Michikane then led the Emperor to a monastery on the outskirts of the Capital, and stood by while he received the tonsure. When it came to his own turn he said he must first go back to the City and obtain his father’s consent.

Kwazan saw that he had been the victim of a plot and burst into tears. The step which he had taken was irrevocable; it only remained to make the best of it. Officially he was a monk in the Flower Mountain Temple; but it began to be rumoured that under another guise he was to be seen nightly in Kyōto. Kwazan abdicated in 986. In 995[28] it was said that he was secretly frequenting the palace of the late High Falconer Tamemitsu—the very house from which ‘the Captain’ (Fujiwara no Kiminobu) had come running down the highway in pursuit of Shōnagon’s carriage.

In the first month of 996, less than a year after his father’s death, Korechika gave his enemies the opportunity for which they had been waiting.[29] He had for some while been in love with one of Kiminobu’s sisters. He got it into his head that the ex-Emperor Kwazan was cutting him out. He stationed himself, along with his brother Taka-iye, outside Kiminobu’s palace, and when a muffled figure crept out in the darkness, shot at it with his bow. Kwazan was wounded in the leg, but managed to crawl back to his monastery. The story leaked out, and both brothers were accused of sacrilege against the Church and the Imperial Family. It was no very reputable specimen either of royalty or priesthood who had been thus assaulted; but popular feeling, as regards the sanctity both of the Throne and the Church, was at that time passionate, and amid universal reprobation Korechika was banished to Kyūshū, his brother to Izumo. The Empress Sadako seems to have shared to some extent in her brothers’ disgrace. In the third month of 996 she left the Court and moved into her own house, the ‘Small Palace in the Second Ward.’ There was, however, an adequate reason for this removal. She was going to have a baby, and pregnant women were not allowed to remain in the Palace.

Only when all these commotions were over did Korechika discover that Kwazan’s visits to the First Ward had been paid not, as rumour (which commonly makes light of such details) had informed him, to the Third Sister but to the Fourth, a lady in whom Korechika took no interest whatever.

The banishment of the young lords and the retirement from the Palace of the Empress Sadako were events which would in any case have moved Sei Shōnagon very deeply. It so happened, however, that she herself became unexpectedly involved. She had for years past carried on a desultory love-affair with Kiminobu’s brother, Tadanobu. He was naturally furious at the scandal of his sister’s connexion with the ex-Emperor becoming known, and openly sided with Korechika’s prosecutors. It is likely enough that on some occasion, at a time when everyone’s nerves were on edge, Shōnagon flared up on behalf of her lover.

In any case, she was regarded as being ‘on the other side,’ and after the Empress’s move to the Second Ward, was allowed to remain in miserable suspense at her brother’s house.

This went on for about four months. But in the autumn of 996 a certain captain of the Bodyguard of the Left told Shōnagon that he had been talking with some of the Empress’s women, and had gathered from their conversation that her Majesty would welcome Shōnagon’s return. ‘At any rate go and have a look,’ said the captain. ‘The peonies in front of the terrace give the place an amusingly Chinese air. I am sure you would be delighted by it.’ ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t like people thinking such things of me as they have thought.’

Shōnagon, however, relented, and soon afterwards we find her in the Small Palace. As I came from my room, she writes, I passed a group of ladies who were whispering together. I caught something about ‘being in with Michinaga’s party’; but when they saw me coming, they stopped talking, and edged away from me in so hostile a manner that I made up my mind I would not enter the Presence. This went on for several weeks, and though I was constantly asked to return, I would not do so; for I was sure that those about the Empress were all the while telling her I was on the other side, and every sort of other lie. For a long while her Majesty seemed completely to have forgotten me.

At last, Shōnagon tells us, a messenger arrived with a letter from the Small Palace. On opening it she found a single petal of the mountain-azalea, wrapped up in a sheet of paper. On the paper nothing was written, but on the petal were the words: ‘My love, long silent....’[30]

Then to Shōnagon in her excitement the strangest thing happened. When she sat down to write her reply she could not remember the first words of the poem to which she knew the Empress was alluding. Not to make some reference to these words would place her under a suspicion hardly less grave than that from which she seemed just to be emerging. To side with Michinaga was indiscreet; but to misunderstand a literary allusion was disgraceful. Fortunately a small boy who happened to be in the room heard Shōnagon fumbling for the elusive words and piped out: ‘Like a river that has dived....’

When I arrived, continues Shōnagon, describing her meeting with the Empress, I felt very nervous.... Her Majesty pretended not to know me and asked whether I was a new lady-in-waiting. Then turning to me she said: ‘It was a bad poem that I made use of. But for a long time I had been feeling that something of the kind must be said. I am wretched all the time, when you are not here.’ I could see at once that everything was right again. Presently I confessed that I had been in difficulties about the beginning of the poem, till a little boy told me how it went. She was very much amused. ‘That is just what happens,’ she said. ‘It is always those old tags that slip one’s memory. One grows careless about them....’

The banishment of the Empress’s brothers was not a very serious affair. Korechika paid a secret visit to the Capital in the late autumn of 996, and in the spring of 997 both brothers were officially recalled, in consequence of the general amnesty which celebrated the birth of the Empress Sadako’s child.

In the summer of that year Sadako and her ladies returned to the Emperor’s Palace, bringing with them the little princess Osako.

