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In a list titled "Elegant Things" from Sei Shōnagon's _Pillow Book_, the author delights in a violet waistcoat, wisteria blossoms, and a child eating strawberries. Such lists, observed sharply yet simply by Shōnagon, who served as a lady-in-waiting to Empress Teishi in the tenth century, ______ the daily minutiae of Japanese courtly life.