The Pillow-Book of Sei Shōnagon (2 page)

The Pillow Book
was a product of her court years. The title refers to a custom common among courtiers of keeping notes or a diary in a wooden pillow with a drawer. It is likely that she brought some material with her when she came to the court, most likely items related to poetic composition— “secret” teachings, mainly consisting of lists of poetic vocabulary handed down from the distinguished line of poets in her family—though the bulk of the material deals with her life at court and her reactions to her social surroundings. The work was kept private until 996 when the manuscript was taken from her and began to circulate at the court. As a result many of the sections were written with an audience in mind, though the order of composition was not strictly chronological.

The structure and content of
The Pillow Book
is likely to strike most contemporary readers as unusual, even perplexing, and its jumbled order and mixed styles and formats run counter to modern literary expectations. It must be emphasized that the question of how to present the work formally was a legitimate concern for Waley.
The Pillow Book
is an early example of an extremely important genre in Japanese, the miscellany, or
zuihitsu
(literally, “following one’s brush”)—a form of jotting or literary wandering.
Zuihitsu
gives the writer considerable freedom to use a variety of forms and touch on a wide range of subjects. It is fair to say that
The Pillow Book
is the progenitor of this genre in Japan, but it did not spring into existence
ex nihilo
. Instead it is a synthesis of various elements within the traditions of prose and poetic composition that Sh
ō
nagon inherited. Like her contemporary, Murasaki Shikibu, Sh
ō
nagon’s genius lay not in her ability to create original forms per se, or to radically reshape literary values, but in her command of established practices and in her confident aesthetic judgments. The result was not so much a “new” type of work, but one that is
sui generis
, at its best creating a fresh, vivid, and immediate narrative voice.

The unusual structure of
The Pillow Book
derives from a number of factors that shaped Sh
ō
nagon’s conception of her writing. Over the course of the tenth century prose literature in Japan grew increasingly sophisticated as a medium capable of expressing a wide range of personal emotions and abstract ideas—indeed the difference in sophistication between prose literature in Japan and that in Europe during this period is striking. The increasing complexity of prose forms was in large part an extension of poetic practices. To take one example, the impact of poetry on prose forms is apparent in those sections of
Tales of Ise
where verses by the influential ninth-century poet Ariwara no Narihira are introduced and contextualized by short, disjointed prose accounts of his exploits as a lover (an editorial technique not at all dissimilar to what Waley uses in his version of
The Pillow Book
). The prose elements of
Tales of Ise
, many of which are quite short and expository in nature, are secondary, or derivative in that their function is in a sense to translate the poems for the reader and give them clarity or deeper significance. Indeed, the impetus for writing in prose in this case stems in large part from the social nature of classical Japanese poetry, which was always composed with some context in mind—a pre-determined topic, an official occasion, a personal exchange—that made possible a poem’s emotional or intellectual effects.

The demand for contextualization blurred the formal boundaries between prose and poetry in Heian literature, but that did not mean there was no conception of genre. Indeed, as sections of
The Pillow Book
itself make clear, distinctions between aesthetic values and forms clearly reveal awareness that literature, and culture more broadly, developed over time; and it is this awareness of change that belies Waley’s assertion that Heian culture lacked a strong historical consciousness. As the prefaces to
Kojiki
(
Chronicles of Ancient Matters
, one of the earliest histories written in Japanese, compiled 712) and to
Kokinwakash
ū
(
Collection of Ancient and New Poems
, the first imperially sponsored anthology of poetry, c. 905) make clear, it was recognized early and often that Japanese literature had a history of its own. It wasn’t until the tenth century, however, that the consciousness that literary practices change over time began to have a major impact on the development of prose forms. Again, to point to a single example, the core element of
The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter
is a folktale—the story of Kaguyahime, the princess from the moon who is reborn on earth in a stalk of bamboo. That core story is expanded with a quest narrative, as five courtly noblemen who wish to take Kaguyahime as a bride attempt to perform impossible tasks to win her. This expanded narrative is a conscious fusion of older forms of tale literature, and the relatively simpler values those forms represent, with contemporary court customs and values. Such a synthesis allows the narrator to satirically judge the actions and foibles of the characters, and the presence of an ironic, historical consciousness allows
The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter
to transcend the limits of it source works and provides evidence for how a heightened historical awareness of the tradition impacted narrative structure and rhetoric.

