1 00:00:16,500 --> 00:00:21,899 Welcome. I'm Sally Shuttleworth and I'm here to introduce a further episode in our podcast series, 2 00:00:21,900 --> 00:00:26,160 brought to you by The Sleep and the Rhythms of Life Network of the University of Oxford. 3 00:00:27,090 --> 00:00:29,430 This time we'll be extending our horizons, 4 00:00:29,700 --> 00:00:37,380 reaching back in time and also across the globe as anxieties about sleep and our own culture become more pressing. 5 00:00:38,160 --> 00:00:44,790 Interest in sleep in other periods and cultures as growth is sleep the same worldwide and across time periods, 6 00:00:45,090 --> 00:00:51,630 or rather different cultural practices and attitudes to sleep at various historical periods and in diverse cultures. 7 00:00:52,230 --> 00:00:58,980 With me to discuss these issues. Operator. Stagger, associate professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Cambridge, 8 00:00:59,250 --> 00:01:05,700 who studies sleep both in contemporary Japan, including in tsunamis, shelters and in much earlier periods. 9 00:01:06,060 --> 00:01:14,250 And also Meghan Leech, Reader in English Literature at Cardiff University and author of a book on sleep and its spaces in medieval English literature. 10 00:01:14,700 --> 00:01:20,220 Brigitta is an editor of six volume book series on the cultural history of sleep and dreaming, 11 00:01:20,430 --> 00:01:24,780 for which Meccan is editing a volume, but I believe they've not met before today. 12 00:01:25,230 --> 00:01:33,809 I look forward to a lively conversation. Perhaps we can start with the general question of whether learning about attitudes to sleep and sleep, 13 00:01:33,810 --> 00:01:42,000 practices of earlier periods and non-European cultures can help us to understand and respond to the current issues around sleep, 14 00:01:42,120 --> 00:01:45,750 which seem to be plaguing our society. Thank you very much. 15 00:01:45,810 --> 00:01:53,460 Uh, I think one of the most important messages perhaps we get from the study of pre-modern and also 16 00:01:53,610 --> 00:01:59,700 other cultures sleep habits is that we are not the only ones who have troubles with sleep. 17 00:02:00,120 --> 00:02:06,659 Actually, even thousand years ago, or perhaps longer, people had troubles falling asleep. 18 00:02:06,660 --> 00:02:11,370 They had various reasons for not sleeping, and they had to deal with this. 19 00:02:11,700 --> 00:02:16,530 Absolutely, yeah. Um, I would very much agree with Brigitta that we can learn a lot from the past. 20 00:02:16,560 --> 00:02:20,850 Um, that might be reassuring for us that, you know, we're not the only ones dealing with troubled sleep. 21 00:02:21,150 --> 00:02:27,780 I think we can also, um, learn other things from from past sleeping practices that might help us with our troubled sleep. 22 00:02:27,780 --> 00:02:34,259 Perhaps, um, at a time when the World Health Organisation has been warning that industrialised societies are living through, 23 00:02:34,260 --> 00:02:40,440 uh, a sleep loss epidemic. And it's only been worsened, perhaps, by the disruptions of the Covid 19 pandemic. 24 00:02:40,860 --> 00:02:47,069 What might be gained by by turning to societies that organise the rhythms of their lives differently, 25 00:02:47,070 --> 00:02:56,520 that didn't have electric light and screens, and 24 seven culture and the productivity paradigm shaping experience in quite the same way. 26 00:02:56,520 --> 00:03:02,550 If we, um, turn to the the Middle Ages, which Brigitta and I both work on and think about. 27 00:03:03,470 --> 00:03:08,870 How people slept in and thought about sleep at a time when darkness meant something different. 28 00:03:09,170 --> 00:03:18,320 Yeah, I think one of the things we have to bear in mind that even though people didn't have electric light, there were always means of lightning. 29 00:03:18,470 --> 00:03:23,240 Yeah, that night, even thousand years ago, especially in Japan. 30 00:03:25,100 --> 00:03:33,390 And I have been studying, particularly what would be medieval times, where we have quite a lot of literature, mainly written by women. 31 00:03:33,410 --> 00:03:41,120 So this is actually quite an interesting historical topic because we have the female perspective on sleep habits rather than male perspective. 32 00:03:41,510 --> 00:03:46,370 And we know that there was a lot of nightlife, especially at court, of course. 33 00:03:46,370 --> 00:03:54,769 So people were getting up at night, people were on night duty because the emperor was sleeping, that it admired the moon, that it to have festivals. 