pillow bookn.

Etymology: < pillow n. + book n. In sense 2, after Japanese makura no sōshi, lit. ‘notebook of the pillow’ (10th cent. as the title of a work by Sei Shonagon) < makura pillow + no possessive particle + sōshi book bound with thread, jotter (earlier in form saushi < Middle Chinese elements).Earlier English translations of the title of Sei Shonagon's work were Pillow Miscellany and Pillow Sketches ; compare:1889 T. A. Purcell & W. G. Aston in Trans. Asiatic Soc. Japan 16 217 The Makura no Sōshi, or ‘Pillow Miscellany’.1899 W. G. Aston Hist. Japanese Lit. (1975) 104 The title ‘Pillow Sketches’ is explained by some to mean that she kept the manuscript by her pillow. The name is explained by several sources as referring to Sei Shonagon's story that the Empress Sadako had been given an immense supply of writing paper by her ministers but gave it to the author after the latter had suggested that it would be very suitable for making pillows. Japanese also has the expression makura zōshi (written identically with makura no sōshi ), originally used in the same sense and subsequently more often in the sense ‘erotic picture book’, but there seems to be no evidence to suggest that sense 1 was influenced by this.