By the last quarter of the tenth century, the growing sophistication of writing in prose reached another important stage, because many works began to explicitly wrestle with the question of the trustworthiness of narratives, of how faithfully words could depict the world. By the time Sh
ō
nagon wrote
The Pillow Book
, it had become almost conventional to point out the inherently contrived nature of prose literature— as if by doing so an author gained credibility and authority. Waley stresses the sheer factuality of
The Pillow Book
as one of its most valuable features (he seems to denigrate
The Tale of Genji
on this score since it is a work of fiction). Nowhere is this concern with truthfulness more apparent than in the emergence of the diary (
nikki
) as a dominant form of writing. For example, the
Kager
ō
nikki
, by the Mother of Michitsuna, had an enormous impact on Sh
ō
nagon’s generation of writers. The narrative voice of the diary is almost obsessively concerned with how her life will be perceived, and so she wishes to displace what she sees as the fabrications of earlier romances—stories that are distasteful to her precisely because they are fictional—with an account of her life that justifies her actions and expresses all that is real to her, including the mental suffering caused by her unhappy marriage. Similarly, the
Izumi Shikibu nikki
is a diary marked by a tension between the formal, conventional demands of prose narratives and the desire for truthfulness. In this case, however, the author strives to make the account of her real-life love affair conform to the idealized literary expectations created by the structure of romance narratives as told in poetic anthologies. In both these examples, what makes the handling of plot and character seem so compelling is that the authors do not take the truthfulness of words simply at face value, but assume that the sense of immediacy or reality that prose literature can create is the product of a heightened literary sensibility.

The close relationship between poetry and prose, the critical awareness of how historical and cultural differences are reflected in genres and formal conventions, and the emphasis placed on trustworthiness and affective realism are a few examples of literary practices and concepts that reveal the sophistication of the tradition that Sh
ō
nagon was drawing upon. Her use of these disparate practices and ideas are reflected in the
zuihitsu
model she constructs. We are given examples of diary literature in those passages that chronicle the events of the court calendar, the ceremonies and celebrations specific to Teishi’s court, and the vignettes that provide brilliantly drawn glimpses into the manners and foibles of the aristocracy. These are unquestionably among her most memorable sustained pieces, and it is understandable that Waley is especially drawn to this kind of material. However, Sh
ō
nagon also creates a vivid narrative voice in essays that present her views on many different topics dealing with proper etiquette, literary taste, or the ideal courtier. Her essays are powerfully prescriptive and reveal a classical, conservative mind behind the self-confident arbiter of courtly tastes.

Perhaps the most distinctive form of writing in
The Pillow Book
is the list or catalog of items, people, languages, customs or behaviors that exemplify a particular mood or value. These lists, which also include simple enumerations of the names of rivers or mountains (lists that seem at a cursory glance to be rather cryptic and of little value), may well have been the oldest materials, serving as cues or source works to aid poetic composition, a skill that Empress Teishi would have had to use on an almost daily basis. Such lists had a long history, and many courtiers, men and women, kept notes on poetry, ceremony, manners and customs not merely for the love of aesthetics, but because the political culture demanded such knowledge as a practical aspect of court life. Court intrigues and rivalries may have been expressed in part through art, music and literature, but the aestheticism of aristocratic culture was grounded in ruthless political and economic calculations.

