The Pillow-Book of Sei Shōnagon (3 page)

Japan in the Tenth Century
W
HEN
the first volume of
The Tale of Genji
appeared in English, the prevailing comment of critics was that the book revealed a subtle and highly developed civilization, the very existence of which had hitherto remained un-suspected. It was guessed that so curious a state of society, with its rampant æstheticism and sophisticated unmorality, its dread of the explicit, the emphatic, must have behind it a protracted history of undisturbed development, or (as others put it) must be the climax of an age-long decadence.

And it is indeed true that the unique civilization portrayed in
The
Tale of Genji
and
The Pillow Book
of Sei Sh
ō
nagon corresponds to a unique record of isolation and tranquillity. The position of Japan, lying on the edge of the Oriental world, has been compared to that of England always in full communion with Europe, yet exempt from the worst perils of contiguity—in fact, ideally “semi-detached.”

But the comparison has little force. Japan is eight times farther from the mainland than we from France. One cannot swim across the Straits of Tsushima. Yet phase after phase of civilization—agriculture, tools, domestic animals at an age long before history, then later, the Chinese ideograms, Indian religion, Persian textiles—managed to filter across the Straits; while invasion, save for an occasional raid of pirates from China, not merely during those early years, but until the abortive Mongol descent in the thirteenth century, was almost unknown. In Europe and on the continent of Asia no single strip of land has ever enjoyed a like immunity. Across France, Hungary, Poland, Turkestan, how many armies marched during the long centuries of Japan’s absolute security! Thus arose a culture that, among other peculiarities, had that of not being cosmopolitan. Rome, Byzantium, Ctesiphon, even Ch’ang-an were international cities. In the streets of Ky
ō
to a stray Korean or Chinaman was, as specimens of the exotic, the best that could be hoped for. The world, to a Japanese of the tenth century, meant Japan and China. India was semi-mythical, and Persia uncertainly poised somewhere between China and Japan.

Thus, since the establishment of the capital at Heian
*
in 794, had grown up a highly specialized, intense and uniform civilization, dominated by one family, the Fujiwara; a state of society in which the stock of knowledge, the experience, the prejudices of all individuals were so similar that the grosser forms of communication seemed no longer necessary. A phrase, a clouded hint, an allusion half-expressed, a gesture imperceptible to common eyes, moved this courtly herd with a facility as magic as those silent messages that in the prairie ripple from beast to beast.

It was a purely æsthetic and, above all, a literary civilization. Never, among people of exquisite cultivation and lively intelligence, have purely intellectual pursuits played so small a part. What strikes us most is that the past was almost a blank; not least so the history of Japan, extending even in mythological theory only to the seventh century B.C. and remaining fabulous for fifteen hundred years.

It is indeed our intense curiosity about the past that most sharply distinguishes us from the ancient Japanese. Here every educated person is interested in some form or another of history. The busiest merchant is an authority upon snuff-boxes, Tudor London, or Chinese jade. The remotest country clergyman reads papers on eoliths; his daughters revive forgotten folk-dances. But to the Japanese of the tenth century, “old” meant fusty, uncouth, disagreeable. To be “worth looking at” a thing must be
imamekashi
, “now-ish,” up-to-date. By Sh
ō
nagon and Murasaki the great collection of early poetry (the
Many
ō
sh
ū
), on the rare occasions when they quote it, is always referred to in an apologetic way, as something that, despite its solid merits, will necessarily offend the modern eye. Nor did they feel that the future—with us an increasing preoccupation— in any way concerned them.

Their absorption in the present, the fact that with them “modern” was invariably a term of praise, differentiates them from us in a way that is immediately obvious. The other aspects of their intellectual passivity—the absence of mathematics, science, philosophy (even such amateur speculation as amused the Romans was entirely unknown)—may not seem at first sight to constitute an important difference. Scientists and philosophers, it is true, exist in modern Europe. But to most of us their pronouncements are as unintelligible as the incantations of a Lama; we are mere drones, slumbering amid the clatter of thoughts and contrivances that we do not understand and could still less ever have created. If the existence of contemporary research had no influence except upon those capable of understanding it, we should indeed be in much the same position as the people of Heian. But, strangely enough, something straggles through; ideas that we do not completely understand modify our perceptions and hence refashion our thoughts to such an extent that the society lady who said, “Einstein means so much to me” was expressing a profound truth.

