman who served in the imperial court at Kyoto during Japan’s Heian period. Specifically, Sei was a gentlewoman in the service of the Empress Teishi, from roughly the year 993 until 1000 C.E. Sei herself was born in an outlying province where her father served as a governor. Once she moves into Empress Teishi’s household in early adulthood, however, the rural…

In Empress Teishi’s court, knowledge of classical poetry was neither an academic pursuit nor a frivolous pastime. Rather, courtier Sei Shōnagon’s diary entries in The Pillow Book suggest that poetry was woven into everyday conversations and was often a defining aspect of one’s social status and relationships. Courtiers like Sei would have avidly studied classic poetry collections like the Japanese anthology Kokinshu, and would have also been skilled in composing poems on…

Sei Shōnagon clearly enjoyed romantic adventures during her time in Empress Teishi’s court, and she doesn’t hesitate to disclose these in The Pillow Book. The book isn’t a chronological diary of Sei’s daily life, so it’s not possible to draw many conclusions about her love life overall. Nevertheless, the reader is able to get a general glimpse of relationships between men and women in Empress Teishi’s court. On one hand, there’s a playful…