those described in it. When her life does not turn out as well as she had hoped, she blames her addiction to tales, which made her live in a fantasy world and neglect her spiritual growth. These records are impressive memories of Lady Sarashina’s travel and dreams, and of her day-to-day life. She spent her youth living at her father's house. In her thirties she married Tachibana Toshimichi, a government official, and from time to time seems to have served at court. At the end of her memoirs she expresses her deep grief at her husband's death. Heian literature conventionally expresses sorrow at the shortness of life, but Lady Sarashina conveys her pain and regrets at the loss of those she has loved with passionate directness. She stopped writing at some time in her fifties and no details about her own death are known. Lady Sarashina's birth name is unknown, and she is called either Takasue's daughter or Lady Sarashina. Sarashina is a geographical district never mentioned in the diary, but it is alluded to, in a reference to Mount Obasute, also known as Mount Sarashina, in one of the book's poems (itself an adaptation of a more ancient poem). This, and the fact that her husband's last appointment was to the province of Shinano (Nagano), probably led to the use by later scholars of "Sarashina" as a point of identification of the text and its author. Although the term ‘nikki’ means ‘diary’ in English’, there is a discourse whether the Sarashina Nikki should be classified as a ‘diary’ or as other forms of literature, mainly ‘journal’ or ‘memoir’. The reason is because the content of Sarashina Nikki does not perfectly fit to the term ‘diary’ in English, which it is most commonly understood as private daily records of events. Rather than a diary with daily entries, Sarashina Nikki recorded mainly emotional events and poetic correspondences. She also left out or did not elaborate much of the events that would be normally incorporated in a ‘diary’, such as accounts of the author’s marriage, the births of her children, or her own family connections. This diary consists largely of Lady Sarashina’s struggle with romance, written in the form of prose and poetry. The prose focused on the narration of events, scenery, or retrospective reflection, while the poetry had a central emotional element and acted as a secondary narrative. Themes consisted of