Sei Shōnagonthe ArenaENTP

Some time in the late 990s, at about 30, Sei Shōnagon answered a friend's anxious question by sending him a piece of seaweed.

She was a lady-in-waiting to Empress Teishi in Heian-kyō, the city now called Kyoto, and she was writing what became The Pillow Book. Almost everything known about her comes from its pages, in her own voice. She admits there that when she first came to court, around 993, she was so shy she was always close to tears.

The shyness wore off. Arenas often find that a quick reply is the fastest way out of a corner, and hers became the quickest at court.

One of her friends was Fujiwara no Yukinari, a great calligrapher. One night he left her early, and the next morning blamed a crowing cock for hurrying him away. She did not believe in his rooster. She wrote back with an old Chinese tale of a fake cock-crow that tricked guards at the Hangu Pass into opening their gate before dawn.

Yukinari parried. The barrier he had in mind, he replied, was Ōsaka, Meeting Hill, a name that in poetry meant lovers meeting. She closed the exchange with a poem.

It was a fencing match in four touches, and both of them loved it. The poem was later chosen for the anthology One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each, as number 62. The friendship came out stronger. For two people like that, this is what affection sounds like.

The seaweed was another matter. She had left court for a while and did not want anyone to know where she was. One of the few who knew was Tachibana no Norimitsu, a close friend and probably her former husband. Courtiers kept pressing him. Once, to stop himself giving her away, he had crammed his mouth with seaweed from the table.

Cornered again, he wrote and asked her plainly what he should say. She sent back a piece of seaweed wrapped in paper. Keep eating, it meant. Keep your mouth shut.

Norimitsu did not get it. So she sent a poem to explain, about divers hidden under the waves. He would not even read it. He had asked a plain question under pressure, and twice he had been handed a puzzle.

Soon afterward he was promoted to a post in Tōtōmi province, and that, she wrote, was the end of their friendship. There was no great quarrel. A friendship that had survived a secret did not survive two riddles.

Her rival Murasaki Shikibu, author of The Tale of Genji, later wrote that Sei Shōnagon was terribly pleased with herself, scattering Chinese characters that did not hold up when you looked closely. Arenas hear versions of that verdict all their lives. The sparkle that delights one friend strikes someone else as showing off.

She set down both stories herself, the win and the loss, and she let Norimitsu keep his dignity. With Yukinari, the riddle was the gift. With Norimitsu, the gift would have been a plain answer.