Heian Quotes

“8. The Cat Who Lived in the Palace
The cat who lived in the Palace had been awarded the head-dress of nobility and was called Lady Myobu.”
― Sei Shōnagon, The Pillow Book

“A palm-leaf carriage should move slowly, or else it loses its dignity.”
― Sei Shōnagon, The Pillow Book

“The Heian Period (794–1185) was Japan’s classical era, a time of peace and opulence, when the imperial court in Heian-kyō (“Capital of Peace and Tranquility”: later Kyoto) was the fountainhead of culture, and the arts flourished. Toward the end, however, political power slipped from the aristocracy to the warrior class, the decline of the imperial court led to the decay of the capital, and peace gave way to unrest. This was the part of the Heian Period that interested Akutagawa, who identified it with fin-de-siècle Europe, and he symbolized the decay with the image of the crumbling Rashōmon gate that dominates his story. Director Kurosawa Akira borrowed Akutagawa’s gate and went him one better, picturing it as a truly disintegrating structure, entirely bereft of its Heian lacquer finish, and suggestive of the moral decay against which his characters struggle. His film Rashōmon (1950) was based on two of Akutagawa’s stories, “Rashōmon” and “In a Bamboo Grove.” Both—themselves based on tales from the twelfth century—reach far more skeptical conclusions than the film regarding the dependability of human nature and its potential for good.

(Jay Rubin)”
― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashomon and Other Stories

“Love

Thinking, thinking thus,
loving thus, there is no sleep,
I see him, we meet,
to be woken from that dream
that is suffering indeed.”
― Michitsuna no Haha, The Gossamer Years: The Diary of a Noblewoman of Heian Japan