Sei Shōnagon

Sei Shōnagon was a gentlewoman at the imperial court of Heian Japan, and she wrote one of the sharpest, funniest books in world literature. Born around 966 into a family of poets (her father, Kiyohara no Motosuke, was a respected scholar and poet), she entered service around 993 as a lady-in-waiting to Empress Teishi, the young consort of Emperor Ichijō. Court service meant living inside the palace and attending the empress. It also meant trading witty poems and repartee, because at this court quick verbal skill was how you earned respect. Sei Shōnagon excelled at it. Her book, The Pillow Book (Makura no sōshi), grew out of notebooks she kept during those years. She filled them with lists of elegant things and infuriating things, with gossip and scenes from palace life, and with blunt personal opinions. Nothing quite like it existed before. Her great contemporary Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji, served a rival empress. In her diary Murasaki called her insufferably pleased with herself, which tells you how vivid her personality was. After Teishi died in 1001, Sei Shōnagon faded from the record, and she is thought to have died around 1025. Her voice matters because it feels alive a thousand years later: observant, opinionated, and delighted by the world.