The author of The Pillow Book, daughter of Kiyohara no Motosuke. From about 993 she served Empress Teishi, whose brilliant salon she immortalized in her miscellany of observations, lists and anecdotes celebrating the delightful and the elegant in court life. Learned in Chinese classics, she was famously criticized in Murasaki Shikibu's diary. One of the Late Classical Thirty-Six Immortals, she has about fifteen poems in imperial anthologies. Her Hyakunin Isshu poem, from a witty exchange with Fujiwara no Yukinari, alludes to the Chinese tale of a false cock-crow at the Hangu Barrier.
夜をこめて 鳥のそら音は はかるとも
よに逢坂の 関はゆるさじ
Yo o komete tori no sorane wa hakaru tomo / yo ni Ōsaka no seki wa yurusaji
You may try to fool me with a fake rooster's cry before dawn, but this is not the Hangu Pass — the Barrier of Meeting Hill will never let you through.