The Pillow-Book of Sei Shōnagon (5 page)

The following passage also seems to belong to about the year 986: On that day too (the seventh of the first month) I loved being taken to see the White Horses.
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We girls living at home used to drive offto the Palace in a coach marvellously furbished. When we came to the ground-bar of the Middle Gate, there was always a terrible bump. Heads knocked together, combs fell out, and, if one did not instantly rescue them, got trampled upon and smashed to pieces. Near the guardroom were a lot of officers, who used to take bows from soldiers in the procession and twang them, to make the White Horses prance. Th is we found very entertaining. In the distance, through one of the gates of the Inner Palace, we could see shutters, behind which figures were moving to and fro, ladies perhaps of the Lamp or Wardrobe. How marvellous they seemed to us—these people who walked about the Palace as though it belonged to them!

So close did the procession pass that one could study the very texture of the soldiers’ faces. I remember one who had put on his powder unevenly, so that here and there his dark skin showed through, looking like those black patches in the garden, when the snow has begun to melt. An absurd sight. But when the horses reared and plunged wildly about I was frightened, and shrinking back into our coach saw nothing more of the show.

Here is an after-breakfast scene in the Palace, dating from the spring of 994: Presently we heard those who had been handing the Imperial Dishes tell the serving-men they might clear, and a moment later His Majesty reappeared. He asked me to mix some ink . . . and presently folded a white poem-slip, saying to us gentlewomen: “Write me a few scraps of old poetry—anything that comes into your head.” I asked my lord Korechika what he advised me to choose. “Don’t ask me,” he said. “Write something quickly and hand it in. This is entirely your affair. We men are not intended to help you.” And he put the inkstand by me, adding: “Don’t stop to think! The
Naniwazu
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or anything else you happen to know. . . .” Really there was nothing to be afraid of; but for some reason I felt terribly confused, and the blood rushed to my face. Two or three of the upper ladies tried their hands, one with a spring song, another with a poem on this or that flower. Then it came to me, and I wrote out the poem: “The years go by; age and its evils crowd upon me, but be this as it may, while flowers are here to see, I cannot grieve.” But instead of “flowers” I wrote “my Lord.” “I did this out of curiosity,” said the Emperor, while he was looking at what I had written. “It is so interesting to see what is going on in people’s heads.” A conversation followed, in the course of which he said: “I remember my father, the late Emperor Eny
ū
, once
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saying to his gentlemen-in-attendance: ‘Here is a book. Each of you shall write a poem in it.’ Several of them found great difficulty in getting started. ‘Don’t bother about your handwriting,’ my father said, ‘nor, for that matter, whether your poems are suitable to the season. It’s all one to me.’ Thus encouraged (but still making rather a burden of it) they set to work. One of them was the present Prime Minister! He was only a captain of the Third Rank then. When it came to his turn he wrote the old poem: ‘Like the tide that rises on the shore of Izumo, deeper and deeper grows my love for you; yes, mine.’ But he altered ‘love for you’ to ‘devotion to my Sovereign,’ which pleased my father very much.”

