With these few lines of remarkable self-awareness, the author of this di-ary, a woman of a thousand years ago known to us only as Michitsuna'sMother (936-95?), declares her purpose in writing about her life. Her textis part of a corpus of distinguished literary texts by women in the Heianperiod (794-1185). The texts of this corpus, including The Tale of Genji,Izumi Shikibu Diary, Murasaki Shikibu Diary, The Pillow Book ofSei Shona-gon, and Sarashina Diary,2 established the foundation for classical Japanese prose. That the writing of women played such an important role inthe creation of a national literary tradition is certainly an anomaly in worldliterary history. Kagero Diary is one of the first of these foundation textsby women and therefore deserves special interest as a pioneering work.Moreover, it is fascinating how relevant this text is to issues of women'swriting in a contemporary global context.Examined closely, there are many things in the diary's openingstatement to catch the attention of someone attuned to contemporary liter-ary discussions about the nature of autobiography and the possibility of afemale voice in literature. One of the first things one notices is that theauthor sets out to record her own life as a sort of antiromance. She makesreference to all the old tales (in Japanese, monogatari) that "are just somuch fantasy.