Reading The Tale of Genji

Sources from the First Millennium

Thomas Harper, Haruo Shirane

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780231537209
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Asian Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The Tale of Genji, written one thousand years ago, is a masterpiece of Japanese literature, is often regarded as the best prose fiction in the language. Read, commented on, and reimagined by poets, scholars, dramatists, artists, and novelists, the tale has left a legacy as rich and reflective as the work itself.

This sourcebook is the most comprehensive record of the reception of The Tale of Genji to date. It presents a range of landmark texts relating to the work during its first millennium, almost all of which are translated into English for the first time. An introduction prefaces each set of documents, situating them within the tradition of Japanese literature and cultural history. These texts provide a fascinating glimpse into Japanese views of literature, poetry, imperial politics, and the place of art and women in society. Selections include an imagined conversation among court ladies gossiping about their favorite characters and scenes in Genji; learned exegetical commentary; a vigorous debate over the morality of Genji; and an impassioned defense of Genji 's ability to enhance Japan's standing among the twentieth century's community of nations. Taken together, these documents reflect Japan's fraught history with vernacular texts, particularly those written by women.

Chapter 1

Early Discussions of Fiction

THE IMPACT OF THE TALE OF GENJI on its first readers, and their responses to it, can be fully appreciated only within the context of the romances or tales (monogatari) they were reading before the appearance of Genji and what was being said about them, by both their devotees and their detractors. Only three prose fictions of any length survive from the century before Genji: The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (Taketori monogatari), The Tale of the Hollow Tree (Utsuho monogatari), and The Tale of the Lady in the Lower Room (Ochikubo monogatari). That such tales abounded we know from the many titles mentioned here and there, but none of the texts survive.¹ The same is true of readers’ reactions. We catch only brief glimpses of women copying tales and gossiping about them. In the end, however, it is Murasaki Shikibu herself who gives us the clearest and most discursive picture of the literary landscape of which Genji was to become a part. In chapter 17, “Eawase,” she describes a matching of old romances and tales, similar, perhaps, to something she herself may have witnessed. In chapter 25, “Hotaru,” she sets forth, in the guise of Genji lecturing his ward Tamakazura, what are generally taken to be her own views of fiction and its possibilities. And in her diary, she describes the making of the first bound volumes of Genji, as well as the reactions of Fujiwara no Michinaga (966–1027), the patron who financed the project, and of the Ichijō Emperor (980–1011; r. 986–1011) to whom it was presented. Few though they may be, these documents sketch a court in which tales of the fantastic—of a princess sent to Earth as an exile from the moon, of a young man raised in the hollow of a tree who eventually marries the emperor’s first daughter—formed the principal fare of readers. Then suddenly there appeared a tale—The Tale of Genji—that depicted a known world, and did so with a compelling sense of reality that readers had never before seen. Their reactions to this startling phenomenon, and the preconceptions in which they are rooted, are described in the documents translated in this chapter.

One problem that arises in discussing, in English at least, the development of prose fiction in Japan is that the terminology used in Japanese is only partially congruent with that used in the West. In both cases, a long and revered tradition of “classical” literature forms the background against which vernacular prose fictions evolve—in Japan, the Chinese classics; and in the West, Greek and Roman. Nor are the new genres greatly dissimilar: both are constituted of tales of the marvelous and the improbable, the absurd and the ideal. In the West, it was language itself that gave this new genre its name. Fictions were first called “romances” because they were written in (or translated into) the vernacular “romance languages” rather than Latin or Greek. In Japan, they were called “tales”—literally, “talk of things”—a word that refers here to the act of oral storytelling but in other contexts may denote “chat” or even the “babbling” of babies. If this were all there was to it, the writer of English could simply translate monogatari as either “romance” or “tale,” the former emphasizing origins in the vernacular as well as similarity of subject matter and the latter, the orality of the narration. But further developments in the “progress of romance”² make the choice more complex. In both Japan and the West, these tales of worlds that might have been if dreams came true gave way to representations of known worlds such as those in which their readers actually lived. In Europe, the realist turn is conventionally dated to the appearance of Don Quixote, and in Japan, needless to say, to Genji.