The following extract dates from 998:

While the western side-room was being got ready for the Continual Service, there were, of course, a lot of priests about, hanging up Buddhas and so on. Two days after this we heard a strange voice out on the veranda saying: ‘There’ll be some scraps left from the offerings, I suppose,’ and one of the priests replied that it was too early yet to say. We wondered who it could be, and looking out saw an old nun, wearing an extraordinarily grimy pair of hunting-trousers, very narrow and short, and something in the nature of a cloak, that hardly came more than five inches below her belt and was as dirty as the trousers—the sort of garment, indeed, that is put on to a performing monkey. ‘What is she saying?’ I asked, and the old woman herself in a strange, affected voice croaked that she was a disciple of Buddha. ‘I am only asking for the Lord Buddha’s leavings,’ she said. ‘But these monks are stingy and won’t give me any.’ Her voice was refined and her speech that of someone who had moved in good society. I could not help feeling very sorry that a gentlewoman should have sunk to so miserable a plight. I said I supposed she never ate anything but Buddha’s holy leavings, and said it was an edifying diet. She saw that I was laughing at her and cried out at once: ‘Not eat anything else! I don’t eat scraps from the altar, I can tell you, when I can get anything better!’ We then put some fruit and some broad-cakes into a basket and sent them out to her. When she was feeling thoroughly comforted inside, she became very talkative. The young girls teased her with questions, asking whether she had a lover, and where her house was. Her replies were very lively, not to say scurrilous. Someone asked her whether she could sing and dance, which set her off on a long ballad about ‘With whom shall I sleep to-night? With the sheriff of Hitachi will I sleep; for his skin is the best to touch.’ There was a great deal more of it. This was followed by ‘Many as the red leaves on the peak of Mount Otoko are the tongues that whisper my shame.’ While she was singing, she rolled her head from side to side in the most extraordinary manner. We were now all getting rather tired of her.... Some said we ought to give her a present before we drove her away. The Empress heard this. ‘I can’t think what possessed you to let her make such a painful exhibition of herself,’ her Majesty exclaimed. ‘Her singing was really more than I could endure. I was obliged to stop up my ears. Here, take this cloak and send her off with it as quickly as you can.’

‘Her Majesty sends you this cloak,’ we told her. ‘Your own is rather soiled; it would be nice if you were to put on something fresh.’ We tossed it to her, and she received it with a profound bow; then threw it across her shoulders and executed a sort of dance. But we could not stand her a moment longer, and went indoors.

After this she got into the habit of coming, and was always trying in one way or another to call attention to herself. We used to call her ‘the sheriff of Hitachi.’ She still wore the same filthy cloak, and we wondered how she had disposed of the one we gave her. She had, indeed, long ceased to amuse us when one day Ukon, the Emperor’s waiting-woman, came over to her Majesty’s apartments and the Empress began telling her that we had taken up with this extraordinary old creature, who was always coming to the Palace. Then she made Kohyōye do her imitation of ‘the sheriff of Hitachi.’ ‘Do show her to me one day,’ cried Ukon; ‘I long to see her. Don’t think I shall run off with her. I quite realize that she is your perquisite.’

However, soon after this another nun, crippled but very well-behaved and respectable, called us out on to the veranda and begged for assistance. She seemed so ashamed of having to beg, that we were sorry for her. When we gave her some clothes, she did indeed prostrate herself profoundly, but in how different a manner from the other! Just as she was going off, with tears of gratitude in her eyes, ‘Hitachi’ turned up. She saw her, and was so jealous that she did not come near us again for ever so long afterwards.

A great friend of Sei Shōnagon’s was Fujiwara no Yukinari, a first cousin of her chief lover, Tadanobu.

One day[31] when my lord Yukinari came to see us, he stayed for an immense while talking to someone outside. ‘Who was it?’ I asked, when he at last appeared. ‘Ben no Naishi’ (one of the Empress’s gentlewomen), he replied. ‘What can you have found to talk about with her, that took so long?’ I asked, very much surprised. ‘If the Clerk of the Grand Secretariat[32] had come along, you would soon have found yourself left in the lurch.’ ‘Now who, I should like to know, has told you about that business,’ he said, laughing. ‘As a matter of fact, that was what she was talking to me of just now. She was trying to persuade me not to tell anyone about it.’

Yukinari has no particular talents,[33] or indeed any characteristic likely to recommend him on a superficial acquaintance, and everyone else is content to take him as he seems. But I have had opportunities of seeing the deeper parts of his nature, and I know that he is far from being so ordinary as he appears. I have often said so to the Empress; and as a matter of fact, she knows it quite well herself.... But the young girls are always abusing him and openly repeating the most disagreeable stories about him. ‘What a wretched sight he is!’ they say. ‘And why can’t he recite the Scriptures and make poems like other people? He is really very tiresome.’

The truth is, these ladies do not interest him and he never addresses a word to them. He always says: ‘I wouldn’t mind if a woman’s eyes stood upright in her head, nor if her eyebrows spread all over her forehead and her nose were crooked, provided she had a good mouth and a fine chin and neck. A bad voice I couldn’t, of course, stand.’ ‘But come to think of it,’ he would add, ‘faces are rather important. It is unpleasant when people are ugly.’ This has added to the number of his enemies all ladies who believe themselves to have narrow chins or mouths that are lacking in charm, and it is they who have tried to prejudice her Majesty against him.

As it was I whom he first employed to carry messages to the Empress, he seems unable to communicate with her in any other way. If I am in my room he sends for me to the front of the house, or else comes right into our quarters. When I am not at the Palace but in my home, he follows me there and even if he has written a note[34] he brings it in himself, saying that if anything prevents my going back to Court immediately, he will be obliged if I will send a messenger to her Majesty ‘with instructions to report what he is now about to tell me,’ and so forth. It is useless for me to point out that there are plenty of people in the Palace who would gladly give a message. He rejects one after another. Once, with the best intentions, I suggested that it is often a good thing to act according to circumstances, instead of making for oneself these hard-and-fast rules. But he said it came natural to him to live according to rule, and ‘one can’t change one’s nature.’ ‘Don’t stand on ceremony,’ I answered. He did not see the allusion,[35] and laughing in a puzzled way, he said, ‘I am afraid there has been a good deal of talk lately about our being so friendly. Well, suppose we are! I don’t see anything to be ashamed of. I think, by this time, you might uncover your face, and so on.’ ‘I daren’t,’ I answered. ‘I have heard how particular you are about the shape of people’s chins, and mine is very ugly.’ ‘Is it really?’ he asked seriously; ‘I had no idea of that. Perhaps after all you had better not let me see you.’ After this I always covered my face on any occasion when he could possibly have seen me; but I noticed that he never looked my way, and it seemed clear that he had taken what I said about my own ugliness quite seriously.

