daily aesthetics pillow books

she wanted to make his heart beat faster

Initially, Pillow Books were used by concubines in geisha houses. They were used as reference books regarding sexual techniques. Generally, the images in these books showed enlarged genitalia.

Like Kamasutra Shunga style. Shunga are erotic Japanese prints. Shunga literally means springtime pictures. Shunga images are often highly pornographic and explicit in their depiction of sex.

The Heian aristocrats had the habit of keeping notepaper near their pillows. Apparently, it was a common practice for them to keep a record of stray thoughts and impressions.

makura no soshi

makura=pillow and soshi=randoom notes thus makura no soshi=random notes of the pillow

The Heian Period (794-1192) animated unique Japanese aesthetics. There was a preference, according to Joesph Campbell, for the unsymmetrical that suggests movement purposely leaving things unfinished creating a vacuum into which the imagination of the beholder can contribute.

Ambiguity permits the spectator to participate by filling-in-the blanks.
The most famous Pillow Book ( translated into English in 1991 by Ivan Morris) is that of Sei Shônagon. Sei Shônagon , married and divorced before the age of 25, had 3 choices: find another man, enter a Buddhist convent, or serve at court. She choose the latter and thus became a lady-in-waiting in the Salon of the Empress Sadako (993-1000) in the Imperial Court of what is now Kyoto. During Sei's time, ladies-in-waiting were required to memorize the 20 volumes of the Kokin-Shu, a collection of Old & New Japanese Poetry, compiled in 905, and containing 11 hundred poems.

Sei was one of the few writers living during this period and was extremely able in the use of the zuihitzu form of writing. Her Pillow Book is interesting not only because it is a collection of observations, but because she freely expressed her opinions and wrote with so much detail.

This informal collection of notes constitute a genre of prose that evolved into a literary form called zuihitsu, a kind of free-association, of following the brush because it is the brush that moves the mind and not vice versa.

"Zuihitsu" (which continues as a genre today) means "occasional writings" and consists mainly of poetry by women. Inspired by the natural world and sensuality, the genre deals especially with romance.

Writing was really like painting because brushes where dipped in ink and then the words were painted onto the page.

"Hiragana" was the calligraphy alllowed for women whereas men used the "kanji" form.

The Heian noble women concealed themselves behind "kicho", moveable frames.

Outside of marriage, men and women could not speak to one another so they exchanged "tanka" poetry, and sent their servants scurrying back and forth to exchange these verses.

Poetics.

More than anything, A Pillow Book is a collection of articulated observations. It is thus a form of selection thus of evaluation.

The Pillow Book establishes taste.

The Pillow Book is based on the making of lists. Lists such as "Things That Are Beautiful in Paintings" and/or "Things That Are Not Beautiful in Paintings," "Adorable Things" and "Things That Are Hateful" (example "when you're almost asleep and a mosquito appears announcing himself in a reedy voice." ).

Sei was also very good at describing. She, for example, wrote a line to describe each season.
The Pillow Book ends in tragedy bcause Teishi, Sei's empress, gets in the way of her uncle's thirst for power and, tho' pregnant, she's banished from the court where a short time later she dies in childbirth. Sei, too, was forced to leave the palace and virtually nothing is known about the rest of her life although many speculate that she spent her final years in solitude.

Language is organized sound and poety is sound combined with rhythm.

Waka poetry was trendy at this time. The word WAKA is made up of two parts: wa meaning 'Japanese' and ka meaning 'poem' or 'song'. It was probably coined at about the time Tsurayuki was writing as a way to distinguish the poetry written by the Japanese in their own language from that they read and wrote in Chinese - the source of much of Japan's poetic inspiration.

Beauty is precious because it's brief.