Book #500: The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon - A Bucket List Book Adventure Review

Book #500: The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon -  A Bucket List Book Adventure Review

By: a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures

A Rite of Fancy Bucket List Book Adventure

Book #500 on the Bucket List Book Adventure feels like a fitting milestone, not because of the number, but because of the distance of time and miles.

Let me tell you about The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon.

Despite the title, this is not a romantic chronicle of imperial intrigue during the height of the Fujiwara clan’s dominance in Heian Japan. It is not a sweeping epic, nor even a conventional memoir. It is a notebook.

Sei Shōnagon, daughter of the poet Kiyohara no Motosuke, served as a lady-in-waiting to Empress Teishi from 991 to 1000. What survives is a collection of observations, lists, anecdotes, irritations, seasonal notes, aesthetic judgments, and moments of delight. It reads less like a constructed narrative and more like the record of a brilliant mind refusing to waste an interesting thought (I appreciate that).

The edition I read was Arthur Waley's influential translation, which is notably abridged. Waley openly omitted large portions of the original text,  especially many of the famous “Things that…” lists, because he did not consider them of literary value. That editorial choice is revealing.

By the time Waley made it in 1928, Sei Shōnagon had been read in Japan for nearly a millennium. His translation reflects early twentieth-century Western assumptions about what counted as literature: polished narrative over fragmentary observation, cohesion over accumulation. In that sense, this edition offers insight into two cultures at once,  Heian Japan and modern Europe.

Even in its shortened form, the book is a remarkable window into a world shaped by literacy and aesthetics.

In the Heian court, the ability to compose poetry on demand was not decorative; it was social currency. Elegant handwriting mattered. Sensitivity to season mattered. The right metaphor at the right moment mattered. Literacy was expected among the aristocracy and religious classes, and both men and women were held to high intellectual standards. Compared with much of medieval Western Europe, where literacy was far more restricted, the scholarship within Japan's court culture feels astonishing.

And then there is beauty.

At first glance, Sei can sound merciless about poor taste or awkward behavior. But her devotion to beauty is not superficial. It is about effort. To bathe carefully, to perfume robes, to arrange flowers thoughtfully, to practice calligraphy,  these were moral acts. Attention itself was virtue. That is not shallow. That is discipline.

Sei Shōnagon is witty, occasionally caustic, and sharply observant. She delights in being noticed after adorning a carriage with flowers. She is frustrated with indiscreet lovers. She mocks pretension. At times, she would have been terrifying; I would not want a hair out of place in her presence,  but she is deeply human. Our modern technologies have simply given new form to an old human desire: to be seen.

And then there are the lists.

Though many were omitted in Waley’s edition, they are widely available online and reveal the true texture of her mind. For example, in her list of Rare Things, she includes:

A son-in-law praised by his wife’s father.

A pair of silver tweezers that can actually pull out hairs properly (I appreciate that, too).

To place social irony and domestic frustration side by side is pure clarity. It is a reminder that human absurdity and human insight have always shared the same page.

Across a thousand years, across continents and languages, very little about human nature has changed. We still crave beauty. We still measure effort. We still roll our eyes at foolishness. We still long to be seen. And that, I think, is why we read.

We read to grow. We read to learn. But we also read to discover that the distance between ourselves and the past is not nearly as wide as we imagine. A woman sitting in a palace in the year 1000, quietly noting which tweezers actually work and which people embarrass themselves in public, is not so different from us. Time changes clothing, technology, and etiquette. It does not change longing.

For Book #500, that feels like the right lesson: we are not nearly as isolated in our moment as we sometimes believe. Someone has felt this before. Someone has rolled her eyes before. Someone has delighted in moonlight and good paper before.

And if she took the time to write it down, perhaps we should take the time to notice it.

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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life

She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.

You can also browse her online photography gallery at shop.takethebackroads.com.

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