34 00:03:54,770 --> 00:04:02,750 They did have other events that did have prayers, so the night was not quite as limited to sleep. 35 00:04:03,820 --> 00:04:10,270 Everyone was just sleeping it. Yeah, absolutely. It's so interesting to think about the cultural differences, isn't it? 36 00:04:10,270 --> 00:04:13,239 But also the differences of class, occupation, gender and that sort of thing. 37 00:04:13,240 --> 00:04:20,319 We can't universalise about a past sleeping experience any more than we can universalise about people's sleeping experiences today, right? 38 00:04:20,320 --> 00:04:23,660 It's so varied. Yeah, I really enjoyed your book. 39 00:04:23,680 --> 00:04:32,590 And maybe. Thank you very much. Tell us a little bit more about how, uh, sleep is not only described as, uh, for the sleep habits, 40 00:04:32,770 --> 00:04:40,990 what people did, but also used as a register to tell other messages about moral issues, about ethics and so on. 41 00:04:41,470 --> 00:04:47,620 Yeah, the the politics of sleep depend on the culture in which they read, um, naps, for instance. 42 00:04:47,680 --> 00:04:54,100 Nowadays, we would tend to think of a nap as a good thing if we can get one, um, that's added to our overall sleep quantity. 43 00:04:54,100 --> 00:04:59,020 But in the later medieval period and in Western Europe, naps were very much frowned upon. 44 00:04:59,110 --> 00:05:03,729 Um, in northern Europe in particular. Um, so again, cultures come into this. 45 00:05:03,730 --> 00:05:11,170 It's it's very different in the siesta cultures of the, the medieval Mediterranean where geography, um, 46 00:05:11,170 --> 00:05:19,270 as well as sort of cultural habits, suggested that people should sleep for an hour or two in the middle of the day after the midday meal. 47 00:05:19,750 --> 00:05:29,290 Um, but in northern north western Europe, um, including England, people were instead instructed not to sleep during the day. 48 00:05:29,590 --> 00:05:36,070 They were instructed in church sermons and manuals of health, called diaries and regimens that they read. 49 00:05:36,370 --> 00:05:41,979 Um people were even instructed that if they had to take a midday nap, they should do so standing, 50 00:05:41,980 --> 00:05:46,720 leaning against a cupboard or sitting upright in a chair if you're still exerting. 51 00:05:46,750 --> 00:05:53,350 Um, and I think equally importantly, from the perspective of that society, still performing a degree of, of temperance, 52 00:05:53,350 --> 00:05:59,650 a degree of self-control, so that other people can see, um, that you've still got some bodily decorum in that context. 53 00:06:00,010 --> 00:06:06,940 Yeah. I think the bodily decorum, especially during daytime, is a very important aspect in especially, 54 00:06:07,510 --> 00:06:13,419 uh, English culture, but also European culture, but well also in Japan in, in some ways. 55 00:06:13,420 --> 00:06:19,180 So, uh, midday naps were common, were actually quite useful, but they're not often talked about. 56 00:06:19,180 --> 00:06:23,530 But if they are talked about, it's about how good people are looking. 57 00:06:25,200 --> 00:06:28,109 How beautiful this princess is. 58 00:06:28,110 --> 00:06:39,630 Or this court lady in her very thin clothes, or sometimes how ugly elderly people are who are taking a nap so it can be a judgement to it. 59 00:06:39,750 --> 00:06:46,310 There is quite some judgement. It's not about being lazy and actually afternoon. 60 00:06:46,510 --> 00:06:55,830 You'd never have anything scheduled at the court, for instance, so we can infer that probably this afternoon's sleep was very common. 61 00:06:58,420 --> 00:07:02,590 I think one of the questions is what causes people not being able to sleep? 62 00:07:02,770 --> 00:07:09,880 Yeah. Yeah. And that's something that people have been worrying about as he started off by saying for a very, very long time and yeah. 63 00:07:09,940 --> 00:07:16,270 Yeah, well, we've just been discussing, um, people sleeping during the day, you know, how they might go about that, whether they should or not. 64 00:07:16,330 --> 00:07:23,830 Um, and of course, yeah. I guess one thing I would add in on that topic, uh, maybe just before we move on to to Night-Time strategies, 65 00:07:23,830 --> 00:07:30,790 is that I think the, the survival in the written records, which are what I deal with from medieval England, 66 00:07:30,790 --> 00:07:36,309 the survival of so many injunctions against midday naps very much suggests that the naps were indeed happening, 67 00:07:36,310 --> 00:07:40,240 even if they weren't supposed to, even if this was seen as something slothful and idle, all that sort of thing. 