My Year of Meats

Ozeki frequently opens her chapters with epigrams from Shōnagon, a 10th-century Japanese court poet and diarist who wrote in the Heian period. Shōnagon is best known as the author of The Pillow Book, a collection of diary entries, poems, lists, and reflections recorded as she served the court of Empress Consort Teishi (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Sei Shōnagon.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 24 Jan. 2017, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sei-Shonagon). Noted for its intimacy and candor, Shōnagon’s work connects to Jane’s artistic identity as a documentarian filmmaker. Like Shōnagon, Jane shapes raw material into art and reflects on the specific experiences of women’s lives with wit, candor, and vision. 

Perhaps the most prominent color in this book is pink. It is often used to signify a state of being in between. For example, Akiko sees a little girl wearing a pink snowsuit. The pink calls attention to the girl’s place in life; she is not a brand-new baby but also not elderly, thus it places her somewhere in the middle. In another scene Suzie Flowers and her husband are poised to kiss over a “pink shag rug” (29). The fact that they are kept in this position, not apart but not together, once again connects pink to a place in between.