Little Labors

Reversals

Murasaki Shikibu, of The Tale of Genji, and Sei Shonagon, of The Pillow Book, knew one another. They weren’t fond of one another. Shikibu was reserved and retiring, and more well-placed politically; Shonagon was witty and conversationally brilliant, and had a less stable position at court. Tutored by their fathers, both women knew Chinese, which was then the language of power and of politics (and of serious literature), and it was a language that women were not taught; women were supposed to speak and write only in Japanese; both women wrote their masterworks in Japanese, the insignificant language of women and gossip.

After The Pillow Book and The Tale of Genji, the third most noted and enduring book from the Heian period is The Tosa Nikki. It is a sort of travelogue, written in Japanese, by a male author writing under a female pseudonym, and its opening line is, “I hear that diaries are things that men make but let’s see what a woman can do.”