One morning Shikibu no Omoto [one of the Empress’s ladies] and I lay in the side-room (where we had slept that night) till the sun was well up. Suddenly we heard someone sliding back the door that leads into the main building, and there before us stood the Emperor and Empress! We were so much surprised that we simply lay helpless, while their Majesties stood by, laughing immoderately at our confusion. Presently they came across and stood half hidden behind the pile of rugs and cloaks (for we had buried ourselves head and all under our bedding), to watch the people going to and fro between the Palace and the guard-room. Several courtiers (not, of course, having the least idea who was inside the room) came to the window and saluted us. The Emperor was much amused and begged me not to give him away.

When their Majesties went back to the main building, the Empress said, ‘Come along, both of you,’ intending us to go on duty that minute. ‘Do at least give us time to make up our faces!’ I answered, and we stayed where we were. Later on, when Shikibu and I were still talking about their Majesties’ visit, we became conscious of something swarthy which had suddenly loomed up close to the front door of our room, and was visible through a chink in our curtains, where one flap had got caught up upon the framework. We thought it was only Noritaka,[36] but on looking more closely we saw that the face was not the least like his.

With a good deal of laughing and scuffling, we began pulling the curtain back into its place; but before we had finished doing so, we realized that it was Yukinari who had been looking at us. This was very annoying, for I had made a point of his never seeing me. Shikibu was sitting with her back to him, so she came out of it all right. Stepping forward, he now said: ‘This time I have really managed to see you completely.’ ‘We thought it was only Noritaka,’[37] I explained, ‘and were careless. I must say that, for a person who is supposed to take no interest in women, you stared pretty hard.’ ‘Someone,’ he answered, ‘told me recently that there is a particular charm in women’s faces just at the moment they wake from sleep; so I came along here this morning hoping to get a chance of peeping into one of the bedrooms. I was already watching you when their Majesties were here, but you did not notice me.’ Presently he raised the curtains[38] and made as though to join us.

[The section which follows dates from 999, second month.]

When I was away from the Palace on holidays there were several Court gentlemen who used to come and visit us. This seemed to agitate the people of the house. I was, however, not at all sorry to see it put a stop to, for I had no very strong feeling about any of these visitors. But it was difficult without rudeness to be invariably ‘not at home’ to people who were calling repeatedly at all hours of the night and day; all the more so because, precisely with those whose visits were causing most scandal, my acquaintance was in reality very slight.

So this time I made up my mind not to let my whereabouts be generally known, but only to tell Tsunefusa,[39] Narimasa[40] and a few others.

To-day Norimitsu came, and told me in the course of conversation that yesterday my lord Tadanobu had tried to find out from him where I was, saying that as I was Norimitsu’s ‘sister’[41] he must surely know my address. ‘He was very insistent,’ Norimitsu said to me, ‘but I was determined not to give you away. He refused to believe that I didn’t know, and went on pressing me in a way that really made me feel very uncomfortable. Moreover, Tsunefusa was sitting near by, looking perfectly innocent and unconcerned, and I was certain that if I caught his eye I should inevitably burst out laughing. In the end I was obliged to choke my laughter by seizing upon an odd sort of cloth that was lying on the table and stuffing it into my mouth. Everyone must have thought me very greedy, and wondered what new delicacy I had found to devour between meals. But I managed all the same to avoid telling him anything. If I had laughed, it would of course have been fatal. In the end, he really thought I did not know. It was splendid...!’ I begged him to go on as he had begun, and for days afterwards heard no more about it.

But very late one night there was a tremendous banging on the front gate, enough to have woken a houseful of people at twice the distance. I sent someone to see what was the matter, and was told it was an Imperial Guardsman ‘with a letter from the Major of the Bodyguard of the Left,’ that is to say, from Norimitsu. Everyone in the house was in bed, so I took the letter close to the hall-lamp, and read: ‘To-morrow is the last day of the Spring Reading in the Palace. If Tadanobu is there keeping the penance-day with their Majesties, he may easily ask me where you are, and if (in front of everyone) he insists upon my telling him, I certainly shall not be able to keep up the pretense that I do not know. May I tell him you are here? I certainly won’t unless I have your permission to do so.’

I wrote no answer, but sent him a minute piece of cloth,[42] wrapped up in paper.

Next time he called, Norimitsu said: ‘He got me into a corner and went on at me about it all night. It is really very disagreeable to be pestered like that, and as you did not answer the letter in which I asked for your instructions.... But, by the way, I did receive a wrapper containing a piece of rag. No doubt in a moment of absent-mindedness....’

As if one could conceivably do such a thing by accident! He still could not in the least understand what I had meant, and evidently thought I had merely sent him a very mean and useless present. Irritated by his stupidity, I made no reply, but seizing the inkstand wrote on a scrap of paper the poem: ‘If from the fishing-girl who dives beneath the waves the present of a rag you have received, surely she hints that to the world you should not tell in what sea-bed she hides.’[43]

‘So Madam has started writing poems, has she?’ he exclaimed. ‘I, for one, shall not read them,’ and scrunching up the piece of paper, he marched off.

So it came about that Norimitsu and I, who had always been such good friends and allies, were for a while rather cool towards each other. Soon, however, he wrote to me saying: ‘I may have been to blame; but even if you don’t wish to see me, I hope you do not regard our old alliance as altogether a thing of the past. That, after all, would mean the breaking of a good many promises....’

It was a favourite saying of his that people never sent him poems so long as they liked him. ‘It’s a sure sign that they have turned against one,’ he used to say. ‘When you have made up your mind that you can bear me no longer, just send me one of those, and I shall know what to make of it.’

Despite this warning, Shōnagon sent him another acrostic poem. ‘I don’t suppose he ever read it,’ she continues, ‘and in any case he never answered. Soon afterwards he was promoted to the Fifth Rank and became Lieutenant-Governor of Tōtōmi; since when our friendship has come completely to an end....’

The following dates from about the same time:

A Court lady, when she is on holiday, needs to have both her parents alive.[44] She will get on best in a house where people are always going in and out, where there is a great deal of conversation always going on in the back rooms, and where at the gate there is a continual clatter of horsemen. Indeed, she would far rather have too much noise than too little.

