A Personal Notebook of Artists: Peter Greenaway’s “The Pillow Book”

Małgorzata Radkiewicz

Abstract

Radkiewicz writes that key to this analysis of the film is the title, a direct reference to a special Japanese memoir kept inside a box at the headrest of a bedding. The pillow book performs various functions in the film but is always tied with women’s creative activities. Making the remarks in the spirit of feminist critique, Radkiewicz notes that pillow books in Japanese culture were one of few available forms of expression to women, who had a little margin of freedom. Beside descriptions of the realities of daily life and numerous digressions on world affairs, this kind of women’s memoirs sent the powerful emotional message. The heroine, who inherited the book from a relative, confronts the present with the past, her position in the world with the position occupied by women in the past. She practices, however, a special kind of calligraphy; she writes on her lovers’ bodies. Apart from depicting events typical of Japan’s culture – where traditions always clash with the technology-dominated present – Greenaway’s film speaks much about what position literature and the artist occupy. The film’s structure and visuals are strongly associated with the iconography of Japanese art but technically the movie is an achievement of audio-visual technologies. This film is an encounter of the Orient and the Occident, not without its irony and mutual fascination.