It is, then, not only their complete absorption in the passing moment, but more generally the entire absence of intellectual background that makes the ancient Japanese so different from us, and gives even to the purely æsthetic sides of their culture a curious quality of patchiness. At any moment these men and women, to all appearances so infinitely urbane and sophisticated, may surprise us, even where matters of taste rather than intellect are concerned, by lapsing into a
niaiserie
far surpassing the silliness of our own Middle Ages. It is this insecurity which gives to the Heian period that oddly evasive and, as it were, two-dimensional quality, its figures and appurtenances seeming to us sometimes all to be cut out of thin, transparent paper.

Religious ceremonies were much in vogue, but were viewed chiefly from an æsthetic standpoint. The recitation of sacred texts was an art practiced by the laity as well as the clergy. An exacting standard of connoisseurship prevailed, and if Buddhist services were packed to overflowing, it was upon appraising the merits of the performers rather than upon his own spiritual improvement that a Heian worshipper was bent.

Mimes, pageants, processions filled the Court calendar. Those organized by the Church had a certain tinge of exotic solemnity; for until the tenth century, Indian Buddhism continued to send out fresh waves of influence, which now reached China (and hence Japan) less circuitously than in former days.

But it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that the real religion of Heian was the cult of calligraphy. Certainly writing was the form of conduct that was scrutinized most severely. We find beauty of penmanship not merely counting for almost as much as beauty of person, but spoken of rather as a virtue than as a talent, and the epithet “good,” when applied to an individual, frequently refers not to conduct but to handwriting. Often in Japanese romances it is with some chance view of the heroine’s writing that a love-affair begins; and if the hero happens to fall in love with a lady before he has seen her script, he awaits the first “traces of her hand” with the same anxiety as that which afflicted a Victorian gentleman before he had ascertained his fiancée’s religious views. It was as indispensable that a Japanese mistress should write beautifully as that Mrs. Gladstone should be sound about the episcopal succession.

Again, a considerable place in the lives of the ancient Japanese was given to arts the very existence of which the West has barely recognized. For example, the art of blending perfumes, regarded by us as a mere trade, ranked in ancient Japan as the equal of music and poetry.

These things, however, are only differences of emphasis. Calligraphy has perhaps nowhere else so nearly achieved the status of a religion; but it has been practiced as an art throughout the East, and was esteemed at certain moments even in Europe. So recently as the beginning of the present century, a small school, led by Dr. Bridges, gave it a considerable prominence in one part of England. And even the burning of perfumes, though on the whole neglected in this country, has always been practiced here and there, experimentally, in corners that some chance has screened from the censure of Nordic virility.

Again, the purely æsthetic approach to religion, which was the rule in Heian, has often been fostered in Europe by cliques of exceptional people. At first sight, indeed, Buddhism (with its rosaries, baptism, tonsured monks, and nuns; its Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell) appears to have many points of resemblance to Catholic Christianity. But I fancy, all the same, that the most fundamental difference between the Japanese (or, for that matter, any Far Eastern nation) and us is the fact, obvious indeed yet constantly overlooked, that they were not Christians.

The Buddhist is taught that the world of appearances, with all its imperfection, is coeval with Buddha (using the name in its metaphysical not its historical sense). He is, in fact, this world, and does not exist outside it. Impossible, then, to reproach him with its sorrow or iniquity. The Christian (or strictly, the adherent of any Semitic religion; for it holds good of the Moslem and Jew) alone has compassed the magnificent conception of a Being all-wise, all-powerful, the incarnation of Good. But the world (His creation) is patently evil. Is there then some mistake? Is this adored Being in reality powerless against evil, or ignorant, or cruel? These are the questions that in all ages have racked the Christian’s soul. Official solutions (which it was heresy to reject) failed to satisfy him; the conflict became an agony that has continually goaded Western man into what to the East have seemed gratuitous turmoils and achievements, making his thoughts a hard bed to lie on, waking him (as uneasy quarters drive a traveler on to the road at dawn) not only to fresh adventures but to the discovery of beauties that, wrapped in morning dreams, the East has ignored.

