The Pillow Court Culture

Sei Shonagon draws her court life and sophisticated culture with warm atmosphere in The Pillow Book. Sei Shonagon was a lady-in-waiting to the Empress Teishi and lived most flourished time of the Heian Period that aristocrats established and introduced the new cultures to the court.
The Heian culture emphasized appearance. In fact, Sei Shonagon vividly deserves how people set a high value looks. For example, She mentions how a person wears or piles up the colored clothing again and again, such as “the purple of his court cloak and trousers looked magnificent against the white snow.” She estimates it not only the clothing but also to wear it on a snow day that it beautifully makes a colored contrast and adds a impact to people. Besides of this, being beautiful was important in this time, such as action, behavior, smell, calligraphy, or poem. Beauty was an essential skill for elites to prove educated ability for other people and was important in the class society, for The court culture was …show more content…
Kamo no Chiome was a retired man after he did not success to a priest of the Tadasu Shrine. Chomei strongly believed buddhism, so his behavior and thinking connected to Buddhism philosophy. In fact, he lived alone in the small hut with minimal properties, and he mentions his thinking about appearance that he should not care his beggarly appearance. The reason is that appearance is meaningless in Buddhism thinking because everything “exists only in the one mind.” Saying in different words, everything, including attractive appearance, variable properties, or influential powers, comes to an end and is transient existence. In contrast with Sei Shonagon, Chomei believed that he lives the latter days of the Law Buddhism which comes from the unstable society which elites caused internal wars, catastrophic natural disasters occurred, and in a large number of people died by disaster and