CHAPTER V
"MAKURA ZŌSHI"
With the Genji Monogatari the Japanese associate the Makura Zōshi or "Pillow Sketches" of Sei Shōnagon as of equal excellence, although different in form and character. The author, like Murasaki no Shikibu, was a lady of high rank, her father, who was a poet of some fame, being descended from the Prince who compiled the Nihongi. Her learning and talents obtained for her the honour of being appointed Lady-in-waiting to the Empress. On the death of the latter in A.D. 1000, she retired from the world, some say to a convent, where she received to the last marks of the esteem of her former master, the Mikado Ichigo. Others, however, describe her condition as one of great poverty and misery.
The title "Pillow Sketches" is explained by some to mean that she kept the manuscript by her pillow and jotted down her thoughts and observations when going to bed and when getting up in the morning. It is more probable, however, that it is an allusion to an anecdote which she herself relates in a postscript:—
"It has become too dark for literary work, and my pen is worn out. I will bring these sketches to a close. They are a record of that which I have seen with my eyes and felt in my heart, not written that others might read them, but put together to solace the loneliness of my home life.
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