As a young girl in Japan, Nagiko's father paints characters on her face, and her aunt reads to her from "The Pillow Book", the diary of a 10th-century lady-in-waiting. Nagiko grows up, obsessed with ...

Exploring the Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon, the world’s first portrayal of individual self. What is it to write? What roles do ceremony, beauty, and material play in the act of writing? Not only is the ...

A character in the new film by Peter Greenaway (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover) expresses the view that the two greatest sources of pleasure in life are literature and the body. That it ...