Murasaki Shikibu (c. 978–c. 1014) was a Japanese poet, novelist, and diarist whose book The Tale of Genji was one of the first novels ever written. The book is thought to have been published in 1008; its 1,000th anniversary in 2008 brought renewed attention to the work, which is considered a landmark of world literature and the Japanese language.
Born in Kyoto, the capital of imperial Japan, the author was a member of a noble family and became a lady-in-waiting to the empress. Murasaki received what was, at the time, an unusually extensive education for a Japanese woman from her father, a senior imperial official. It is thought that she began writing the novel after the death of her husband, Fujiwara Nobutaka, in 1001.
The Tale of Genji tells the story of Genji, the son of the emperor, and his many love affairs. It involves hundreds of characters, several different settings in Japan, and a span of several decades. The book lacks many familiar features of a novel—such as a plot with a climactic ending—and is incomprehensible to modern Japanese speakers due to the formal, archaic language Murasaki used. Adding to the confusion, Murasaki generally did not use proper names, since calling a person by his or her name was considered insulting in Japan at the time she was writing. (The author’s own name is unknown; Murasaki Shikibu was a nickname.)
In addition to The Tale of Genji, Murasaki wrote dozens of poems and a diary that provided an important historical record of everyday life and customs in Heianperiod Japan, an era from roughly 794 to 1185. The diary ends in about 1010; Murasaki died four years later.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- For the 1,000th anniversary of the novel, scientists at Kyoto University invented a robot that recites passages from Murasaki’s writing.
- The book was first translated into English by Arthur Waley (1889–1966) in 1935.
- There are almost 800 poems included in the book, which was meant to be recited aloud.