68 00:07:40,540 --> 00:07:45,880 Um, the you know that the priests and the other powers that be wouldn't be spending so much breath. 69 00:07:46,060 --> 00:07:53,770 Um, and and text and ink, um, on trying to stamp it out if it wasn't something that people were doing anyway. 70 00:07:54,040 --> 00:07:58,810 I think, yeah. Especially what they call, uh, church sleep in, in Germany. 71 00:07:58,850 --> 00:08:10,480 Yeah, that was a hugely debated topic, mainly maybe 16th century when the the sermons got longer and, uh, the commoners also joined and had seating. 72 00:08:10,780 --> 00:08:21,760 Yeah. Opportunities in the, in the church. Yeah. So this was hugely debated because your soul could not be rescued if you would fall asleep. 73 00:08:29,260 --> 00:08:36,370 One of the things I've been looking forward to discussing with you, um, Bushy Tail, is sort of, um, night-time sleeping rhythms, 74 00:08:36,550 --> 00:08:44,080 because I know you've been doing some really interesting research that might be qualifying the paradigm that we've had for the past couple of decades, 75 00:08:44,080 --> 00:08:50,739 isn't it? Um, since Roger Eckert, uh, published a book on knights in the pre-modern world, um, 76 00:08:50,740 --> 00:08:58,720 and this idea of biphasic sleep or sleeping in two intervals that he suggested is, is how people in pre-modern Europe, 77 00:08:58,930 --> 00:09:04,360 um, in particular, tended to sleep, sleeping for several hours, perhaps, and then waking up, um, 78 00:09:04,360 --> 00:09:10,060 and perhaps getting up to do something else, or lying there pondering and then falling asleep again. 79 00:09:10,270 --> 00:09:19,120 The idea of that biphasic sleep is often premised on the fact that night time may have been longer at a time before we had electric light, 80 00:09:19,120 --> 00:09:24,460 so you might go to bed earlier when it gets dark. Um, and spend longer in bed, but not necessarily longer asleep. 81 00:09:25,060 --> 00:09:29,830 But you've been going back to those records and, um. Yeah, finding something quite new, haven't you? 82 00:09:29,860 --> 00:09:35,379 Uh, well, I think that in the 18th century, about what a coach is doing, his research, 83 00:09:35,380 --> 00:09:41,350 people might have used the term for sleep in the way he's, uh, uh, analysing it. 84 00:09:41,350 --> 00:09:46,780 But if you go back further to, uh, it's actually a Latin expression. 85 00:09:47,080 --> 00:09:52,810 And the first sleep doesn't mean the first period of sleep, but it means to sleep when people went to bed. 86 00:09:52,840 --> 00:09:57,700 So it's it's a time unit rather than a unit of, uh, of sleep. 87 00:09:57,790 --> 00:10:06,710 Yeah. So that means it's about depending on the time of the year, about 10:00 in the evening, 9:00 in the evening when people first went to sleep. 88 00:10:06,730 --> 00:10:10,660 Yeah. People obviously often woke up at night. 89 00:10:10,690 --> 00:10:14,530 Yeah, as we do today. And they, uh, sometimes worried about it. 90 00:10:14,530 --> 00:10:24,939 Sometimes they just, uh, admire the moon or or talk to each other or just took it for granted or went to the toilet or, uh, whatever reason they had. 91 00:10:24,940 --> 00:10:32,889 But it was not a clear, biphasic sleep. Yeah. So I think the, the expression first sleep and, and second sleep is not very common, 92 00:10:32,890 --> 00:10:38,410 but first sleep is actually a legend expression for a time of the evening. 93 00:10:38,410 --> 00:10:40,420 Yeah. When people normally went to sleep. 94 00:10:43,570 --> 00:10:50,799 It's really interesting because there has been so much interest in, you know, in the 21st century in that idea of biphasic sleep, right? 95 00:10:50,800 --> 00:10:56,590 Is, um, something that people have thought of as perhaps an answer to their difficulty sleeping, to their insomnia. 96 00:10:57,010 --> 00:11:05,620 Um, or at least, uh, sort of frees people from the idea or the expectation of sleeping in one continuous eight hour chunk, 97 00:11:05,830 --> 00:11:11,830 which is what we think of as the aim now. And, um, we think of as sort of natural rather than cultural. 98 00:11:12,160 --> 00:11:20,290 Uh, right. But I suppose positing that idea of biphasic sleep, um, like I coached it, gave people a different way of understanding it, 99 00:11:20,290 --> 00:11:26,320 that perhaps it isn't, um, something where it all needs to be continuous in this one chunk. 