It is very annoying if one is living in someone else’s house and a friend comes from Court, either openly or in secret, just to ask how long one will be away or to apologize for not having written (‘I did not even know you were on holiday ...’)—it is, as I say, extremely annoying, particularly if he is a lover, to have the owner of the house coming and making a scene (‘very dangerous ... at this time of night too,’ and more in the same style) merely because one has opened the front door for a moment, to let the visitor in. Then later on: ‘Is the big gate locked?’ To which the porter grunts in an injured tone: ‘There’s someone here still. Am I to lock him in?’ ‘Well, lock up directly he goes,’ says the landlord. ‘There have been a lot of burglaries round here lately.’ All of which is not very pleasant to overhear.

After this the master of the house is continually poking out his head to see whether the visitor is still there, to the great amusement of the footmen whom the guest has brought with him. Most alarming of all is to hear these footmen doing an imitation of the landlord’s voice. What a row there will be if he hears them!

It may happen that someone, who neither appears to be nor indeed is in any way a lover, finds it more convenient to come at night. In that case he will not feel inclined to put up with the churlishness of the family, and saying: ‘Well, it is rather late; and as it seems to be such a business for you to open the gate ...’ he will take his departure.

But if it is someone of whom the lady is really fond, and after she has told him again and again that she dare not receive him, he nevertheless goes on waiting outside her room till dawn; at which point the porter, who has during his nightly rounds continually lingered regretfully by the gate, exclaims in a tone intended to be heard: ‘The morning’s come’ (as though such a thing had never happened before!) ‘and that front gate has been ——[45] open all night,’ whereupon in broad daylight, when there is no longer any point in doing so, he locks the gate—all that sort of thing is very trying.

As I have said, with real parents of one’s own, it would be all right. But step-parents can be a nuisance. One is always wondering how they will take things; and even a brother’s house can be very tiresome in this way.

Of course, what I really like is a house where there is no fuss about the front gate, and no one particularly minds whether it is midnight or morning. Then one can go out[46] and talk to whoever it may be—perhaps one of the princes, or of the lords attached to his Majesty’s service—sit all through a winter’s night with the shutters open, and after the guest has gone, watch him make his way into the distance. If he leaves just at daybreak, this is very agreeable, particularly if he plays upon his flute as he goes. Then, when he is out of sight, one does not hurry to go to bed, but discusses the visitor with someone, reviews the poems he made, and so gradually falls to sleep.

‘I saw someone, who had no business here, in the corridor early this morning. There was a servant holding an umbrella over him. He was just going away....’ So I heard one of the girls say, and suddenly realized that it was to a visitor of mine that she was referring!

However, I really didn’t know why she should describe him as ‘having no business here.’ As a matter of fact, he is only a chige,[47] a person of quite comfortable eminence, whom I have every right to know, if I choose.

Presently a letter came from the Empress, with a message that I was to reply instantly. Opening it in great agitation, I saw a drawing of a huge umbrella; the person holding it was entirely hidden, save for the fingers of one hand. Underneath was written the quotation: ‘Since the morning when dawn broke behind the fringe of the Mikasa[48] Hills....’

The whole affair was a trivial one, but her Majesty might easily have been cross about it, and when the letter came I was actually hoping that no one would mention the matter to her. And now, instead of a scolding, came only this joke, which, though it humiliated me, was really very amusing. I took another piece of paper and drawing upon it the picture of a heavy rainstorm, I wrote underneath: ‘It is a case of much cry and no rain.’

Masahiro

Everyone laughs at Masahiro.[49] It must really be very painful for his parents and friends. If he is seen anywhere with at all a decent-looking servant in attendance upon him, someone is sure to send for the fellow and ask him whether he can be in his senses, to wait upon such a master. Everything at his house is extremely well done and he chooses his clothes with unusually good taste; but the only result is to make people say: ‘How nice those things would look on anyone else!’

It is true that he does sometimes talk in the most peculiar way. For example, he was sending home some things he had been using when on duty at the Palace and he called for two messengers. One came, saying that there was not more there than one man could easily carry. ‘You idiot,’ said Masahiro, ‘I asked for two messengers because there is someone else’s things here as well as my own. You can’t ask one man to carry two men’s stuff, any more than you can put two pints into a one-pint pot.’ What he meant no one knew; but there was loud laughter.

Once someone brought him a letter, asking for an immediate reply. ‘What a moment to choose!’ Masahiro cried. ‘I can hear beans crackling on the stove. And why is there never either ink or brushes in this house? Someone must steal them. If it were something to eat or drink that got stolen, I could understand....’

When the Emperor’s mother, Princess Senshi, was ill, Masahiro was sent from the Palace to inquire after her. When he came back, we asked him what gentleman had been in waiting upon the Princess. ‘So-and-so and so-and-so,’ he said, mentioning four or five names. ‘No one else?’ we said. ‘Oh yes,’ answered Masahiro, ‘there were others there, only they had gone away.’

Once when I happened to be alone he came up to me and said: ‘My dear lady, I have something I must tell you about at once.’ ‘Well, what is it?’ I asked. ‘Something,’ he said, ‘that I have just heard one of the gentlemen say.’ And coming quite close to my curtain: ‘I overheard someone who instead of saying “Bring your body up closer to mine,” said “Bring your five limbs[50] ...” and he went off into fits of laughter.

Once on the second of the three Appointment nights[51] it fell to Masahiro to go round oiling the lamps. He rested his foot on the pedestal of a lamp-stand, and as it happened to have been recently covered with yutan[52] and was not yet dry, it stuck to him, and as soon as he started to move away the lamp-stand toppled over. So fast was the framework stuck to his stockinged foot, that the lamp banged along after him as he walked, causing a regular earthquake at each step.

