Sacred Rites in MoonlightBen no Naishi (12281270), a descendant of a literary branch of the Fujiwara family, created an innovative poetic account focusing on her public personae as a naishi serving at the court of Go Fukakusa (r. 12461259). Traditional scholarship regards Ben no Naishi Nikki as a naive record of court minutiae written without any literary purpose, but Ben no Naishi's text is constructed consciously by her devotion to sacred and secular duties as naishi