Free The Pillow-Book of Sei Shōnagon by Sei Shōnagon

To Hazel Crompton
    Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.
    www.tuttlepublishing.com
    Copyright © 2011 Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.
    Credit Images used with the permission of The Clark Center for Japanese Art & Culture All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.
    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
    Sei Shonagon, b. ca. 967.
[Makura no soshi. English]
The pillow book of Sei Shonagon: The Diary of a Courtesan in Tenth Century Japan / translated by Arthur Waley; with a foreword by Dennis Washburn.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4629-0088-6
1. Sei Shonagon, b. ca. 967. 2. Courtesans--Japan--Biography. 3. Japan--Court and courtiers--Biography. 4. Japan--Court and courtiers--History. 5. Japan--Social life and customs--794-1185. 6. Japan--History--Heian period, 794-1185. I. Waley, Arthur. II. Title.
PL788.6.M3E56 2011
895.6’8103--dc22
[B]
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010026057
    ISBN 978-1-4629-0088-6
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Foreword
    Arthur Waley’s translation of Sei Sh ō nagon’s The Pillow Book ( Makura no s ō shi ), which was first published in 1928, may strike contemporary readers as something of a literary curiosity. Waley informs us at the very beginning of his work that he has translated only about one-quarter of the original, omitting “only” those portions (i.e. a full three-quarters of the text) he found dull, unintelligible and repetitive, or that required too much explanation. Moreover, he does not provide a straightforward, stand-alone translation, but instead offers a mix of translated passages and commentary that contextualizes and explains the original text. These extraordinary decisions not only imply a rather severe critical judgment of the literary value of Sei Sh ō nagon’s work, but also suggests in a somewhat backhanded manner that his English-speaking readership had neither the patience nor the imagination to deal with the original in its entirety.
    At first glance Waley’s approach seems to fly in the face of one of the most fundamental assumptions about translation, which is that it must somehow stay true to the original and preserve its integrity. To make radical cuts on the basis of practical considerations of length or intelligibility is an understandable though debatable proposition, but to select which passages to translate on the basis of subjective criteria (e.g. what makes one section dull and another interesting) is simply arbitrary. However, by the same token, to criticize Waley solely on the basis of the notion that the translator must preserve the integrity of a text, that he should essentially disappear from view so that the reader can engage the original without mediation, is also very much a debatable proposition, since determining what it means to stay true to an original almost always depends upon subjective criteria. In producing his version of The Pillow Book, Waley was certainly as much an editor as a translator, and as such