The Pillow-Book of Sei Shōnagon (15 page)
Read The Pillow-Book of Sei Shōnagon Online
Authors: Sei Shōnagon
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Historical, #Personal Memoirs, #History, #Ancient, #General
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There is here a series of puns too complicated for explanation.
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What we should call bobbed hair; standing out fan-wise behind, and worn about six inches long over the temples.
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Like our Venetian blinds.
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Bringing messages from home, or the like.
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The examinations for officers of the Sixth Rank and under.
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I.e.
Confucius. This is the ceremony in honor of Confucius and his disciples. In Chinese,
Shih-tien
. I quote this passage because it illustrates the extraordinary vagueness of the women concerning purely male activities.
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I.e.
dream-interpreter. Modern experts have seldom been known to take this reassuring view.
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Light purple, lined with clear blue.
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Partitions made of thin pieces of wood, laid trellis-wise.
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The incantations of the priest cause the spirit which is possessing the sick person to pass into the medium, who, being young and healthy, easily throws it off.
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Not to be confused with Minamoto no Narimasa, mentioned above.
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The story of Yü Kung, who rebuilt his gate because of a conviction that his son Ting-kuo would rise to greatness, is told in the little handbook of improving anecdotes to which I refer below (p 120). Sh
ō
nagon is laughing at the fact that Narimasa should so easily have been impressed.
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Sh
ō
nagon was now about thirty-four; Narimasa was fifty.
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He uses an affected pronunciation.
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Died in 1018, at the age of nineteen.
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See above, p. 57.
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There is a good copy of this at the British Museum.
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The intimacy would, of course, be secret. Sh
ō
nagon’s embarrassment would proceed solely from her own conscience.
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Except in the case of
uta
, the small poems of thirty-one syllables.
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Higuchi Ichiy
ō
(1872-1896).
