The Pillow Book Analysis

Before beginning to relate the two pieces through the views of Japanese aesthetics, I had to understand the concept. Japanese aesthetics is ancient ideas that talk about Japanese culture and what is beautiful or tasteful. The ideas include Wabi, Sabi, and Yugi. These concepts are integrated into their everyday life and culture. You can tell through both pieces that they both respected aesthetics and wanted to live through that.
The Pillow Book is a diary that Sei Shonagon kept while she was serving as a lady at the imperial court. She wrote about the issues that went on there and is split into six parts. The first is The Cat Who Lived in the Palace. The dog named Okinamro tried to bite Lady Myobu and was told to leave the palace. Lady Myobu, the cat, got awarded headdress of nobility. The dog was eventually allowed back and people didn’t know if it was him. When she wrote, The Hateful Things, she talks about how people are disrespectful to their culture and aren’t respectable towards others. “To envy others and to complain about ones lot”(503), here she is talking about how people interrupt someone and add things to their
In the past, Kenko was a court poet and then later became a priest. He said that “one had to renounce the world to seek salvation). He found beauty in life and he discussed that in the Essays in Idleness. He decides to become a hermit and withdraw himself from the world. His essays include advice, observations and anecdotes. “Were we to live on forever — were the dews of Adashino never to vanish, the smoke on Toribeyama never to fade away — then indeed would men not feel the pity of things. .. Truly the beauty of life is its uncertainty” Kenko believes in the meaning and internal truth of Buddhism and Japanese aesthetics. He wants to make his life to be aesthetically pleasing. Through his life you can see the Japanese court fade and he becomes more true to his