Worlding Sei Shônagon

The Pillow Book in Translation

Valerie Henitiuk

• Publisher: University of Ottawa Press
• Year: 2012
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• eBook ISBN:
  9780776619798
• Subtopic: Translating & Interpreting
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The Makura no Sôshi, or The Pillow Book as it is generally known in English, is a collection of personal reflections and anecdotes about life in the Japanese royal court composed around the turn of the eleventh century by a woman known as Sei Shônagon. Its opening section, which begins haru wa akebono, or "spring, dawn," is arguably the single most famous passage in Japanese literature. Throughout its long life, The Pillow Book has been translated countless times. It has captured the European imagination with its lyrical style, compelling images and the striking personal voice of its author.

Worlding Sei Shônagon guides the reader through the remarkable translation history of The Pillow Book in the West, gathering almost fifty translations of the "spring, dawn" passage, which span one-hundred-and-thirty-five years and sixteen languages. Many of the translations are made readily available for the first time in this study. The versions collected in Worlding Sei Shônagon are an enlightening example of the many ways in which translations can differ from their source text, undermining the idea of translation as the straightforward transfer of meaning from one language to another, one culture to another.

Published in English.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Tilte
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Sei Shônagon
• The First Generation of Western Translators
• Second Generation
• Third Generation
• Fourth Generation
• Appendix I Romanization of original and Romanization with English gloss
• Appendix II A selection of book covers from the translations
• Appendix III A selection of modern Japanese versions
• Bibliographies
• Additional Resources