The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon: The Diary of a Courtesan in Tenth Century Japan Read online

  The PILLOW BOOK of Sei Shōnagon

  The

  PILLOW BOOK

  of Sei Shōnagon

  THE DIARY OF A COURTESAN IN TENTH CENTURY JAPAN

  Translated by ARTHUR WALEY

  With a foreword by DENNIS WASHBURN

  TUTTLE Publishing

  Tokyo | Rutland, Vermont | Singapore

  To Hazel Crompton

  Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.

  www.tuttlepublishing.com

  Copyright © 2011 Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.

  Credit Images used with the permission of The Clark Center for Japanese Art & Culture

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Sei Shonagon, b. ca. 967.

  [Makura no soshi. English]

  The pillow book of Sei Shonagon: The Diary of a Courtesan in Tenth Century Japan / translated by Arthur Waley; with a foreword by Dennis Washburn.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-1-4629-0088-6

  1. Sei Shonagon, b. ca. 967. 2. Courtesans--Japan--Biography. 3. Japan--Court and courtiers--Biography. 4. Japan--Court and courtiers--History. 5. Japan--Social life and customs--794-1185. 6. Japan--History--Heian period, 794-1185. I. Waley, Arthur. II. Title.

  PL788.6.M3E56 2011

  895.6’8103--dc22

  [B]

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2010026057

  ISBN 978-1-4629-0088-6

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  Foreword

  Arthur Waley’s translation of Sei Shōnagon’s The Pillow Book (Makura no sōshi), which was first published in 1928, may strike contemporary readers as something of a literary curiosity. Waley informs us at the very beginning of his work that he has translated only about one-quarter of the original, omitting “only” those portions (i.e. a full three-quarters of the text) he found dull, unintelligible and repetitive, or that required too much explanation. Moreover, he does not provide a straightforward, stand-alone translation, but instead offers a mix of translated passages and commentary that contextualizes and explains the original text. These extraordinary decisions not only imply a rather severe critical judgment of the literary value of Sei Shōnagon’s work, but also suggests in a somewhat backhanded manner that his English-speaking readership had neither the patience nor the imagination to deal with the original in its entirety.

  At first glance Waley’s approach seems to fly in the face of one of the most fundamental assumptions about translation, which is that it must somehow stay true to the original and preserve its integrity. To make radical cuts on the basis of practical considerations of length or intelligibility is an understandable though debatable proposition, but to select which passages to translate on the basis of subjective criteria (e.g. what makes one section dull and another interesting) is simply arbitrary. However, by the same token, to criticize Waley solely on the basis of the notion that the translator must preserve the integrity of a text, that he should essentially disappear from view so that the reader can engage the original without mediation, is also very much a debatable proposition, since determining what it means to stay true to an original almost always depends upon subjective criteria. In producing his version of The Pillow Book, Waley was certainly as much an editor as a translator, and as such his work challenges widely accepted notions of the role of the translator. In order to judge his work fairly, to account for its strengths and weaknesses, we need to consider the validity of the reasons behind his choices.

  In 1928, Waley undertook his translation of The Pillow Book during a remarkably productive period of his life. He had begun his studies of Chinese and Japanese in 1913 after taking a position cataloguing the British Museum’s Oriental Prints and Manuscripts collection, and he started his career as a translator a few years later with a focus on Chinese poetry— a project that led to a brief professional association with Ezra Pound. Following on from his work with Chinese literature, he spent over a decade translating Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji, eventually publishing his version in six volumes between 1921 and 1933. The acclaim he received secured his reputation as both a writer and a scholar, and established him as a seminal figure in the history of Japanese cultural studies in the West.

  Given the demands placed on him by his other projects, Waley’s decision at that time to turn his attention to The Pillow Book seems extraordinarily ambitious. He certainly had personal reasons to undertake the project, since his success helped create a readership for translations from Asian literatures. There was, however, a compelling historical justification for the project as well. Shōnagon’s work has been considered canonical in Japan for a millennium, and it is usually placed alongside Murasaki’s masterpiece as one of the most of important achievements of the aristocratic culture of the Heian court. Taking that shared history into account, the value and appeal of translating The Pillow Book simultaneously with The Tale of Genji is apparent.

  Comparisons between these works are sometimes a bit forced, since they are in fact quite different in form and conception. However, there was a long history in Japan of linking the works less on the basis of literary considerations than on the perception of a personal rivalry between the two authors—a rivalry occasionally expressed as a contrast between personalities, with Shōnagon being (supposedly) bright, perky, and audacious and Murasaki being dour, melancholy, and profound. While there is some textual basis for claiming this difference in temperament, any conclusions about the personal lives of these women remain speculative. What is not speculative is that they both employed their literary talents in the service of empresses who in fact were political rivals; and while Shōnagon and Murasaki may not have been in direct competition (though it is clear from Murasaki’s diary that they were aware of one another) their literary works were produced in a cultural milieu that privileged highly refined aesthetic sensibilities. In that respect their writings were shaped by and provide vivid insight into the values that governed taste and behavior in aristocratic society.

  Waley makes it clear in his introductory essay that he believed the most important connection betw
een The Pillow Book and The Tale of Genji was this shared aestheticism, and he makes a number of sweeping generalizations about Japanese court culture to support his claim. He argued that it was a culture that lacked any true historical awareness, that courtiers were so absorbed in the present that the term “modern” always denoted a positive value. As a result, he sees in mid-Heian court culture a kind of intellectual passivity and an obsession with proper form and ritual that led the aristocracy to place great emphasis on aesthetic pursuits.

