Sugawara no Takasue no Musume

Recollections of a Woman in Eleventh-century Japan

As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams

Simon Elliott Stegall

This is the short journal of an anonymous Japanese woman (known to posterity by the sobriquet "Lady Sarashina") writing in the eleventh century. The loneliness and transience of her life, which passed her by like a dream, is heartbreaking to read. Night after night she gazed at the moon, composed poetry, watched the changing of the seasons, and came one day closer to her death. It blows my mind that a thousand years ago she watched the same moon we see now. 

Early in the book Lady Sarashina's older sister dies in childbirth. They cremate the body and lay her ashes in a communal burial ground. The sister's former nurse goes to the burial ground to pay her respects, but in vain strives to find the place of her burial. The ashes have already been scattered by the wind. How fleeting it all is.

To be read before going to sleep, or dying.

A Lady-in-waiting at a Heian court in medieval Japan records her personal feelings and reactions to social standards

As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams Recollections of a Woman in Eleventh-century Japan

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