SOURCE: An introduction to Court Ladies of Old Japan, translated by Annie Shipley Omori and Kochi Doi, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1920, pp. xi-xxxiii.

In the following essay, Lowell provides historical perspective for the study of court ladies' diaries and briefly compares Izumi Shikibu's diary, Murasaki Shikibu's diary, and the Sarashina Diary.

The Japanese have a convenient method of calling their historical periods by the names of the places which were the seats of government while they lasted. The first of these epochs of real importance is the Nara Period, which began A.D. 710 and endured until 794; all before that may be classed as archaic. Previous to the Nara Period, the Japanese had been a semi-nomadic race. As each successive Mikado came to the throne, he built himself a new palace, and founded a new capital; there had been more than sixty capitals before the Nara Period. Such shifting was...