Nikki (genre)

Nikki ( 日記 ) is a genre of Japanese literature that originated and gained its greatest prosperity in the Heian era.

The Heian era occupies an important place in the development of Japanese literature and is considered the period of formation and formation of national Japanese literary genres, including poetry, prose, novels, diaries, and poetry notes. It should be noted that in this historical period, diary literature was one of the leading literary genres, and the writers and readers of the diaries were mainly female aristocrats, which is a rare occurrence in the history of world culture. The main group of all authors, almost half of the total number, belonged to the court officials. Vladislav Goreglyad wrote: “This indicator characterizes the difference between the works of early medieval writers and poets from the works of the ancients in two respects. Firstly, the records of folk art almost disappeared, and secondly, in the Heian era, a kind of literary class began to form, the creativity of whose representatives can be defined as the literature of officials. She was oriented toward Chinese scholarship and fluency in the kambun. ” ^[1]

Women were not supposed to know Chinese writing, and at least some knowledge of scientific matters was reproached. Therefore, along with the invention of phonetic writing, the women of the Heian aristocracy got the opportunity to write, and therefore to create openly, without fear of falling under condemning views.

The departure of diary prose into private life meant at the same time a certain decline in interest in the social aspects of being that could be present in diaries, only because they were associated with the author. The authors of the diaries wrote, trusting only their own experience, not to mention what they did not see, did not hear themselves: “Thoughts flowed like in a dream - somewhere far, far away, and I stopped noticing what was happening around” ^[2] , ending similarly recording a specific day.