Student Papers and Projects

Japanese Aesthetics, Literature, and Culture, Japanese Food and Culture

An Assistant’s Musings: A Look at The Pillow Book through a Modern-Day Lens

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For this project, to showcase my understanding of not only the text, but also the historical context and the author’s personal history under which the piece was written, I decided to adapt Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book into what I believe a modern-day rendition would resemble. All of the writing is completely my own, drawing inspiration from the general work as a whole, as well as specific passages. All images were found online, but were collaged by me. In total I wrote 19 short pieces, each of which can be broadly categorised under six different categories: descriptive image, descriptive lists, non-descriptive lists, opinion pieces, anecdotes, and romantic scenes, though there is obviously significant overlap between these categories, with many pieces fitting into several (which is true also of the original). The following analysis will walk you through my thought process when creating these pieces, as well as the reasoning behind specific stylistic choices, explaining what the intended goals of the pieces were.

Japanese Food and Culture

Umami

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Before getting into the big reflection part I do want to say that I appreciate having the opportunity to do this. I have made videos before but this is probably the longest and most complicated video I have done in my life I did my best to balance entertainment, cooking, research, and personal thoughts.

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