But when she describes Teishi’s court being moved to a house of lower status, Shonagon does so with amusement. This is the world that Shonagon writes from and about: privileged, precarious, on the way down. But by the time Shonagon arrived, in 993, Teishi’s power was already in decline, along with her father’s in 995 the regent died and two of Teishi’s brothers were exiled. Teishi became an empress in 990, at the age of 14, when her father was appointed regent to the young emperor. During the Heian period (794-1186), ‘empress’ was a flexible term: Teishi was merely the first among a number of consorts with that title, each with her own entourage, each competing to find favour with the emperor and bear a future sovereign. In 993, when she was in her late twenties, she joined the court of Empress Teishi. Little is known about its author, Sei Shonagon, save for what can be deduced from the text itself. T he Pillow Book was written in Japan more than a thousand years ago.
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