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The first entry in the Diary bears date the 21st day of the 12th month, and we learn from other sources that the year was the fourth year of Shohei. This would be, according to the European reckoning, some time in the months of January or February A.D. 935, or now 940 years ago.
Tsurayuki begins by telling his readers that diaries being commonly written by men, this is an attempt to write a woman’s diary. Hence he always speaks of himself in the third person, under the vague designation of ‘a certain man.’ But in Tsurayuki’s day something more than this was implied by the phrase ‘a woman’s diary.’ The learned were at this time devoted to the study of Chinese, and rarely composed in any other language, whilst the cultivation of the Japanese language was in a great measure abandoned to women. It is honorable to the women of Japan that they nobly discharged the task which devolved upon them of maintaining the credit of their native literature. I believe no parallel is to be found in the history of European letters to the remarkable fact that a very large proportion of the best writings of the best age of Japanese literature was the work of women. The Genji Monogatari, the acknowledged standard of the language for the period to which it belongs, and the parent of the Japanese novel, was written by a woman, as were also the Ise Monogatari, the Mafura Zôshi, and much of the poetry of the time. There is even reason to suppose that the traditions collected in the Kojiki, the Bible of the Shintô religion, were taken down from the mouth of a woman. With the exception of the last-mentioned work, which was committed to writing before the invention of kana, the Chinese character was very sparingly used in books written by women, and the use of Chinese vocables was also extremely limited. It is evident, therefore, that when Tsurayuki spoke of writing a ‘woman’s diary’ he meant a diary composed in the style usually employed by the women of that period.
The first day’s entry also records Tsurayuki’s departure
