Sei Shōnagon Had Opinions

Sei Shōnagon served as lady-in-waiting to Empress Teishi at the Japanese court in Kyoto around the year 1000. She was brilliant, well-read, and the daughter of a celebrated poet. Sometime around 994, the Empress gave her a stack of rare paper and, essentially, permission to do whatever she liked with it.

She made lists.

Specifically, she made 164 of them. "Things That Should Be Large" included priests, fruit, and men's eyes. "Things That Should Be Short" included the speech of a young girl. She filed pear blossoms under the most vulgar thing in the world. She placed a pair of silver tweezers that can actually pull out hairs properly on the same list as the impossibility of lasting human love. One gets the sense she would have had strong feelings about font choices.

Her list of "Hateful Things" included a lover who rustles his paper on the way out at dawn. Her conclusion: a woman's attachment to a man depends largely on the elegance of his leave-taking. She liked everything that cries in the night, with the exception of babies. She devoted one entire entry to the spindle tree. It read: "I shall say absolutely nothing about the spindle tree."

The resulting book, The Pillow Book, is now considered the first great work of personal essay. She never intended anyone to read it. A courtier stole the manuscript from her room and passed it around.

She kept writing.