The gossamer years : the diary of a noblewoman of Heian Japan

Kagero Nikki, translated here as The Gossamer Years, belongs to the same period as the celebrated Tale of Genji. This frank autobiography diary reveals two tempestuous decades of the author’s unhappy marriage and her growing indignation at rival wives and mistresses. To impetuous to be satisfied as a subsidiary wife, this beautiful noblewoman of the Heian dynasty protests the marriage system of her time in one of Japanese literature’s earliest attempts to portray difficult elements of the predominant social hierarchy.