The Palace roll-call[53] has a special charm. Those who are actually waiting upon his Majesty do not have to attend it, but are checked off on the spot by officers who come from seat to seat. But the rest all come clattering out into the courtyard, pell-mell. In our quarters,[54] if one goes to that side and listens hard, one can actually hear the names, which must have caused a flutter in many a susceptible breast.... Some by their manner of answering win great approval, while on others very severe judgments are passed. When it is all over, the watchmen twang their bows, and there is another great clatter of shoes, among which is discernible the even heavier tread of the Chamberlain who is advancing to take up his position at the north-east corner of the balcony, where he kneels in the attitude called the High Obeisance, facing the Emperor’s seat, while with his back to the watchmen he asks them who was there.... Sometimes, if for one reason or another a good many courtiers are absent, no roll-call is held, and when the head-watchman reports this, the Chamberlain generally asks him to explain the reason why there was no roll-call, and then retires. But when Masahiro is on duty he does not listen to what he is told, and if the young lords try to teach him his duties, flies into a temper, lectures them on the impropriety of omitting a roll-call, and is laughed at for his pains not only by these lords, but by the very watchmen whom he is rebuking.

On one occasion Masahiro left his shoes on the sideboard in the Royal pantry. Everyone who passed broke into exclamations of disgust and called upon the owner of the filthy things to take them away at once. It was very awkward, for though no one dared mention Masahiro’s name, everyone knew they were his. ‘Who do these things belong to? I haven’t the least idea,’ said the Chief Steward or someone of that kind. Suddenly Masahiro appeared, saying: ‘Those dirty things are mine!’ The fact that he had the face to come for them in person caused a fresh sensation.

Once when neither of the chamberlains was on duty and there was no one near the High Table, Masahiro took a dish of beans that was lying there and hiding behind the small partition,[55] began stealthily devouring them. Presently some courtiers came along and pulled away the partition....

I have a great objection to gentlemen coming to the rooms of us ladies-in-waiting and eating there. Some gentlewomen have a tiresome habit of giving them food. Of course, if he is teased long enough and told that nothing can happen till he has eaten, a man will in the end give way. He cannot very well express disgust at what he is offered, cover up his mouth, or turn his head the other way. But for my part, even if they come very late and very drunk, I absolutely refuse to give them even so much as a bowl of rice. If they think this is mean, and don’t come again—well then, let them not come!

Of course, if one is at home and food is sent from the back room, one cannot interfere. But it is just as unpleasant.

Elsewhere Shōnagon says:

The things that workmen eat are most extraordinary. When the roof of the eastern wing was being mended, there were a whole lot of workmen sitting in a row and having dinner. I went across to that side of the house and watched. The moment the things were handed to them, they gulped down the gravy, and then, putting their bowls aside, ate up all the vegetables. I began to think that they were going to leave their rice, when suddenly they fell upon it and in a twinkling it had all disappeared. There were several of them sitting there together and they all ate in the same way; so I suppose it is a habit of builders. I can’t say I think that it is a very attractive one.

Another of Shōnagon’s butts was Fujiwara no Nobutsune, Assistant in the Board of Rites.

‘I am very ready at making Chinese poems or Japanese,’ he said to her one day,[56] ‘you need only give me a subject....’ ‘That is easily done,’ I said. ‘It shall be a Japanese poem.’ ‘Good,’ he cried. ‘But you had better give me a whole lot, while you are about it. One would hardly be worth while.’ But when I gave him the subject, he suddenly lost his nerve and said he must be going. Someone told us it was his handwriting that he was uneasy about. ‘He writes an atrocious hand in Chinese and Japanese,’ this lady said, ‘and he has been laughed at about it so much that he is apt to take fright.’

In the days[57] when he had an appointment in the Board of Household Works, he sent a plan to some craftsman or other with ‘This is the way I want it done’ written underneath in Chinese characters of a sort one would never have supposed anyone in the world could perpetrate. The document was such a monstrosity that I seized it and wrote in the margin ‘I should not do it quite in this way, or you will indeed produce a queer object.’ The document then went to the Imperial apartments, where it was passed from hand to hand, causing a good deal of amusement.

Nobutsune was very angry about this.

Annoying Things

When one sends a poem or a kayeshi (‘return-poem’) to someone and, after it has gone, thinks of some small alteration—perhaps only a couple of letters—that would have improved it.

When one is doing a piece of needlework in a hurry, and thinking it is finished unthreads the needle, only to discover that the knot at the beginning has slipped and the whole thing come undone. It is also very annoying to find that one has sewn back to front.

Once when her Majesty was staying at my Lord the Prime Minister’s house,[58] and she was with him in the western wing, to which he had retired in order to make room for her, we gentlewomen found ourselves herded together in the central building with very little to occupy us. We were romping and idling in the corridors, when someone came from the Empress, saying: ‘This dress is wanted in a hurry. Please get together and do it immediately. Her Majesty wants it back within the hour.’[59] What we were to make up was a piece of plain, undamasked silk.[60] We all collected along the front of the main hall, the work was given out piecemeal, and there was a wild race to see who could get her bit finished first. It was a maddening business, for one was not near enough to some of the others to see what they were doing.

Nurse Myōbu got hers done in no time, and laid it down in front of her. She had been told to sew the shoulders of the bodice, but had carelessly put the stuff inside out and without finishing off the work in any way had just slammed it down and gone off to amuse herself. When we came to put the dress together, the back seams did not fit properly, and it was clear there had been some mistake. There was a great deal of laughing and scolding. It was clearly Myōbu’s fault and everyone said she must do her seam over again.

‘I should first like to know who has sewn anything wrong,’ she burst out. ‘If anyone had sewn a piece of damask inside out, so that the pattern was wrong, of course she would have to do it again. But with plain silk, what difference can it make? If anyone has got to do it all over again, I should think it had better be one of the girls who did not do her share the first time.’ ‘How can anyone have the face to suggest such a thing?’ the others cried. But Myōbu could not be prevailed upon, and in the end Gen Shōnagon and some others were obliged to unpick the stitches and put the thing right. It was amusing to watch the expression on their faces while they did so.

This all happened because her Majesty was to wait upon the Emperor at dusk and wanted the dress to be ready in time. ‘I shall know that the one who gets her work done quickest really loves me,’ she had said.

It is particularly annoying if a letter goes astray and gets delivered to someone to whom one would never have dreamt of showing it. If the messenger would simply say straight out that he has made a mistake, one could put up with it. But he always begins arguing and trying to prove that he only did as he was told. It is this that is so trying, and if there was not always someone looking on, I am sure I should rush at him and strike him.

