"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."

― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Shirabyōshi dancers in the diary of Lady Sarashina

For a very small and specific part of the novel, I decided to research the role of a specific kind of dancers in medieval Japan, called shirabyōshi. As it happens, their role and characteristics are highly romanticized (i.e., objectified) by male authors of the time: they’re often portrayed as femmes fatales and seductresses, and this is marginally what this part of the novel is about.
In order to look for better sources, we need to be sexist and look for female contemporary authors, and one of the most relevant is lady Sarashima, the daughter of a provincial governor who writes a sort of retrospective diary. In today’s post on my Patreon, we read a snippet of her night encounter with three travelling entertainers.
Summertime

Omeros in the Caribbeans

Derek Walcott was a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, and painter, and one of the major voices of Caribbean literature. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, and his work often explores Caribbean history, identity, colonial inheritance, and the meeting of European and African

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August 9, 2026 6:00 am
books and literature

Ioanna Papadopoulou’s The Castaway and the Witch

I had a genuine “oh shit” moment when I read the author’s preface saying this was darker than “Winter Harvest” because – and I absolutely ADORED “Winter Harvest” – that was pitch-black dark. I thought “we’re all going to die”. This maybe has something to

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August 8, 2026 9:00 am
Summertime

The Path You Have to Sing

Alexis Wright‘s Carpentaria, an epic work set in a fictional town called Desperance, opens before there are any people in it at all: an ancestral serpent, “a creature larger than storm clouds,” descends from the stars and drags itself across the wet clay of the

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August 8, 2026 6:00 am
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Omeros in the Caribbeans

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Derek Walcott was a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, and painter, and one of the major voices of Caribbean literature. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, and his work often explores Caribbean history, identity, colonial inheritance, and the meeting of European and African

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I had a genuine “oh shit” moment when I read the author’s preface saying this was darker than “Winter Harvest” because – and I absolutely ADORED “Winter Harvest” – that was pitch-black dark. I thought “we’re all going to die”. This maybe has something to

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