Sh
ō
nagon then tells us of the Emperor’s astonishment that people should be able to read such vast quantities of poetry. Twenty chapters (the length of the
Kokinsh
ū
, the first official anthology) was far too much. “I am sure for my part,” said the Emperor, “I shall never succeed in getting beyond Chapter 2.” Another extract: From the beginning of the fifth month,
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it had been dark, rainy weather all the time. I became so bored that at last I suggested we had better go out and see if we couldn’t somewhere hear the cuckoo singing. This idea was very well received, and one of the girls suggested we should try that bridge behind the Kamo Shrine (it isn’t called Magpie Bridge, but something rather like it). She said that there was a cuckoo there every day. Someone else said it was not a cuckoo at all, but a cricket. However, on the morning of the fifth day, offwe went. When we ordered the carriage, the men said they didn’t suppose that in such weather as this anyone would mind if we were picked up outside our own quarters and taken out by the Northern Gate.
†
There was only room for four. Some of the other ladies asked whether we should mind their getting another carriage and coming too. But the Empress said “No,” and though they were very much disappointed we drove off rather hard-heartedly without attempting to console them or indeed worrying about them at all. Something seemed to be happening at the riding-ground, where there was a great press of people. When we asked what was going on, we were told that the competitions were being held, and that the archers were just going to shoot on horseback. It was said, too, that the Officers of the Bodyguard of the Left were there; but all we could see, when we had pulled up, was a few gentlemen of the Sixth Rank wandering vaguely about. “Oh, do let us get on,” someone said; “there’s no one of any interest here.” So we drove on towards Kamo, the familiar road making us feel quite as though we were on our way to the Festival.
*
Presently we came to my lord Akinobu’s
†
house, and someone suggested we should get out and have a look at it. Everything was very simple and countrified—pictures of horses on the panels, screens of wattled bamboo, curtains of plaited grass—all in a style that seemed to be intentionally behind the times. The house itself was a poor affair and very cramped, but quite pretty in its way. As for cuckoos, we were nearly deafened! It is really a great pity her Majesty never hears them. And when we thought of the ladies who had wanted so badly to come with us, we felt quite guilty. “It’s always interesting to see things done on the spot,” said Akinobu, and sending for some stuffwhich I suppose was husked rice, he made some girls—very clean and respectable—along with others who seemed to come from neighboring farms, show us how the rice was thrashed. Five or six of them did this, and then the grain was put into a sort of machine that went round, two girls turning it and at the same time singing so strange a song that we could not help laughing, and had soon forgotten all about the cuckoos. Then refreshments were brought on a queer old tray-stand such as one sees in Chinese pictures. As no one seemed much interested in its contents, our host said: “This is rough, country fare. If you don’t like it, the only thing to do in a place like this is to go on bothering your host or his servants till you get something you can eat. We don’t expect you people from the Capital to be shy. These fernshoots, now. I gathered them with my own hand.” “You don’t want us to arrange ourselves round the tray-stand like a lot of maid-servants sitting down to their supper?” I protested.

“Hand the things round,” he said . . . and while this was going on, in the midst of the clatter, one of the men came in and said that it was going to rain, and we hurried back to our carriage. I wanted to make my cuckoo-poem before we started; but the others said I could do it in the carriage. Before going we picked a huge branch of white-flower and decorated our carriage with it, great trails of blossom hanging over the windows and sides, till one would have thought a huge canopy of white brocade had been flung across the roof of the coach. Our grooms, throwing themselves into the thing, began with shouts of laughter squeezing fresh boughs of blossom into every cranny that would hold them. We longed to be seen by someone on our way back, but not a soul did we meet, save one or two wretched priests or other such uninteresting people. When we were nearly home we made up our minds it would be too dull to finish the day without anyone having seen us in our splendor, so we stopped at the palace in the First Ward and asked for the Captain,
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saying we were just back from hearing the cuckoo. We were told he had been off-duty for some time and had got into easy clothes; but was now being helped into his Court trousers. Wouldn’t we wait? We said we couldn’t do that, and were driving on to the Eastern Gate, when he suddenly appeared running after us down the road. He had certainly changed in a marvellously short space of time, but was still buckling his belt as he ran. Behind him, barefooted in their haste, panted several dressers and grooms. We called to the coachman to drive on and had already reached the gate when, hopelessly out of breath, he staggered up to us. It was only then that he saw how we were decorated. “This is a fairy chariot,” he laughed. “I do not believe there are real people in it. If there are, let them get down and show themselves.”

“But, Sh
ō
nagon, what poems did you make today? That’s what I should like to hear.” “We’re keeping them for her Majesty,” I replied. Just then it once more began to rain in earnest. “I have always wondered,” he said, “why when all the other gates have arches, this Eastern gate should have none. Today, for example, one badly needs it.” “What am I to do now?” he asked presently. “I was so determined to catch you up that I rushed out without thinking what was to become of me afterwards.” “Don’t be so ridiculous,” I said. “You can come with us to the Palace.” “In an
eboshi
?”
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he asked. “What can you be thinking of?” “Send someone to fetch your hat,” I suggested. But it was now raining badly and our men, who had no raincoats with them, were pulling in the carriage as quickly as they could.
†
One of his men presently arrived from his palace with an umbrella, and under its shelter he now, with a slow reluctance that contrasted oddly with his previous haste, made his way home, continually stopping to look back at us over his shoulder. With his umbrella in one hand and a bunch of white-flower in the other, he was an amusing sight.