It has been suggested, as a dominating characteristic of the ancient Japanese, that they were without a sense of sin. It would, I maintain, be truer to say that they were not troubled by the Problem of Evil. But a sense of sin they certainly did not lack. Hell gaped at them perpetually; no delicately Japanicized variety, but a true Dantesque inferno, brutally depicted not only on monastery walls, but even amid the gay elegancies of the Palace. The period at which Sh
ō
nagon wrote her book corresponded with a time of general panic concerning the Life to Come. In 985 appeared Eshin S
ō
zu’s
Ō
i
ō
Y
ō
sh
ū
or “Texts Essential to Salvation,” with its ghoulish evangelism that culminated in the great democratic “revivals” of H
ō
nen Sh
ō
nin in the twelfth and Shinran in the thirteenth century.

And if Eshin’s mission marked the beginning of a new phase in Japanese religion, it was at the same time associated with the political counter-currents that ultimately destroyed the civilization of Heian.

Among Eshin’s aristocratic adherents the most important were drawn not from the dominant Fujiwara family but its rivals, the Taira and Minamoto.
*
One of his most influential followers was Taira no Koremochi, a lawless character, possibly the model for Murasaki’s Tay
ū
(the braggadocio suitor of Tamakatsura) in the third volume of
Genji
. Koremochi had a dispute with one of the Fujiwaras about a piece of land, and failing to win his case, waylaid and slaughtered his rival. The consequences of this murder, committed with complete impunity, were far-reaching. For centuries the Fujiwaras had been hedged round by a mysterious prestige. Fiefs, titles, offices of state—all seemed to belong to them by some inviolable decree, and each fresh claim met only with a superstitious acquiescence. But now it had been discovered, to everyone’s astonishment, that even a Fujiwara could crumple at the touch of steel, “roll over like an ox and vanish unavenged.” These events took place in the extreme north of the main Island. Here, and in all the border provinces the hold of the Fujiwaras was beginning to weaken. The great struggle began early in the twelfth century; but when it came it was a contest not between civilization and barbarism—for the effeminate and decadent society of Heian disappeared at the first breath of conflict—but between a long series of rival swashbucklers and dictators. And with the advent of a robust militarism the old attitude towards religion, half childish, half cynical, gave way on the one hand to the intense, peasant faith of H
ō
nen, and on the other to the passionate mysticism of the Noh plays. The life of the Heian Court in the tenth century is known to us chiefly through two documents,
The Tale of Genji
, a novel by Murasaki Shikibu, and
The
Pillow Book
by Sei Sh
ō
nagon. The first has, as a document, the disadvantage of being fiction. Murasaki shows us the world, particularly the male part of it, rather as she would like it to have been than as she actually found it. She dreamed of lovers who, though in every sense men, should yet retain the gentleness and grace of her girl friend Saish
ō
.
*
How different was the world she actually lived in we can see in her Diary, which fortunately is also preserved.

The Pillow Book
, on the other hand, is a plain record of fact, and being at least ten times as long as Murasaki’s
Diary
, and far more varied in contents, it is the most important document of the period that we possess.
†

Sei Sh
ō
nagon, the authoress of
The Pillow Book
, was born in 966 or 967, the daughter of Kiyohara no Motosuke. The Kiyohara clan was descended from Temmu, the fortieth Emperor of Japan. For many generations, Motosuke’s ancestors had held office as provincial governors, a respectable but undistinguished form of employment. Chiefly, however, they are known for their devotion to learning and literature. Prince Toneri, the founder of the family, was one of the compilers of the Nihongi, or “Chronicles of Japan;”
*
another ancestor, Natsuno,
†
who died in 837, was the author of an important work, the
Ry
ō
no gige
or “Commentary on the Penal Code,” while Sh
ō
nagon’s great-grandfather, Fukayabu, became the typical Court-poet of the early tenth century, and his thin elegant verse still figures in every anthology.