To plant a nice hagi[61] or susuki[62] and then find someone with a long-box and gardening tools who has dug them up and is carrying them away—is a painful and annoying experience. The provoking part of it is that if a male even of the humblest description were on the spot, the wretch would never dare to do so. When one stops him and expostulates, he pretends he has only thinned them out a bit, and hurries off. I really cannot tell you how annoying it is.

One is staying with a provincial Governor or some small official of that kind, and a servant comes from some grand house. He speaks and behaves with the utmost rudeness and an air as much as to say ‘I know I am being rude; but people like you can’t punish me for it, so what do I care?’ I find that very annoying.

A man picks up a letter that one does not want him to see and takes it with him into the courtyard, where he stands reading it. At the first moment one rushes after him in rage and desperation; but at the curtains one is obliged to stop, and while one watches him reading one can hardly prevent oneself from swooping down upon him and snatching it away.

A lady is out of humour about some trifle, and leaving her lover’s side goes and establishes herself on another couch. He creeps over to her and tries to bring her back, but she is still cross, and he, feeling that this time she has really gone too far, says: ‘As you please,’ and returns to the big bed, where he ensconces himself comfortably and goes to sleep. It is a very cold night and the lady, having only an unlined wrap to cover herself with, soon begins to suffer. She thinks of getting up; but everyone else in the house is asleep and she does not know what to do or where to go. If she must needs have this quarrel, it would have been better, she thinks, to start it a little earlier in the evening. Then she begins to hear strange noises both in the women’s quarters and outside. She becomes frightened and softly creeps towards her lover, plucks at the bedclothes, and raises them. But he vexingly pretends to be fast asleep; or merely says: ‘I advise you to go on sulking a little longer.’

Small children and babies ought to be fat. So ought provincial governors, or one suspects them of being bad-tempered. As regards appearance, it is most essential of all that the boys who feed the carriage-oxen should be presentable. If one’s other servants are not fit to be seen, they can be stowed away behind the carriage. But outriders or the like, who are bound to catch the eye, make a painful impression if they are not perfectly trim. However, if it is too obvious that one’s menservants have been lumped together behind the carriage in order to escape notice, this in itself looks very bad.

It is a mistake to choose slim, elegant youths on purpose that they may look well as footmen, and then let them wear trousers that are grimy at the ends and hunting-cloaks or the like that have seen too much wear. The best that can be hoped is that people will think they are walking beside your carriage by chance and have nothing to do with you.

But it is a great convenience that all one’s servants should be handsome. Then if they should happen to tear their clothes or make themselves in any way shabby or untidy, it is more likely to be overlooked.

Officers of State, who have official attendants allotted to them, sometimes spoil the effect by allowing their page-boys to go about dirty and ill-kempt.

Whether a gentleman is at home or on an official mission or staying with friends he ought always to have round him quantities of handsome page-boys.

For secret meetings summer is best. It is true that the nights are terribly short and it begins to grow light before one has had a wink of sleep. But it is delightful to have all the shutters open, so that the cool air comes in and one can see into the garden. At last comes the time of parting, and just as the lovers are trying to finish off all the small things that remain to be said, they are suddenly startled by a loud noise just outside the window. For a moment they make certain they are betrayed; but it turns out only to be a crow that cried as it flew past.

But it is pleasant, too, on very cold nights to lie with one’s lover, buried under a great pile of bed-clothes. Noises such as the tolling of a bell sound so strange. It seems as though they came up from the bottom of a deep pit. Strange, too, is the first cry of the birds, sounding so muffled and distant that one feels sure their beaks are still tucked under their wings. Then each fresh note gets shriller and nearer.

Very Tiresome Things

When a poem of one’s own, that one has allowed someone else to use as his, is singled out for praise.

Someone who is going a long journey wants introductions to people in the various places through which he will pass, and asks you for a letter. You write a really nice letter of recommendation for him to present to one of your friends who lives at some place through which he will pass. But your friend is cross at being bothered and ignores the letter. To be thus shown up as having no influence is very humiliating.

Miscellaneous

There is nothing in the whole world so painful as feeling that one is not liked. It always seems to me that people who hate me must be suffering from some strange form of lunacy. However, it is bound to happen, whether at Court or in one’s home, that some people like one and some don’t; which I find very distressing. Even for a child of the servant-class (and much more for one of good-breeding) it is very painful, after having always been petted at home, to find itself the object of a disapproving stare. If the girl in question has anything to recommend her, one thinks it quite reasonable that she should have been made a fuss of. But if she is without attractions of any kind, she knows that everybody is saying, ‘Fancy anyone making a pet of a creature like that! Really, parents are very odd!’ Yes, at home or at Court the one thing that matters is to be liked by everyone, from their Majesties downward!

Shōnagon elsewhere tells us that she used often to say to the Empress: ‘I must always come first in people’s affections. Otherwise, I would far rather be hated or even actually maltreated. In fact, I would rather die than be loved but come second or third.’

Writing is an ordinary enough thing; yet how precious it is! When someone is in a far corner of the world and one is terribly anxious about him, suddenly there comes a letter, and one feels as though the person were actually in the room. It is really very amazing. And, strangely enough, to put down one’s thoughts in a letter, even if one knows that it will probably never reach its destination, is an immense comfort. If writing did not exist, what terrible depressions we should suffer from! And if it is a relief to put down, once and for all, the things that have been weighing on one’s mind, with a vague idea that the person in question may one day read what one has written, it is no exaggeration to say that the arrival of an answer can sometimes work like a real Elixir of Life!

The boys employed by magicians are extraordinarily clever. When their master is sent for to perform a ceremony of purification, these boys are expected to read the invocations,[63] and no one thinks anything of it. But to see them dash up at exactly the right moment, without a word from their master, and sprinkle cold water on the face of the patient, really makes one envious. I wish I could get hold of boys like that to wait upon me!

If one hears a servant girl say about anyone, ‘He’s an awfully nice gentleman,’ one at once feels a slight contempt for the person in question. One would really think better of him if she abused him. Even a lady can lose by being too much praised in the wrong quarters; and, considering how much one is certain to suffer by being decried, it seems a pity that even the praise one gets should only do one harm!

