The Pillow Book

The work is a collection of essays, anecdotes, poems, and descriptive passages which have little connection to one another except for the fact they are ideas and whims of Shōnagon's spurred by moments in her daily life.

"[1] She wrote The Pillow Book as a private endeavor of enjoyment for herself; it seemed to be a way for her to express her inner thoughts and feelings that she was not allowed to state publicly due to her lower standing position in the court.

[4] Shōnagon's writing is categorized into three parts; the first consists of narratives, which focus mainly on the events that she witnessed and experienced during her time in the court, the second consists of her own thoughts and opinions on various matters and topics, and the third were the famous lists, or headings, with one example from Shōnagon's writing being "Things That Make the Heart Grow Fonder."

The Pillow Book consists of 164 of these lists total, where they range from aesthetically pleasing items to being less diplomatic than Shōnagon's anecdotes.

[5] However, there are sections that are rather ambiguous and are difficult to classify (e.g., in the first paragraph of her ramblings, "As for Spring, (it is) the dawn [that is lovely]", there are objections to common opinions of what is actually meant here).

It is composed primarily in Japanese hiragana, which is a syllabary that is actually derived from Chinese characters, and generally many of her short stories were written in a witty literary style.

In general, The Pillow Book is written in brief statements, where the length of one paragraph is relatively short, and it is easy to read the contents, even for modern Japanese speakers.

[8] The Pillow Book is a collection of anecdotes, lists, and assorted writings that is one of the best sources of information concerning the court society of the 10th century and is considered an influential landmark in the history of Japanese literature.

Despite women in the Heian period still being less socially important than men, the writers studied today for their creativity and wordplay wrote in hiragana.

Males tended to use kanji exclusively due to demonstrate their command of a writing system borrowed from their neighbour, China.

Extensive schooling was not necessary in order to describe every feeling on paper; and the syllabic hiragana could note inflections heard in speech, unlike kanji.

First printed in the 17th century, it exists in different versions: the order of entries may have been changed by scribes with comments and passages added, edited, or deleted.

Zuihitsu rose to mainstream popularity in the Edo period, when it found a wide audience in the newly developed merchant classes.

Starring Vivian Wu and Ewan McGregor, it tells a modern story that references Sei Shōnagon's work.