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Why Did Heian Women Write So Deeply
About the Human Heart?

Women's Literature That Blossomed in the Mid-Heian Period

If we divide the Hyakunin Isshu into groups of ten poems, we find that women poets are very unevenly spread. They cluster especially around poems 51 to 70, the range that includes Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shōnagon: in the mid-Heian period, a great many outstanding works of women's literature were produced.

So why were women especially active in this period? The following factors are thought to lie behind it.

• The development of kana script
• The political background centered on the Fujiwara clan
• The maturing of court culture

The Development of Kana Script

One of the reasons women's literature blossomed in the Heian period was the development of kana script.

In Heian aristocratic society, Chinese writing (kanbun) was an important accomplishment tied to politics and official work. For male aristocrats, knowledge of kanbun and the Chinese classics was essential for holding office and taking part in government and ceremony. Some educated women were well versed in kanbun and the Chinese classics, but women had far fewer occasions than men to write official documents.

Kanbun is also a form of writing with a grammar and word order different from Japanese, while kana made it easy to write down Japanese word order, particles, and verb endings just as they were. Kana therefore held great potential for developing the fine expression of the Japanese language into literature: conversations, feelings, and subtle changes in human relationships.

At court in particular, waka and letters were important means of communication. People put into waka and letters the delicate feelings born in daily life: the joys and anxieties of love, thoughts for another person, jealousy and loneliness, the turning of the seasons.

Kana, in which Japanese could be written freely, was well suited to expressing such "movements of the heart." With kana, people could write down what they saw, felt, and thought in finer detail, while making the most of Japanese word order and expression.

This maturing of expression in kana greatly advanced Heian women's literature. The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (Taketori Monogatari), considered Japan's oldest tale, is by an unknown author but is written in kana. In the Tosa Nikki, Ki no Tsurayuki wrote a diary in kana as though he were a woman.

Prose had centered on kanbun, but Japanese prose in kana gradually came to be accepted as well, and in the mid-Heian period outstanding works written mainly in kana appeared one after another: the Kagerō Nikki, the Izumi Shikibu Nikki, The Pillow Book (Makura no Sōshi), and The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari).

The Political Background Centered on the Fujiwara

Political moves centered on the Fujiwara clan were also deeply tied to the blossoming of women's literature in the mid-Heian period.

Emperor Ichijō took Teishi, a daughter of Fujiwara no Michitaka, as his empress (chūgū) and loved her deeply. But when Michitaka died, his younger brother, Fujiwara no Michinaga, took real control of the government.

Michinaga sent his own daughter Akiko (Shōshi) to Emperor Ichijō's court and in time made her chūgū. Teishi, who was already chūgū, became kōgō, and an unusual system known as "one emperor, two empresses" (ittei nikō), with two empresses standing side by side under Emperor Ichijō, came into being.

For the Fujiwara, making a daughter an emperor's empress and having her son become heir to the throne was an important means of strengthening their political power as the emperor's maternal relatives. For Michinaga, too, Akiko bearing a son to Emperor Ichijō held great meaning for the further rise of the Fujiwara.

In this way, the court affairs surrounding Teishi and Akiko were deeply bound up with the Fujiwara power struggle to strengthen their political influence through the emperor's empresses.

The Maturing of Court Culture

These political moves around the empresses were also tied to the growth of court culture. At the court of the time, the kind of educated women gathered around an empress was an important part of what made her court culturally attractive.

Around Teishi gathered women who excelled in waka, Chinese literature, and other learning, among them Sei Shōnagon, known as the author of The Pillow Book. With her witty conversation and sharp powers of observation, Sei Shōnagon became an important presence who brightened Teishi's salon.

Around Akiko, too, women of outstanding learning gradually gathered. The most famous of them was Murasaki Shikibu, known as the author of The Tale of Genji. Murasaki Shikibu entered service as a lady-in-waiting (nyōbō) to Akiko and supported Akiko's salon with her learning in waka and Chinese literature.

So Teishi was served by Sei Shōnagon, and Akiko by Murasaki Shikibu: women writers whose names have come down to later ages. In each salon, a rich culture unique to the court grew through waka, Chinese literature, witty conversation, and more.

The maturing of these court salons is thought to have been one of the important reasons women's literature blossomed so greatly in the mid-Heian period.

Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shōnagon

Sei Shōnagon and Murasaki Shikibu are widely known as writers who represent Heian literature.

