Kagerō Nikki instance of diary
Kagerō Nikki (蜻蛉日記, The Mayfly Diary) is a work of classical Japanese literature, written around 974, that falls under the genre of nikki bungaku, or diary literature. The author of Kagerō Nikki was a woman known only as the Mother of Michitsuna. Using a combination of waka poems and prose, she conveys the life of a noblewoman during the Heian period.
In English Kagerō Nikki is often called The Gossamer Years, which is the title given to the first English translation by Edward Seidensticker.  The term kagerō has three possible meanings: it may mean a mayfly; a heat wave; or a thin film of cobweb, which is the meaning proposed by the English Orientalist Arthur Waley.Story
Sonja Arntzen argued that the work also functions as a record of the death of Michitsuna’s Mother’s marriage and her struggle to find a reason for living. Kagerō Nikki unfolds around the principal relationship between Michitsuna’s Mother and her husband, Fujiwara no Kaneie, while also placing a hefty emphasis on the author’s other social relationships, such that between herself, her son, and later on her adopted daughter.  The diary entries detail events of particular emotional significance, such as when Kaneie visits other women while she stays at home taking care of their son ("the boy"). The Mother of Michitsuna's deep feelings for Kaneie are apparent in the way her words take on a tone of inner anguish as Kaneie's visits dwindle.
In an attempt to find solace, the Mother of Michitsuna makes pilgrimages to temples and mountains of religious importance. She often expresses her desire to become a nun, but the effect that act would have on her son’s future plagues her mind and prevents her from ever taking Buddhist vows. Towards the end of the diary, she finally reconciles herself to her separation from Kaneie, and determines to devote herself to caring for her son and her adopted daughter.
The story ends with Michitsuna’s mother watching the festival of the souls’ return in the new year, and she hears a knock on her door during the late night. The visitor’s identity is never disclosed in the work.Style
Kagerō Nikki is said to be a diary, but it is "written in a mixture of styles; the first half characterized more by memoir, the latter half by day-to-day entry." The amount of time that passes between events is sometimes weeks or months.
The Mother of Michitsuna is credited with creating "a new form of self-expression and psychological exploration that expanded the potential of kana prose writing and influenced subsequent woman's writing, including The Tale of Genji." She achieves this raw, intimate expression by exploiting the first-person point of view allowed by the diary genre. Edward Seidensticker characterized the diary as “a remarkably frank personal confession” that describes “a disturbed state of mind.”  Donald Keene has described Kagerō Nikki as “a self-portrait devastating in its honesty,”  one “written passionately and without a thought to how readers might judge her actions.” Another characteristic of the work is the unique way in which the author labels people in her life. For example, in one entry she writes "that 'splendid' personage of Machi Alley" when referring to the woman with whom Kaneie is having an affair. The sarcastic tone reflects the author’s attitude to the person in question: "This method of labeling people shows how very egocentric she was in her dealings with others, defining them solely in relationship to herself."On the other hand, Sonja Arntzen argued in her 1997 translation that Michitsuna’s Mother “contributed a realistic mode of writing to Japanese prose” and highlights the psychological sophistication shown in Kagerō Nikki that recognizes the mutability of mental states and memories. Arntzen also praised Kagerō Nikki for its “awareness of the fictiveness of her [Michitsuna’s Mother] telling” and described the style of the work as resembling a “stream of consciousness”.
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