  The reader is likely to find in both The Pillow Book and The Tale of Genji much to justify Waley’s description of Japan in the tenth century. Artistic pursuits and the constant round of rituals, festivals and ceremonies set by the court calendar do seem to dominate the life of the nobility. Nonetheless, just as Waley argues that Murasaki’s fictional account of court life presented a view of the world as she wanted it to be, his account of tenth-century Japan has its own whiffof idealism. His emphasis on aestheticism as the dominant characteristic of the court reflects assumptions about art and literature that were invisible to him because of the age in which he lived and worked. The simple fact that he translated The Pillow Book as he did suggests that he shared, or at least was never bothered enough to question, his generation’s confidence in its cultural superiority and the universality of its standards of aesthetic tastes. He was apparently untroubled by the omissions in his translation, for in his view there was no point trying to read the original purely on its own terms.

  The elite world Waley inhabited was not simply one of rarefied scholarship. His literary connections, especially with the Bloomsbury Group, put him in contact with a circle of writers who were on the cutting edge of literary Modernism. These interactions undoubtedly reinforced his already strong propensity to privilege a belief in the priority of genius and the individual talent in the creation of art. However, in occupying these two worlds Waley had to reconcile the perceived divide between the work of the scholar and that of the poet in order to treat translation as a form of art that attempts not only to capture the parochial qualities of the original that make it worthy of translation, but also to conform to broad contemporary literary standards. There is no question that he succeeded in many respects in producing works of considerable aesthetic appeal, but in terms of engaging the parochial qualities of a work like The Pillow Book, his achievement is much more uneven. It may seem paradoxical, but to give Waley the credit he is due we have to acknowledge the limitations and flaws created by assumptions that flowed from a narrow view of mid-Heian court society. Thus, it is important to briefly reconsider the historical context of the composition of The Pillow Book and some of the key literary practices of the period it exemplifies.

  As Waley notes in his introduction, Sei Shōnagon was most likely born in the year 966. She was the daughter of Motosuke no Kiyohara, who worked as a provincial official, but became famous as a poet and scholar. Her family line can be traced back to the late seventh century, and it included many notable literary figures. We do not know her given name – like many other women authors from this period, we know her only by the name associated with her writings. Sei () is the Chinese-based pronunciation of the element kiyo in her family name (). Shōnagon () is a government post (Lesser Counselor), and it was common for women who served at the palace or in the households of the nobility to take their name from an official title held by a male relative (usually the father, but not always). The scant archival record makes it difficult to say anything definitive about her personal life, and like many women writers of this period Shōnagon’s identity is partially hidden behind the anonymity of her literary name.

  Motosuke seems to have desired a career at court for his daughter, partly as a means of promoting his family’s position, and so she was married to Tachibana Norimitsu when she was sixteen. She gave birth to a son and her husband’s career made a promising start, but he suffered a series of reversals and their marriage was on the point of annulment when Motosuke died in 990. In 993 she received her husband’s permission to separate in order to go into the service of Empress Teishi (Sadako), the oldest daughter of Fujiwara no Michitaka, who at that time held the powerful post of Kanpaku (Chancellor).

  Shōnagon went into service at the palace for two main reasons. First, the separation from Norimitsu and the death of her father left her in a precarious social position. Serving in the salon of Empress Teishi thus provided some degree of financial security. Second, Michitaka was eager to spruce up the image of his daughter’s court. The system of “marriage politics” that the Fujiwara clan had practiced for more than a century as a way to gain control of the imperial household depended on Fujiwara daughters producing imperial princes who would be in the line of succession. Proximity to the Emperor was vital, and the rivalry among the consorts and concubines who made up what was in effect a harem was fueled by both sexual and political desires. The higher-ranking consorts established salons in their living quarters, and they strove to make them fascinating and enticing sites of culture where music, painting, incense, poetry and other arts would serve to attract the interest of the emperor. A woman like Shōnagon, who came from a long line of distinguished poets and scholars and who thus could be counted on to create a sophisticated, elegant atmosphere on both formal and informal occasions, was a valuable commodity to Michitaka.

  Shōnagon became a central figure in Teishi’s salon, but unfortunately the young empress was star-crossed. Michitaka died in 995 and his rival, Fujiwara no Michinaga, became Kanpaku. Teishi’s brother Korechika was caught up in court intrigue and exiled in 997, at which point she withdrew from the palace. She failed to give Emperor Ichijō a male heir, and so in 999 Michinaga’s young daughter Shōshi (Akiko) entered the palace as a consort (and later empress) to Ichijō (Murasaki Shikibu entered service in Shōshi’s salon several years later, in 1006). Teishi died in 1000, at the age of 24, giving birth to another girl, and Shōnagon, who had become a close confidant to the empress, evidently left the court that year. It is reported that she married Fujiwara Muneyo and may have had a daughter with him, but little about her is known after she leaves the court, though it may be that she put together the manuscript of The Pillow Book during the first decade of the eleventh century. The last reference to her is dated 1017, but the precise date of her death is not known for certain.

  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 Shōnagon inherited. Like her contemporary, Murasaki Shikibu, Shōnagon’s genius lay not in her ability to create original forms per se, or to radically reshape literary values, but in her com
mand 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 Shōnagon’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 Kokinwakashū (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.