Lady Sarashina

(c. 1008 - c. 1059)

Living at the height of the Heian period, Lady Sarashina was affected by the precarious nature of life. “Ever since I was a child,” she wrote, “the news of people’s death, even the death of strangers, had disturbed me greatly, and it used to take a long time to recover from the shock.” She served as a lady-in-waiting for five years and most likely wrote her book in her fifties, following the death of her husband.