My grandfather used to tell me, when I was a young reporter, that good writing called for short, simple, sentences. But he was a banker, and at the time, I didn’t think he knew much about writing. I was wrong, of course, and my life since then has been, in one way, a long process of learning just how sharp his judgment was.

Good language is transparent, so that the ideas it describes can be seen clearly beneath it. More than that, language honed down to muscle and bone acquires a curious power. It is capable of delivering a little punch of understanding, so that the reader’s mind is suddenly illuminated by comprehension.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in Japanese literature. The verse form known as haiku, for example, is famous for being capable of delivering much, much more information than you might have thought could be packed into the 17 syllables allowed.

Language in Japan has a odd history. At one time, the Japanese had no written language at all. Around the 5th Century, they borrowed Chinese, which at the time was part pictographic, part phonetic. They modified it over time to produce their own writing.

As you might expect, borrowing from the Chinese had a huge influence on Japanese culture. For centuries, for example, literary Japanese wrote exclusively in Chinese. In a reflection of what happened in England during Norman days, Chinese was used by the upper classes, but not at all by the vast bulk of the population. Perhaps that was a good thing.

Writing in Japanese came into its own slowly. It flowered suddenly and spectacularly in the Heian period, from 794 to 1185. When it did , it arose from the little-educated masses, purely Japanese, unsullied by any external influence. The leading writers of that period were women, who were not normally formally educated, and would therefore not have been so exposed to Chinese influence. To my knowledge, this is the only Golden Age of literature in which women have been the predominant force.

There were lots of them, but three stand out — first is Murasaki Shikibu, poet and novelist, who wrote the long novel, The Tale of Genji, that some say is the best book written in any language. Second is the poet and diarist Izumi Shikibu.

Third is Sei Shonagon, who wrote a kind of diary, (the technical term is zuihitsu) known to us as The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon. Had he known about it, her work would have reduced old Sam Pepys to a stunned, abiding silence.

Her language is so sparse, so clear and so sophisticated that it sounds as if it might have been written yesterday. I suspect there is much less difference between Sei Shonagon in her native Japanese, and Sei Shonagon in English, than is usually the case with translation. And I suspect this will always be the case, no matter what year it is, because Sei Shonagon was tapping into a vein of universality in language that few others have found.

She would be embarrassed to hear such praise. At the very end of her diary, she wrote:

“I was sure that when people saw my book they would say, ‘It’s even worse than I expected. Now one can really tell what she is like’. After all, it is written entirely for my own amusement and I put things down exactly as they came to me. How could my casual jottings possibly bear comparison with the many impressive books that exist in our time?”

Not a lot is known about her apart from the information she conveys in The Pillow Book. Sei means a member of a family called Kiyowara. Shonagon means ‘minor counsellor’.

She was a lady-in-waiting to the Empress Sadako in the last decade of the 10th Century. That would have meant that she lived a very exciting and glamorous life, but also that she was cut off from having a ‘normal’ life of family, home and children.

It is possible that she might, nonetheless, have married a government official and happily raised their son after her service to the Empress ended. It is possible that she died in lonely poverty. Her first name might have been Nagiko. Then again, none of these things might have been—it was, after all, a very, very long time ago.

What is obvious from her writing is that she was a highly cultured woman, intelligent and complicated, a keen observer of detail, highly sensitive to both beauty and pathos. She was full of humour. She was feisty and impatient, and sometimes, she was intolerant of people she felt were her social or intellectual inferiors. Above all, though, she enjoyed her life.

“When I make myself imagine what it is like to be one of those women who live at home, faithfully serving their husbands — women who have not a single exciting prospect in life yet who believe they are perfectly happy — I am filled with scorn. Often they are of quite good birth, yet have had no opportunity to find out what the world is like. I wish they could live for a while in our society, even if it should mean taking service as Attendants, so that they might come to know the delights it has to offer.”

Make myself imagine, indeed!

She was a lady who knew what she liked. Her diary is famous for its lists. There are 164 of them — things she does like, doesn’t like, finds amusing, finds hateful, and so on. They are a striking feature.

This is a part of her long list of Depressing Things: “A dog howling in the daytime—a lying-in room when the baby has died. A cold, empty brazier. An ox-driver who hates his oxen. A scholar whose wife has one child after another—

“It is quite late at night and a woman has been expecting a visitor. Hearing finally a stealthy tapping, she sends her maid to open the gate and lies waiting excitedly, But the name announced by the maid is that of someone with whom she has absolutely no connection. Of all the depressing things this is by far the worst.”

This is her complete list of Things That Make One’s Heart Beat Faster: “Sparrows feeding their young. To pass a place where babies are playing. To sleep in a room where some fine incense has been burnt. To notice that one’s elegant Chinese mirror has become a little cloudy. To see a gentleman stop his carriage before one’s gate and instruct his attendants to announce his arrival. To wash one’s hair, make one’s toilet, and put on scented robes; even if not a soul sees one, these preparations still produce an inner pleasure.

“It is night and one is expecting a visitor. Suddenly one is startled by the sound of rain-drops, which the wind blows against the shutters.”

And this is the complete list of Elegant Things: “A white coat worn over a violet waistcoat. Duck eggs. Shaved ice mixed with liana syrup and put in a new silver bowl. A rosary of rock crystal. Wistaria blossoms. Plum blossoms covered with snow. A pretty child eating strawberries.”

Poetry was very much a part of court life in Heian Japan. Imperial officials were expected to be as poetic as they were efficient. Affairs of state, affairs of the heart, social interaction among people of rank — all were conducted in a flurry of verse. Poetry was oil on the cogs of human affairs.

Sei Shonagon was known at the Empress’s Court as an accomplished poet. She and the Empress often vied with one another. She wrote about one occasion when her ability was challenged:

“On the last day of the Second Month, when there was a strong wind, a dark grey sky, and a little snow, a man from the Office of Grounds came to the Black Door and asked to speak to me. He then approached and gave me a note which he said was from Kint|0xf4|, the Imperial Adviser. It consisted of a sheet of pocket-paper on which was written,

And for a moment in my heart

I feel that spring has come.

“The words were most appropriate for the weather; but what concerned me was that I was bound to produce the opening lines. I asked the messenger which gentlemen were present, and he gave me their names. They were all the type of men to put me on my mettle; but it was Kint|0xf4|’s presence among them that made me most reluctant to give a commonplace answer. I felt very alone and wished that I could show the note to Her Majesty and discuss my predicament; but I knew she was lying down with the Emperor.

“The man from the Office of Grounds urged me to hurry; and I realised that if, in addition to bungling my reply, I was slow about it, I should really disgrace myself. ‘It can’t be helped’, I thought and, trembling with emotion, wrote the following lines:

As though pretending to be blooms

The snow flakes scatter in the wintry sky<$>.”

Who, down all the ages, could have done better? One hopes the Imperial Adviser’s ghost has been graceful enough to blush to pink forever in embarrassment at his presumption.

The Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature says, without equivocation, that if Sei Shonagon did not exist, there would be no one to invent her.

She was, by comparison with other women of her time, highly knowledgeable. She probably spoke and was able to write in Chinese. But she was not formally educated. She knew instinctively about writing what people now spend years at university trying - and most often failing - to learn. Keep language pale, the colour of simplicity. Then, when you throw in a little colour, like noting that the Minister of the Treasury had such good ears that “I believe he could hear the sound of a mosquito’s eyelash falling on the floor”, your words fly into people’s understanding like paint splashed arrows.

Oh, she was good at it!

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