The Pillow Book consists of the observations and views of Sei Shonagon, who worked for the Empress in 990s-1000s in Japan. Her work is very personal, where "in it she included lists of all kinds, personal thoughts, interesting events in court, poetry, and some opinions on her contemporaries" (Wikipedia 2016). You can tell through the article that it is based on what she encounters that day and what she deems right and wrong of certain ideas, and how she feels about occurring events in her everyday life. The article makes it is known that her stories were obviously for her own eyes, and especially not for the eyes of the ones above her, but somehow it was revealed and is famously read by literature students around the world.
According to the Wikipedia article, "it is composed primarily in Japanese hiragana, and generally many of her short stories were written in a witty literary style. Confessions of her personal feelings are mixed into her writing with occasionally subtle sentimentality..." and this reveals that she was indeed a rather good writer, and I would have loved to see what more she could have done in her time period if she was actually known as a wonderful writer instead of a worker of the court. I also like how the article tells the readers how her work is considered one story, yet it is divided into smaller paragraphs that focus on separate topics, because this is a very important aspect of the story and is part of what makes it unique. Wikipedia states, "in general, this piece is written in brief statements, where the length of one paragraph is relatively short, and it is easy to read the contents, even for modern Japanese speakers", so it seems that the writer of this article preferred it to be this way too, which makes it easier to follow along, stay interested, and understand.
In my opinion, the Wikipedia article written over The Pillow Book is weak due to its lack of detail. It entails that "part of it was revealed to the Court by accident during Shōnagon's life" but leaves it at that statement and moves on to something else about the history. I want an article that tells me a fact, and then supports it with details on how it happened. Also, it gives a very short summarization over what The Pillow Book is about and how it's divided into sections, yet it doesn't address the topics, or quote anything from her stories, which help the reader understand better what the stories are addressing. Most of the time, when readers view an article like this, they want a detailed summarization over what the story was about, section by section, so that they can perfectly understand what happens in the story, without even having to read it. This Wikipedia article fails to do that, so hopefully through my proper research and writing, I can improve it and make it much stronger than it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pillow_Book
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