29 DECEMBER 1928, Page 25

More Books of the Week (Continued from page 993) Once

more Mr. Waley has opened to us the doors of Old Japan. In The Pillow-Book of Sei Shonagon (Allen and Unwin, 6s.) we see again the Empress and her quaint, rather intimate court, but this time it is not the Lady Murasaki, but a new narrator, Sei Shonagon, who describes to us the picnic parties, the scandals and above all the poetry com- petitions, which seem to have been the principal diversions of the Empresses (for we hear very little of the Emperors) in tenth-century Japan. Surely no more delightful and improbable court has existed than this, and we are grateful to Mr. Waley for having introduced us to yet another charming Japanese lady.