Narinobu

Captain Narinobu[64] is a son of His Highness the Reverend President of the Board of War. He is not only very handsome, but also exceedingly intelligent. How that poor daughter of Kanesuke’s must have suffered at the time he broke with her, and she was obliged to go off with her father to Iyo, where he had been appointed Governor! One imagines her being due to start at dawn, and his coming to say good-bye the night before. I see him wrapped in a Court cloak, standing in the pale moonlight of dawn, as she must then have seen him for the last time.

In old days he used frequently to come and see me. He talked with considerable freedom, never hesitating to say the most disagreeable things about those of whom he disapproved.

There was in those days a certain gentlewoman of her Majesty’s, rather a tiresome person who made a great fuss about her penances, and the like. She was known by her surname, which was Taira or something grand of that sort. But she had really only been adopted by these people, and among the other girls it was considered amusing always to refer to her by her original name.

She was not at all good-looking—this Taira girl—nor had she any other quality to recommend her. But she seemed entirely unaware of her defects and always pushed herself forward when there was company at the Palace, in a way that her Majesty particularly disliked, though no one had the strength of mind to tell her so....

Once, when the Empress said that Shikibu no Omoto and I were to sleep in her apartments instead of going back to our own room, we settled down for the night in the southern ante-room. After a while there was a tremendous banging on our door. We decided it would be a nuisance to have anyone coming in, and pretended to be asleep. But the knocking was followed by violent shouting, and I heard her Majesty say: ‘Go and wake her up, one of you. She is only pretending to be asleep.’ The ‘Taira’ girl then came in and tried to wake me; but she found that I was very fast asleep indeed, and saying that if I would not stir she must open the door herself, she went out and began a conversation with the visitor. I kept on thinking she would come back, but midnight came and still she did not appear. I was fairly certain that the visitor was my lord Narinobu....

Next morning she heard us talking in our ante-room, and joining us, said to me: ‘I do think that when a man comes through such storms of rain as there were last night, you ought to treat him better. I know that he has been behaving very badly lately, and that you had almost lost sight of him. But I think you ought to forgive anyone who arrives with his clothes as wet as that.’

I cannot follow that line of argument. It seems to me that if a man who comes regularly every night is not put off even by a heavy shower of rain, that is something to his credit. But if, after absenting himself for weeks on end, he is fool enough to choose such weather as this for coming back, then all I can say is I would rather he showed more sense and less devotion. But I suppose that is a matter of taste.

The case is this. Narinobu likes sometimes to have dealings with a woman who has observed and reflected sufficiently to acquire a mind of her own. But he has many other attachments to keep up, not to mention his main responsibility, and it would be quite impossible for him to see me often. His object in choosing so atrocious a night for his visit was chiefly that other people might be impressed by his devotion and point out to me how much beholden I ought to feel. However, I suppose if he did not care for me at all, he would not think it worth while to indulge even in such stratagems as these.

When it is raining I fall into complete gloom, and even if only a few hours ago the sun was shining brightly I cannot in the least remember what things looked like when it was fine. Everything looks equally disagreeable, so that it makes no difference to me whether I am in the loveliest corner of the Palace arcades or in the most ordinary of houses; so long as it is raining I can think of nothing else but how long the rain is going to last.

But if anyone comes on a night when the moon is up and there is a clear sky, even if it is ten days, twenty days, a month, a year, yes, even seven or eight years since his last visit, I can look back with pleasure on his visit; and even if the place is not very convenient for meeting and one must be prepared for interruption at any moment—even if, at the worst, nothing more happens than a few remarks exchanged at a respectful distance—one feels that next time, if circumstances are favourable, one will allow him to stay the night.

The Storm

Among ‘deceptive things’ Shōnagon mentions boating excursions and tells the following story: The sun was shining brightly; so calm was the lake that it looked as though it was tightly covered from corner to corner with a sheet of light green, glossy silk. Never can day have seemed more safe. We young girls had thrown off our mantles and were helping at the oars (we had brought some lads to wait upon us and manage the boat), and singing one song after another—really the whole excursion was so delightful we wished a thousand times that the Empress or some of her family were with us—when a violent gale sprang up, the lake all of a sudden became terribly rough, and soon our only thought was how to get into shelter as quickly as possible. It seemed impossible that this lake, whose waves now hung over us as we rowed with all our might to the shore, was the same that a little while ago had been so sleepy and harmless.

When one thinks of it, to be in a boat at all is a terrible thing! It is bad enough, even in reasonably shallow water, to trust oneself to such a conveyance; but where the water may be any depth—perhaps a thousand fathoms—to embark upon a thing loaded up with goods and baggage of all kinds, with only an inch or two of wood between oneself and the water! However, the low-class people who manage the boat do not seem to be in the least frightened, but run up and down unconcernedly in places where a single false step would lose them their lives.

Even the loading of a ship, when they bang down into the hold huge pine-trees two or three feet in circumference, sometimes half a dozen of them at a time, is an amazing thing. Rich people of course go in ships with cabins, and those who are lucky enough to be in the middle of the ship do not get on so badly. But those who are near the sides get very dizzy. It is extraordinary how little strength there looks to be in those things they call thongs, which keep the oars in place. If one of those were to snap, the oarsman would be drowned in a minute; yet they are always quite thin.

Our cabin was a very lovely one, with fringed curtains, double doors, and sliding shutters. Of course, it would not have done for it to be so heavy as the cabins on ships such as I have been talking about; but all the same, it was like a complete little house. What frightened me most was looking at the other ships. Those in the distance, scattered here and there across the waters, looked like the bamboo leaves that one sometimes makes into toy boats. When at last we got back into the harbour it was full of ships with lighted torches on board, a wonderful sight. How sorry one was for the people whom one saw toiling along in those very small rowing-boats that they call hashi...! I can understand why it is that some quite ordinary people absolutely refuse to go in boats. It is true that travelling on land is also very dangerous; but, whatever may happen, it is always some comfort to have firm ground under one’s feet.

