The Diary of Lady Murasaki along with Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book are the main representatives of the genre to this day. This did not stop aristocratic women from investing themselves in the creative fields, however, using hiragana and contributing greatly to the poetic diary genre. Women, however, were restricted to the arts because that is what was considered attractive Chinese was an important language to master for those directly involved with the court and to participate in literary circles, but women usually could not study it. Men would learn everything from poetry and languages to law and politics. The Heian period elite favored high education and culture, and often powerful individuals were also the most cultured ones. Like many women of her status around the world, she lived relatively comfortably, though the aristocratic lifestyle also came with a few restrictions. The name Murasaki Shikibu was allegedly created based on one of the characters appearing in The Tale of Genji (Murasaki) and her father’s status (Shikibu, which is Japanese for “Ministry of ceremonies”), though historians still dispute this theory. At the time, the maiden names of elite women weren’t recorded. While Shikibu was undoubtedly a pioneer of fiction in Japan, not much is known about Shikibu, including her given name.
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