100 00:11:26,680 --> 00:11:32,799 Um, in an eight hour period that we've squished as narrow as possible with our use of electricity and that sort of thing, 101 00:11:32,800 --> 00:11:37,240 and to try and have as much a time for, you know, being productive or being alert. 102 00:11:37,810 --> 00:11:45,820 Um, but but perhaps, um, in light of your research, um, but you so we can nuance that further and just think, 103 00:11:45,820 --> 00:11:51,580 you know, perhaps discontinuous sleep rather than biphasic sleep, uh, is something that we might replace that with. 104 00:11:51,880 --> 00:11:58,930 Uh, yeah. I think, you know, some people sleep in one chunk, some people sleep in, in several, uh, periods. 105 00:11:58,930 --> 00:12:07,680 And I think what we can learn really, from the historical work is we shouldn't worry too much about having any specific way of sleeping. 106 00:12:07,690 --> 00:12:18,760 Yeah. Uh, and, uh, uh, then, you know, uh, I mean, lots of, lots of our sleep habits actually develop from the logic of our overall life. 107 00:12:18,910 --> 00:12:26,590 And that, of course, this logic of our life can be different depending on our jobs, depending on gender, age and so on. 108 00:12:26,980 --> 00:12:33,460 Uh, and, uh, what we learn, especially from the Japanese, uh, uh, sources of 2000 years ago, 109 00:12:33,850 --> 00:12:38,429 is that you have a lot of emotional reasons also for not sleeping. 110 00:12:38,430 --> 00:12:48,450 Yeah. And, uh, that's to bring it back to, to more contemporary issues in Japan has probably has been widely broadcast as in 2011 and, 111 00:12:48,460 --> 00:12:53,770 uh, March 11th, there was, uh, huge earthquake and tsunami. 112 00:12:53,770 --> 00:12:57,280 And then of course, also Fukushima, the nuclear accident. 113 00:12:58,240 --> 00:13:07,270 And during that time I went to Japan and I, uh, had the opportunity to stay at the shelter and, uh, study how people dealt, 114 00:13:07,660 --> 00:13:15,130 uh, in their daily lives from living in a shelter, sharing their sleeping place, their eating place and everything. 115 00:13:15,460 --> 00:13:20,710 And, um, so I think I was the only researcher who actually stayed in the shelter. 116 00:13:20,710 --> 00:13:25,840 And this was only thanks to the priest who who invited me as a guest. 117 00:13:25,840 --> 00:13:36,040 So I talked to people about, uh, you know, about their daily experiences and to see what helped them to sleep again, what interrupted the sleep. 118 00:13:36,100 --> 00:13:40,690 Also prepare us what we can do to improve sleep in these situations. 119 00:13:40,810 --> 00:13:44,500 And then people are having to to try to sleep, you know, both in a, 120 00:13:44,500 --> 00:13:48,850 in a space that is very much not their own and without the comforts they might be used to, 121 00:13:48,850 --> 00:13:52,929 but also while worrying about having perhaps lost everything that was their own. 122 00:13:52,930 --> 00:14:03,969 Right. You know, uh, the way how they, we learned how to sleep was little things like having certainties in little daily rituals, 123 00:14:03,970 --> 00:14:10,210 like how to cook, you know, uh, having a little challenge of to get all this, uh, donations of food. 124 00:14:10,360 --> 00:14:19,960 What, what would they cook for the whole group or or cleaning and doing whatever they needed to do to make the shelter also a nice place. 125 00:14:20,560 --> 00:14:24,040 Uh, just this year, we had another big earthquake. 126 00:14:24,540 --> 00:14:30,809 Again in Japan. So unfortunately, there's not something, uh, that goes out of date. 127 00:14:30,810 --> 00:14:35,250 So we we still have to deal with this situation. And there's so many disasters in the world. 128 00:14:35,250 --> 00:14:43,070 And I think to understand, uh, what we do with in the disaster can actually help us also to understand sleep. 129 00:14:43,080 --> 00:14:48,000 So you need security to sleep, right, to to fall asleep, to sort of give in to unconsciousness in that sort of way. 130 00:14:48,000 --> 00:15:01,970 You need to, to not feel vulnerable in your surroundings. My thanks to Brigitta Staker and Megan Leach for a fascinating conversation. 131 00:15:03,530 --> 00:15:11,630 This podcast is a feast. Collective production. The producer is Ruth Abrahams, with music by Madeline Morris and Melissa Holding. 132 00:15:12,350 --> 00:15:17,660 Do look out for our next podcast. You can also catch up with previous episodes in this series.