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The Yoshiwara Hut of Lady Murasaki Shikibu

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The Moonlit Balcony

May that lady live one thousand years who guards the flowers!
My sleeves are wet with thankful tears
As though I had been working
In a garden of dewy chrysanthemums.

My room is ugly, blackened by smoke. I play on a thirteen or six-stringed koto, but I neglect to take away the bridges even in rainy weather, and I lean it up against the wall between the cabinet and the door jamb. On either side of the koto stands a biwa. A pair of big bookcases have in them all the books they can hold. In one of them are placed old poems and romances. They are the homes of worms which come frightening us when we turn the pages, so none ever wish to read them. As to the other cabinet, since the person who placed his own books no hand has touched it. When I am bored to death I take out one or two of them; then my maids gather around me and say, "Your life will not be favoured with old age if you do such a thing! Why do you read Chinese? Formerly even the reading of sutras was not encouraged for women."

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