Pilgrimage to the Hasedera[65]

While they were seeing about our rooms, the carriage (from which the oxen had been unyoked) was pulled up to the foot of the log stairway by which one climbs up to the temple. Young priests, with nothing but body-belts under their cassocks, and those clogs they call ashida on their feet, were all the while hurrying up and down the stairway without seeming to take any notice where they stepped, and reciting, as they went, scraps of the Sūtras or stray verses from the rhythmic portion of the Abhidharma Kośa,[66] in a manner pleasantly appropriate to such a place. Our own ascent of the steps was very much less secure; indeed, we crept up at the side, never daring to let go of the railings, in places where these young priests walked as comfortably as on a board-floor.

‘Your rooms are ready; you can come at once,’ someone said to us, and providing overshoes for the whole party he led us in. The place was already full of pilgrims; some, too poor to buy new coats, were wearing them with the lining outside, others in Court robes and cloaks of Chinese brocade were decked out with almost too obtrusive a splendour. The sight of so many soft-boots[67] and slippers shuffling along the corridor was very amusing, and indeed reminded me of the Emperor’s apartments in the Palace.

Several young men who seemed thoroughly at home in the place (probably retainers attached to the temple) accompanied us, saying, ‘Now up a few steps,’ ‘Now down!’ and so on, to prevent us falling in the dark. There was another party (I don’t know who they were) close behind us. Some of them tried to push past, but our guides asked them to stand back, saying we were a party from the Palace and they must keep clear of us. Most of them said ‘Indeed!’ and at once drew back. But there were others who took no notice and rushed on as though all they had come for was to see who could get to the chapel first. On the way to our rooms we had to pass between rows of people, and it was not very pleasant. But once arrived, we got a view right up to the centre of the altar.[68] The sight was so strangely moving that I wondered why I had allowed so many months to go by without once coming here; the old feeling had woken again within me.

The altar was not lit by the ordinary lamps of the outer chapel, but by lamps that pilgrims had laid as offerings within the shrine itself; and in this terrifying furnace of light the Buddha flashed and sparkled with the most magnificent effect. Priest after priest came up to the lectern in front of the altar and, holding up his scroll in both hands, read out his prayer.[69] But so many people were moving about that it was impossible to make out what any particular priest was saying. All we could catch was an occasional phrase, when one voice for a moment pressed up from among the rest, such as ‘These thousand lamps ... offered on behalf of ...’; but the names one could not make out. While with the streamers of my dress hung back over my shoulders I was prostrating myself towards the altar, a priest came up, saying ‘I have brought you these,’ and I saw that he was carrying a bough of anise,[70] a courtesy which though merely pious in intention was very agreeable. Presently another priest came from the direction of the altar and said he had recited our prayers for us ‘very well,’ and wanted to know how long we were staying. We got him to tell us the names of some of the other people who were in retreat at the temple, and hardly had he left us when another priest came with braziers, food, and so on. Our washing-water was in a pot with a spout and our washing-tub had no handles! ‘I have given your servants that cell over there,’ the priest said; and he called them up one at a time to show them where they had been quartered. A recitation of the Scriptures was about to begin, and the temple bell was ringing. ‘Ringing for our good,’ so we felt, which gave us a great sense of security.[71]

Next door to us was an ordinary sort of man who all the while was quietly prostrating himself till his head bumped against the floor. I thought at first that he must be doing it for show. But it soon became apparent that he was completely absorbed in his devotions. How wonderful that anyone can go on like this hour after hour without falling asleep! When for a short time he rested from these devotions, we heard him reciting the Sūtras in a low voice, so that we could not hear what he was reading, but with a very solemn intonation. We were just wishing he would read a little louder, when he broke off, and we heard him sniffing, not loudly enough to be disagreeable, but gently and secretly. I wondered what sort of trouble he was in and longed that his prayers might be answered.

When we had been at the temple several days, the mornings became very quiet and uneventful. The gentlemen and boys in attendance upon us usually went off to visit one or other of the priests in his cell, and we were left with very little to amuse us. Then suddenly, from quite close at hand would come the sound of the conch-shell,[72] taking us always completely by surprise. Or a messenger would come bringing an elegant tatebumi[73] or stuffs in payment for some ritual or service, and laying the things down, would shout for the temple-servants to come and take them away, shriller and shriller, till his voice echoed among the hills. Sometimes the din of the temple gongs would suddenly rise to an unwonted pitch, and in answer to our question as to what was afoot, they would mention the name of some great mansion, saying ‘It is a service[74] for her Ladyship’s safe delivery.’ An anxious time for my Lord. No wonder he could not rest content till the priests were at their task!

But all this applies only to ordinary times at the temple. At New Year, for example, there is a never-ending throng of sightseers and pilgrims, who cause so much disturbance that the services have often to be abandoned.

One evening a large party arrived from the City—so late that we were sure they were going to stay the night. Such tall screens were put up round their quarters that the little acolytes staggered under the weight of them. We could hear mats being flopped down, and everyone seemed to be scurrying about getting things in order. They were taken straight to their quarters and great rustling curtains were hung upon the railings that separated their rooms from the chapel-enclosure. People, evidently, who were used to being waited upon and made comfortable. Presently there was a great rustling of skirts, which gradually died away in the distance. It seemed to proceed from a party of elderly gentlewomen, very respectable and discreet. No doubt their services had been required only for the journey, and they were now going home. ‘Don’t be careless about fire,’ we heard someone say, ‘these rooms are very dangerous.’ Among the party was a boy of seven or eight, rather spoilt and conceited we thought, judging from his voice. It amused us to hear him calling out for the valets and grooms, and carrying on long conversations with them. There was also a darling baby of three or thereabouts that we could hear gurgling to itself in the way that drowsy children do. We kept on hoping that the mother or someone else would call to the nurse by name; then we should have had some chance of guessing who the people were.

That night the services went on uninterruptedly till daybreak and the noise was so great that we got no sleep. After the Goya,[75] I dozed off for a while, but was soon woken by a sound of coarse, noisy chanting, that seemed intentionally to avoid any kind of beauty or holiness. We recognized the Sūtra as that of the Temple Patron.[76] These rough voices no doubt belonged to mountain-hermits from far away, and bursting in upon us thus unexpectedly, they were strangely moving....