Some Thoughts on Letters in Makuranososhi

No letters written in the Heian period have been preserved and we cannot see them today. So, the only means to confirm, though indirectly, form of letters or hands of characters is to see letters in literary works written in the period. Among such works the tales are not suitable because many of letters in them are unreal. Makuranososhi is an essay and so it is estimated that letters in it would have been really exchanged in Ichijo Age. Of course it is not certain. But examining all letters in the essay will bring us close to letters of the Age. At the same time, the author evaluated letters more frequently in the essay than other literary works in the period. So it will be also useful to inquire how she evaluated letters in the essay because such evaluations will reflect those to real letters by her. The author did not mention the contents of letters and focused on the relationships between characters that could be seen from the contents of letters. When she focused on a person who did not correspond, she paid attention to the behaviors of those who wrote or received the letter. She described little when a letter was written by herself. For example, although she made reference to colors of Usuyo and letter papers and said blue, purple, white, red and yellow are good, she did not write the color of the paper she used. The reason might be that her attention to a letter differed when she sent or received. When seeing as a recipient, her attention turned to the paper, its form and attachment branch. But as a sender, she saw only contents of the letter. The author would have seen many letters. And seeing the scene she mentioned the paper used for letters, it becomes clear that she felt worth on preciousness of white paper, attractive depth of blue and purple, and passion of red. So, for example, when we read “Seiryoden no Ushitora no sumi no”, we can realize the prosperity of the Teishi salon because Teishi distributed white paper. It is expected that this way of reading will add a useful method to elucidate the text of the Makuranososhi