When we were back in the Palace, her Majesty asked for an account of our adventures. The girls who had been left behind were at first inclined to be rather sulky; but when we described how the Captain had run after us down the Great Highway of the First Ward, they could not help laughing. Presently the Empress asked about our poems, and we were obliged to explain that we had not made any. “That is very unfortunate,” she said. “Some of the gentlemen at Court are bound to hear of your excursion, and they will certainly expect something to have come of it. I can quite understand that on the spot it was not very easy to write anything. When people make too solemn an affair of such things, one is apt suddenly to feel completely uninterested. But it is not too late. Write something now. You’re good for that much, surely.” This was all true enough; but it turned out to be a painful business. We were still trying to produce something when a messenger arrived, with a note from the Captain. It was written on thin paper stamped with the white-flower pattern, and was attached to the spray that he had taken from our carriage. His poem said: “Would that of this journey I had heard. So had my heart been with you when you sought the cuckoo’s song.” Fearing that we were keeping the messenger waiting, her Majesty sent round her own writing-case to our room, with paper slipped into the lid. “You write something, Saish
ō
,” I said. But Saish
ō
was determined that I should write, and while we argued about it the sky suddenly grew dark, rain began to pour, and there were such deafening peals of thunder, that we forgot all about our poem, and frightened out of our wits ran wildly from place to place, closing shutters and doors. The storm lasted a long time, and when at last the thunder became less frequent, it was already dark. We were just saying we really must get on with our answer, when crowds of visitors began to arrive, all anxious to talk about the storm, and we were obliged to go out and look after them. One of the courtiers said that a poem only needs an answer when it is addressed to someone in particular, and we decided to do no more about it. I said to the Empress that poetry seemed to have a bad
karma
today, and added that the best thing we could do was to keep as quiet as possible about our excursion. “I still don’t see why some of you who went should not be able to produce a few poems,” she replied, pretending to be cross. “It isn’t that you can’t; of that I am sure. You have made up your minds not to.” “The time has passed,” I said. “One must do those things when one is in the right mood.” “Right mood? What nonsense!” she exclaimed indignantly. But all the same, she did not worry me any more about it.

Two days afterwards Saish
ō
was talking about our excursion, and mentioned the fernshoots that Akinobu had “plucked with his own hand.” The Empress was amused that Saish
ō
seemed to have retained a much clearer memory of the refreshments than of anything else that happened during the expedition, and picking up a stray piece of paper she wrote: “The memory of a salad lingers in her head,” and bade me make a beginning for the poem. I wrote: “More than the cuckoo’s song that she went out to hear.” “Well, Sh
ō
nagon,” she said, laughing, “how you of all people can have the face to mention cuckoos, I cannot imagine.’ I felt very crestfallen, but answered boldly: ‘I don’t see anything to be ashamed of. I have made up my mind only to make poems when I feel inclined to. If, whenever there is a question of poetry, you turn upon me and ask me to compose, I shall stay in your service no longer. When I am called upon like that, I can’t even count the syllables, still less think whether I am writing a winter song in spring, or a spring song in autumn. ... I know there have been a lot of poets in my family; and it would certainly be very nice if, after one of these occasions, people said: ‘Of course, hers was much the best; but that is not surprising, considering what her father was.’ As it is, not having the slightest degree of special talent in that direction, I object strongly to being perpetually thrust forward and made to behave as though I thought myself a genius. I feel I am disgracing my father’s memory!” I said this quite seriously; but the Empress laughed. However, she said I might do as I pleased, and promised that for her part she would never call upon me again. I felt immensely relieved.