When Nagaiko is a little girl, her family enacts a particular ritual on her birthday. First her father paints her name on her face, teling her the myth of how the gods brought the first clay people to life by giving them names. Then he goes and has his annual meeting with his publisher, something which turns out to be as humiliating as it is beneficial. When Naigaiko is an adult (played by Vivian Wu) she yearns not only to be a writer herself, but to find a lover who will paint on her body.

In her search she learns about her own interest in body painting. It is the attitude of the calligrapher, for Naigaiko rejects “scribblers,” and his reverence for the act. It does not matter to her if the lines form Arabic love poetry or Chinese mathematics, it is the experience and exchange of being part of the calligraphy. She first meets Jerome one evening at her favorite club, interested in his multi-lingual translation. She induces him to write on her in three languages but declares his writing on her chest to be mere scribbling. Her counters by offering his own body as her paper, asking her to teach him. She leaves. When they next meet again, he has learned two more languages and she takes him home with her, to paint and write on him.

Nagaiko and Jerome become lovers and her offers to put in a good word with his publisher for her. She learns that Jerome’s publisher is also his lover, and the same man who both published and humiliated her own father. Nagaiko sends Jerome to the publisher with the first of her series of “books” painted on his skin.

The Agenda The Book of the Innocent The Book of the Idiot The Book of Impotence The Book of the Exhibitionist The Book of the Lover The Book of Youth The Book of the Seducer The Book of Secrets The Book of Silence The Book of the Betrayed The Book of Births and Beginnings The Book of the Dead

Nagaiko becomes jealous of Jerome’s relationship as the publisher’s lover, and he becomes angry when he learns she has been body painting on other men. Their emotional turmoil comes to a violent head, and causes both the publisher and Nagaiko to take extreme measures.

The use of words in The Pillow Book is on many levels. Multiple languages are used by the cast, words are painted on bodies, float across the screen and appear on virtually any surface of the sets. The body painting is elegant, executed crisply in primarily black ink with red or gold highlights. The male bodies used for the books vary in age, size, shape and aesthetic, reflecting the tones and qualities of the calligraphy and message of each different volume.

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