Garden of Paradise. Japanese Identity in Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book
Garden of Paradise. Japanese Identity in Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book

Summary/Abstract: This text focuses on the identity of the Japanese garden as an accomplished aesthetic act, in the manner depicted in the official diary of Sei Shonagon’s, a lady living at the Japanese imperial court, around the year 1000. Nature is sieved through an aesthetics of concentric circles, in which human life turns into a painstakingly pen crafted page, strictly owing to the perfection of artistic integration in the nature. But Nature, and more specifically the garden that Sei Shonagon details with refinement in The Pillow Book, is a specific clue to the concept of Japanese identity.

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