Some Books of the Week
The Sketch Book of the Lady Sei Shanagon, translated from the Japanese by Nobuko Kobayashi, with an introduction by Mrs. Adams Beck, is a small volume in "The Wisdom of the East series (Murray, 8s. 6d.) which-merits a longer review than we can give it here, for it depicts with extraordinary vividness the life of a lady-in-waiting to the Empress of Japan in the Heian period- of about the year 1000 A.D. "What would we -not give for such a picture of a Saxon Court in England ! "—writes Mrs. Adams Beck. Sei Shanagon "has the cold, brilliant sparkle of a diamond whose sole use is adornment, and adornment achieved at much cost to others." She is an artist in words, and excels in the understanding of ceremonies and traditiOns, dress and manners : she is amoral, hard-hearted, worldly, yet passionately devoted to the beauty of the world, whether that beauty be moonlight on snow, dew on grass, temple chanting, the dress of her lovers, or the clear triumphant note of the cuckoo sheltering in a blossoming
tleutzia . ." One waits and waits and Suddenly a beautiful cry comes through the night. Lovely ! It gives one the true heart-longing. But everything that sings at night is charming —except a baby," -writes the lady Sei • ShOnagon, leader of Japan's bright young people nine hundred years ago. In her slightly cynical but wholly exquisite prose she will live again in many hearts and minds.
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