Sei Shônagon and the Politics of Form Penny Weiss Political Science, Purdue University To write well, a man must, then, possess his subject fully; he must reflect upon it sufficiently to see clearly the order of his thoughts, and to make of them a sequence, a continuous chain, of which each point represents an idea; and when he has taken up his pen, he must guide it with due sequence along this chain, without letting it wander, or bear too heavily anywhere, or make any movement save that which will be determined by the ground it has to cover. It is in this that severity of style consists, and it is this also that will make unity of style, and regulate its flow; and this alone also will suffice to make the style precise and simple, even and clear, lively and consecutive (Comte de Buffon 1753). I. ACCORDING TO BUFFON A CCORDING to Buffon (1707–1788), renowned author of a landmark thirty-six volume work on natural history, good writing requires knowledge of and reflection upon the author’s subject. The writing, exactly like the thinking that produces it, is: • sequential • unified • precise • linear • parsimonious and • orderly. Above all, it seems, the pen must not wander. One could hardly hope for (or dread finding, as the case may be) a starker contrast to use to introduce Sei Shônagon (ca. 965–1010), Empress Sadako’s lady-in-waiting from about 993–1000. The Pillow Book, Sei Shônagon’s masterpiece, is described as a “lengthy collection of notes, stories, comments, and descriptions of everyday life.” 1 Her pen roams, her style varies, the order is not apparent. “The datable sections are not in chronological order, and the lists have been placed with little attempt at logical sequence.” 2 Yet without Buffon’s “severity of style,” I will show, she produces a work worthy of notice by political thinkers. 1 Morris 1991, p. 317. 2 Ibid., p. 12. See further Morris (1980) and Stone-Mediatore (2000). The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume 16, Number 1, 2008, pp. 26–47 © 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9760.2007.00294.x