Sei Shōnagon grew up as a daughter of the poet Kiyohara no Motosuke and expressed her keen sensibility and sense of beauty in The Pillow Book. Murasaki Shikibu, on the other hand, loved tales and was influenced by her father, who was well versed in Chinese literature; her deep learning and powers of observation bore fruit in The Tale of Genji.

Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shōnagon were writers of the same era, but the time when Sei Shōnagon served Teishi and the time when Murasaki Shikibu served Akiko were different, and there is no reliable record that the two ever met at court. It is therefore thought unlikely that they knew each other personally. More specifically, Sei Shōnagon is said to have left the court soon after the death of Empress Teishi, and Murasaki Shikibu is said to have begun serving Akiko five or six years after that.

The Murasaki Shikibu Nikki (Diary of Murasaki Shikibu), however, contains the following passage about Sei Shōnagon.

In the Heian period, women were expected to be careful about openly showing knowledge of Chinese characters and Chinese literature, so Sei Shōnagon, who actively displayed her knowledge and learning, may have been seen as somewhat conspicuous by the values of the time.

Still, Murasaki Shikibu's criticism of Sei Shōnagon cannot be explained simply as personal likes and dislikes. The differences between the court societies surrounding the two empresses, Teishi and Akiko, are also thought to lie behind this judgment.

From the Kagerō Nikki to The Tale of Genji

The author of the Kagerō Nikki, the Mother of Michitsuna (Udaishō Michitsuna no Haha), was one of the wives of Fujiwara no Kaneie. The Kagerō Nikki is a work that frankly depicts, from her own point of view, her married life and her conflicts with her husband.

In this way, the Kagerō Nikki frankly depicts her relationship and conflicts with her husband, and it is a valuable work for understanding the inner life of a woman living in aristocratic society.

What matters is that the Kagerō Nikki was written before The Tale of Genji. It was one of the pioneering works of Heian women's literature, depicting the author's own experiences and feelings in kana prose.

Murasaki Shikibu is thought to have read the Kagerō Nikki, and some argue that its influence reaches into The Tale of Genji. The way the Kagerō Nikki depicts a woman's heart wavering within a marriage, and its method of portraying married life from a woman's own point of view, carried on into later women's literature.

Visiting Marriage and Women's Lives

In Heian aristocratic society, "visiting marriage" (kayoi-kon), in which the husband visited his wife, was widespread. Even after marriage, husband and wife often lived apart, and the usual form was for the husband to call on the woman.

Under this form of marriage, husband and wife did not always live together, and for a woman, her husband's visits came to mean a great deal in her life. A change of heart in her husband, or an end to his visits, could therefore bring her anxiety and loneliness.

The Kagerō Nikki depicts exactly such a woman's heart wavering within married life. That the author, drawing on her own experience, frankly wrote down not only the joys of love and marriage but also their anxieties and pain held great meaning for the women's literature that followed.

The Universal Appeal of The Tale of Genji

Emperor Ichijō, after reading The Tale of Genji, is said to have remarked that its author must surely have read the Nihongi (the Nihon Shoki), and Murasaki Shikibu is said to have been mockingly called "the Lady of the Chronicles" (Nihongi no mitsubone). At the time, tales were seen by some as fiction and entertainment, and they are thought not to have received proper recognition.

In Chapter 25 of The Tale of Genji, "Fireflies" (Hotaru), there is a line that says, in effect: "Histories such as the Nihongi show only one side of things, but tales tell the truth in detail and in a coherent way." These are words spoken by Genji to Tamakazura, who loves tales. Murasaki Shikibu seems to have thought of the value of tales in this way.

The Birth of Literature That Depicts "the Inner Life"

Aristocratic women of the Heian period were often placed in positions where they could hardly decide their own lives by their own will, especially in marriage and married life. In a life of waiting for a husband's visits, a change of heart or an end to his visits could lead directly to anxiety and loneliness. For women in such hard circumstances, about the only way to look at their own lives anew was probably to become a nun.

The Kagerō Nikki and The Tale of Genji depict many kinds of human feeling: not only love and marriage, but also jealousy, loneliness, parting, and the wish to renounce the world. Reading these works, we can see that these women did not only distance themselves from reality by becoming nuns, but also looked deeply, through their writing, into the human heart and the relations between men and women.

Heian women were not necessarily in a position to choose their own lives freely. Yet within those limits, through their own experience and imagination, they gazed at the joy and pain of loving someone and at the way people's hearts change.

The maturing of Japanese expression in kana and the flowering of court culture also laid the foundation for this literature. The women's literature born in this way may have grown into literature that depicts not only the lives of women a thousand years ago, but also "the human heart," which does not change even as the times change.