By taking a broader view of the historical context of composition—both the political economy of the court and the tradition of literary practices that Sei Sh
ō
nagon was able to draw upon to create her art—the unusual forms and seemingly aleatory structure of
The Pillow Book
makes sense and should be engaged and enjoyed on its own terms. Of course the work is most celebrated in Japan for its great stylistic beauty; and since it is a miscellany, it is meant to be read in bits and pieces. On that basis, Waley was justified in taking the approach he did; he produced a work that is true to the original by treating it as a miscellany, and by capturing the beauty of its prose and the vitality of the narrative voice in English. Still, by not translating the entire work he distorts the view of tenth-century Japan as a culture wholly aesthetic and absorbed in the present. He claims, rightly, that works like
The Pillow Book
provide an insight into the values and customs of a society distant in time and place, but by not engaging Sei Sh
ō
nagon on
her
terms, by selecting what he likes, or what he thinks his readers will like, his translation is self-reflective, telling us as much about his aesthetics as it does about Sh
ō
nagon’s.

Waley’s approach to translating was guided by tastes shaped for the most part by European literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and thus he read
The Pillow Book
as the product of a society interested in aesthetic rather than intellectual pursuits. Waley worked for the most part in isolation from Japanese scholars and writers, but the lack of direct connection with modern Japan did not seem to bother him much. Perhaps this was an outgrowth of his view that translation, in narrowly artistic terms, was a means for self-expression. After all, his fascination with Heian culture was of a piece with the
Japonisme
that had such a profound effect on European art during his lifetime. It was a kind of exoticism that further emphasized the universalized aesthetic superiority of the West over the particularized local cultures of the East. For readers of his generation the distortion produced by this particular emphasis was not an especially urgent problem. The notion that a translation could actually improve on the original was not uncommon, if the reception of the work of other important translators during the period is any indication. Assuming that the literary value of a translation may be judged on its own merits apart from the original, it follows that a translation may potentially be the superior work of art.

The reputation of Waley as a translator remains high, but now the praise is more often qualified. His version of
The Pillow Book
may be criticized for being anachronistic, for playing too fast and loose with the original, for displaying a cavalier attitude toward historical accuracy; and it has long since been displaced as the standard English-language version by full-length translations by Ivan Morris and Meredith McKinney, both of which are sensitive, careful renderings. Yet despite the criticisms that may be made of his work, despite his limitations and flaws, Waley continues to be revered and his work still read, and deservedly so – not simply because of his historical importance or because he challenges the reader to think seriously about translation as an art form in and of itself, but because the beauty of his prose captures the artistic spirit of a brilliant and fascinating woman of Heian Japan.

Dennis Washburn
Dartmouth College

Translator’s Notes
I
have here translated about a quarter of the
Pillow Book
.
*
Omissions have been made only where the original was dull, unintelligible, repetitive, or so packed with allusion that it required an impracticable amount of commentary.

Short extracts from the
Pillow Book
will be found in Aston’s
Japanese Literature
(1899), Florenz’s
Geschichte der Jap. Litteratur
(1906), and
Revon’s Anthologie de la Littérature Japonaise
(1910). Save for a line or two here and there, and two anecdotes (pp. 67 and 93), parts of which are translated by Aston and Revon, I have avoided what has been translated before, not on principle, but because it seemed to me that, on the whole, the least interesting passages had been chosen.
†

The text I have used is that of the
Makura no S
ō
shi Hy
ō
shaku
(first published, 1924; 2nd edition in one volume, 1926), by Kaneko Moto-omi, to whose commentary I am greatly indebted. The proofs have been read by Miss Sybil Pye and Mr. Tadao Doi, to both of whom I am very grateful.

Footnotes

*
Makura no S
ō
shi, this being a name given at the time to notebooks in which stray impressions were recorded.

†
Since this was written there has appeared
Les Notes de l’Oreiller
, by K. Matsuo and Steinilber-Oberlin, containing extracts which amount, like mine, to about a quarter of the original. My selection was, however, made from a very different point of view and coincides with theirs only to the extent of a few pages. The two books are therefore complementary.