In this week's Sayōnara Zetsubō-Sensei, for reasons too involved to explain here, the titular sensei ends up shouldering all the troubles of Japan's womanhood throughout history. Since I have nothing else to blog today, I thought I'd share those troubles with you.

• Share computer with parents
• School uniform is dorky
• Hair is unruly and hard to style in the morning
• Gained 3 kg over New Year's
• Got billed for 80,000 yen via Dial Q2 [an NTT service allowing third parties to bill phone users more easily]
• Cooking pots confiscated for war effort
• Kissed before marriage... [We are now back before WWII; note the kana/kanazukai change]
• Believe father has mekake [a kind of kept woman/mistress, and a tradition which underwent a renaissance in the Meiji period]
• Want to taste this so-called "iced cream"
• Sei Shōnagon is a smug and horrible person

That last one is the beginning of an infamous passage from Murasaki Shikibu's diary 紫式部日記, inevitably dragged out whenever female Heian authors are discussed:

清少納言こそしたり顔にいみじうはべりける人。さばかりさかしだち、真名書きちらしてはべるほども、よく見れば、まだいと足らぬこと多かり。かく、人に異ならむと思ひこのめる人は、かならず見劣りし、行く末うたてのみはべれば、艶になりぬる人は、いとすごうすずろなるをりも、もののあはれにすすみ、をかしきことも見すぐさぬほどに、おのづからさるまじくあだなるさまにもはべるべし。そのあだになりぬる人の果て、いかでかはよくはべらむ。

Sei Shōnagon is a smug and horrible person. She acts so smart and is always writing in true [Chinese] characters, but if you look closely, you can find lots of mistakes. People who try that hard to be different from everyone else always end up falling behind, with trouble waiting in their future; and people who are that affected act all mono no aware and attend all the interesting events even when they're lonely and bored, so that in the end the affectation stops being an act. How exactly are things going to end well for a person like that? [They are not.]