AUTHOR: MURASAKI SHIKIBU
DATE: EARLY ELEVENTH CENTURY
The Tale of Genji is a work of fiction depicting life among the courtiers of Heian-era Japan, a period of high culture and political intrigue, where appearances mattered much. Its author, Murasaki Shikibu – a pen-name, her real name being unknown for certain – was herself a courtier, serving as lady-in-waiting to the Empress Consort Shoshi. Historical references show the work to have been completed by 1021 at the latest. The book’s original manuscript – written on lengths of paper joined together and folded like a concertina – no longer exists but the work is regularly cited as the world’s first novel. According to Nobel Prize-winning novelist Yasunari Kawabata: ‘The Tale of Genji in particular is the highest pinnacle of Japanese literature. Even down to our day there has not been a piece of fiction to compare with it.’
The book tells, first, the story of Hikaru Genji (‘the Shining Prince’), son of the Emperor Kiritsubo and one of his more lowly concubines, before moving on to the sagas of two of his descendants, Niou and Kaoru. The character of Genji is widely considered to have been based on one of the ministers at court at the time. It is a long book, coming in at some fifty-four chapters spread over well in excess of a thousand pages in English translation. The language, often lyrical and poetic, can be dense for the modern reader unused to Heian idioms. But it does not lack in compelling narrative drive. At its start, Genji falls victim to political manoeuvrings that see him stripped of his place in the line of succession. The narrative then follows the handsome and lusty protagonist (‘so beautiful that pairing him with the very finest of the ladies at the court would fail to do him justice’) as he embarks on life as an imperial officer, tracing his many romantic episodes and casting an eye over the customs, practices and foibles of the aristocratic milieu he inhabits. On one level, the book serves as something of a Jane Austen-esque read for fans of medieval Japan, but it also functions as a critique of Heian society and its purported obsession with outward appearances over inner morality.
Murasaki Shikibu (or ‘Lady Murasaki’, Murasaki meaning ‘Lavender’) shares a name with Genji’s principal romantic interest and is thought to have been born in the 970s into a minor branch of one of Japan’s most powerful families at the time, the Fujiwaras. Her father was probably a mid-ranking official who, rarely for the time, permitted the education of his daughter. She subsequently appears to have married an older man who already had other wives, and she only started writing after his death. Her rise to fame as a poet, however, was rapid and she soon found herself if not a central figure at court, at least a welcome interloper into high society. From her position at its fringes, and with her Buddhist-informed outlook, she bore witness to the schemes and plots, the affairs and flirtations, the break-ups and fallings-out that defined court life. And then she poured them into The Tale of Genji. Although, it should be noted, some scholars suggest that certain passages, differing in style and tone from the rest of the book, may have been the work of other writers. It has also been speculated that the book’s rather abrupt finale is an indication that it was unfinished.
In creating her masterpiece, Murasaki adopted many of those elements we associate with the modern novel. A central protagonist is vividly drawn with psychological depth, as are the leading members of a large supporting cast (numbering in the hundreds). The plot is episodic rather than progressive, but characters evolve in response to the action, and internal consistency is maintained throughout. Her themes, meanwhile, are emotionally engaging and dramatically tense. She explores, for instance, the nature of romantic love (including its disappointments), the inescapable pull of passing time and, not least, the sorrow that accompanies human existence. The prose style and certain structural features may be of their time (for instance, many characters are not named but are instead referred to by their social station or their function), but The Tale of Genji remains in key respects highly engaging and relevant for a modern audience.
GENRE-QUEEN
Murasaki Shikibu is renowned as the author of two other major works. First, a short collection of verse, The Poetic Memoirs, published around 1014. Then, The Diary of Lady Murasaki, a collection of diary entries written in the vernacular Japanese of the day and including letters and verse written during her time at court. It is here that we garner most of the biographical information known about her but also where one may read her critique of The Pillow Book’s author, Sei Shonagon. The Heian period was a golden age for Japanese women writers but it is clear that solidarity only went so far.
Although no original manuscript in Murasaki’s hand has survived, an ornate twelfth-century picture scroll illustrating scenes from the book is designated a ‘National Treasure’. The earliest extant manuscript was written by Fujiwara no Teika in the first half of the thirteenth century, at which time there were thought to have been a number of slightly differing versions of the book in circulation. The first English translation of sections of the book was completed by Suematsu Kenchō in 1882, but an almost full translation (by Arthur Waley) only appeared between 1925 and 1933. The first volume received a review in British Vogue from Virginia Woolf. She expressed wonder that Murasaki was ‘[gazing] from her lattice window at flowers which unfold themselves “like the lips of people smiling at their own thoughts”,’ while the ancestors of ‘Tolstoy or Cervantes or those other great story-tellers of the Western world … [were] fighting or squatting in their huts’. She continued:
All comparisons between Murasaki and the great Western writers serve but to bring out her perfection and their force. But it is a beautiful world; the quiet lady with all her breeding, her insight and her fun, is a perfect artist; and for years we shall be haunting her groves, watching her moons rise and her snow fall, hearing her wild geese cry and her flutes and lutes and flageolets tinkling and chiming, while the prince tastes and tries all the queer savours of life and dances so exquisitely that men weep, but never passes the bounds of decorum, or relaxes his search for something different, something finer, something withheld.
Jorge Luis Borges was another admirer, noting: ‘The Tale of Genji, as translated by Arthur Waley, is written with an almost miraculous naturalness, and what interests us is not the exoticism – the horrible word – but rather the human passions of the novel. Such interest is just: Murasaki’s work is what one would quite precisely call a psychological novel.’