When I think how I tried to keep them secret, conscious of vulgar and exaggerated remarks which have escaped me, the tears flow uncontrollably.
"One day when I was in attendance on the Empress, she showed me some paper which had been given her by the Naidaijin. 'What is to be written on this?' said her Majesty. 'The Mikado has had something they call History written on his.' 'It will do nicely for pillows,' I replied. 'Then take it,' said she. So I tried to use up this immense supply by writing down strange matters of all kinds without any connection or sequence."
The Makura Zōshi is the first example of a style of writing which afterwards became popular in Japan under the name of Zuihitsu or "following the pen." There is no sort of arrangement. The author sets down upon the spur of the moment anything which occurs to her. Stories, descriptive enumerations of dismal, incongruous, abominable and dreary things, lists of flowers, mountains, rivers, sketches of social and domestic life, thoughts suggested by the contemplation of nature, and much more form her farrago libelli.
Unlike the author of the Genji, who loses herself in the characters which she describes, the personality of Sei Shōnagon comes out distinctly in everything which she has written. The clever, somewhat cynical, cultured woman of the world is always present to the reader. Her tastes and predilections are made known at considerable length, and she does not mind being her own Boswell, not failing to record in her "Pillow Sketches" any apt quotation or neat retort which she may have made. Subsequent writers do not acquit her, as they do Murasaki no Shikibu, of a personal share in the amorous intrigues which formed so large a part of life among the
