The eighth-century ritsuryo state system, with its system of ranks, ministries, and university, continued to operate throughout the Heian period and provided the framework for a court-based state system, which emerged at the beginning of the tenth century. One of the major characteristics of this court-based state was gradual concentration of power outside the capital in the provincial governors, drawn from middle-rank aristocrats, who were the fathers of women writers of this period. The early Heian period was marked by the continued prominence of Chinese-based literature and culture and the gradual introduction of vernacular cultural forms, particularly the court-based vernacular literature written in kana, a new syllabary, which flourished from the tenth century onward. One of the striking characteristics of the emergence of Japanese vernacular literature was the central role played by women writers who were closely associated with the imperial court in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, such as Murasaki Shikibu, Sei Shonagon.

Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book represents the rival salon of Empress Teishi. Like many of the other diaries by court women, the Pillow Book can be seen as a memorial to the author's patron, specifically a homage to the Naka no Kanpaku family and a literary prayer to the spirit of the deceased empress Teishi. The roughly three hundred discrete sections of the Pillow Book can be divided into three types such as list, essay, and diary, which sometimes overlap. The Pillow Book is now considered one of the pillars of Heian vernacular court literature, but unlike the Kokinshu, The Tales of Ise, and The Tale of Genji, which had been canonized by the thirteenth century, the Pillow Book was not a required text for waka poets and was neglected in the Heian and medieval periods. But it became popular with the new commoner audience in the Tokugawa period, and it has been read for its style, humor, and interesting lists.