In the list “Adorable Things” from Sei Shōnagon’s Pillow Book, the author delights in baby sparrows, a face drawn on a melon, and a young courtier in ceremonial garb. So shrewd an observer is Shōnagon, a lady-in-waiting to Empress Teishi, that her book’s musings on tenth-century Japanese courtly life ______blank readers a thousand years later.