The great difference between the two traditions is that in Europe the realist turn marked the rise of a genre of fiction so new, and eventually so voluminous, that it seemed to require a new name: novella, nouvelle, novel.³ In Japan, Genji so overwhelms its predecessors that it has no successors; there is no need for a new word because there is only one work of such towering novelty. The novelty itself was as clearly recognized in Japan as it was in Europe. The “old romances,” as they came to be called in English, became furu-monogatari or mukashi monogatari in Japan. The author of the Kagerō Diary (Kagerō nikki) complains bitterly of their shortcomings, and Murasaki Shikibu herself distinguishes old from new with complete clarity in the “Hotaru” chapter of Genji. Yet The Tale of Genji continues to be called a monogatari along with its far more fanciful forebears of the same name. Therefore, when discussing Genji in English, I am reluctant to call it a “novel” when no comparable term exists in Japanese. Neither is it a “romance.” Although acceptable in the title, “tale” is less than ideal as a generic designation, for it fails to suggest any quality that would distinguish Genji from its predecessors. Another approach to the problem is not to translate monogatari at all but instead to attempt to force the word into the English language, as has been done with haiku and nō and even hiragana. But haiku and nō and hiragana have a far stronger claim to naturalization, for there are no even remotely comparable terms in English that might serve to translate them. Monogatari is not untranslatable. To use it as if it were is only to evade the issue, and risks implicating whatever one has to say in a welter of ideological and ahistorical claims for the “non-novelistic” narratological uniqueness of all Japanese works that bear the name.⁴ In the end, then, a conservative compromise seems to be the least problematic solution. In this volume, furu-monogatari and mukashi monogatari are translated as “old romances”; references to monogatari other than Genji are rendered as either “romance” or “tale,” depending on which seems more appropriate to the work in question; and Genji itself is always, as its readers termed it, a “tale.”

T. HARPER

KAGERŌ DIARY, CA. 974

(Kagerō nikki)

THE MOTHER OF MICHITSUNA

This prologue to the Kagerō Diary records the first surviving objection to “the old romances” (furu-monogatari) on the grounds of their remoteness from the reality of the reader’s own life.⁵ The same objection is voiced by Tamakazura in The Tale of Genji itself, and no doubt other readers harbored similar feelings. But the author of the Kagerō Diary—a woman we know only as “the Mother of Michitsuna” (935–995)—not only voiced her objection but then wrote a memoir of her own life in as unidealized a manner as she could. Paradoxically, the prologue begins as if it were itself another “old romance” but soon settles down into an unvarnished account of her experience of marriage to a “man of the highest rank.” It is highly likely that Murasaki Shikibu read this memoir, and it may well have served as an example to her of the hitherto unexplored possibilities of prose fiction.

T. HARPER

The times, such as these have been, have passed, and there was one who lived through them, uncertain as they were, with nothing to which she could cling. Even her looks were not the equal of others’, nor was she particularly bright. It was only natural, she thought, that she should be as useless as she was. Yet as the days passed with nothing to do but live through them and she looked into some of the old romances, of which there were so many about, all of them laden with all the same old lies, it occurred to her that it might be interesting to describe in a diary even the lot of someone of no consequence. Life with a man of the highest rank, you ask? Here’s an example! But those bygone years are now but a blur, so there are many places where, well, that will just have to do.

TRANSLATED BY T. HARPER

EARLIER COLLECTED POEMS OF THE GREAT KAMO PRIESTESS, CA. 983

(Dai Sai’in saki no gyoshū)

PRINCESS SENSHI

The following is a brief sampling from a collection of 394 poems compiled by Princess Senshi (964–1035), a daughter of the Murakami Emperor (926–967; r. 946–967).⁶ She is known as the Great Kamo Priestess (Dai Sai’in) because she served in that position through five imperial reigns, from 975 until she was finally allowed to retire in 1031, a total of fifty-seven years. Several collections of her poetry survive. This one is particularly notable for its glimpses into the daily lives of the princess and her retinue, as well as their literary activities, such as poetry competitions (uta-awase), the copying of tales, and the appointment of the princess’s ladies-in-waiting to positions in the fanciful “Bureau of Poetry” (Uta no Tsukasa) and “Bureau of Romances” (Monogatari no Tsukasa).

T. HARPER

On about the twentieth day,⁷ when Her Highness promoted the Deputy Director to Director of the Bureau of Poetry, the new Deputy Director said:

mi wa naredo sakidatazarishi hana nareba / kotakaki e ni zo oyobazarikeru

Though it has borne fruit, never has this flower been one to lead the way,

nor, therefore, shall it ever bloom upon a branch so high.

When she said this, Her Highness replied:

shizueda to itaku na wabi so sue no yo wa / kotakaki mi ni zo narimasarubeki

Pray lament not so the lowliness of the branch upon which you bloom,

for in times to come, surely you shall fruit high in the tree.

After these bureaus had been established, when it was suggested that the Deputy Director of the B...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents 
• Illustrations
• Abbreviations and Periods of Japanese History
• Chapter Titles of The Tale of Genji
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Early Discussions of Fiction
• Chapter 2 Genji Gossip (Plus a Bit of Good Advice)
• Chapter 3 Toward Canonization
• Chapter 4 Obsequies for Genji
• Chapter 5 The Tale of Genji Apocrypha
• Chapter 6 Medieval Commentary
• Chapter 7 Edo-Period Treatises
• Chapter 8 Modern Reception
• Index