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 nikki)
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
(Dai Sai’in saki no gyoshū)
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 Bureau of Romances might well serve jointly in the Bureau of Poetry, the Director of Romances said to the Deputy Director of Poetry:8
uchihaete ware zo kurushiki shiraito no / kakaru tsukasa wa tae mo shinanamu9
To go on thus, speaking for myself, would be quite excruciating.
Far rather would I that these bureaus should be abolished.
In reply:
shiraito no onaji tsukasa ni arazu tote / omoiwaku koso kurushikarikere
True though it be, that we are not colleagues of the self-same bureau,
that you should set yourself apart from us is hurtful indeed.
When Her Highness commanded that fresh copies of the romances be made and the old texts were distributed among the members of the bureau, the Director of Romances sent some to Minbu’s place, saying:
yomo no umi ni uchiyoserarete…neyoreba kakisuteraruru mokuzu narikeri10
Of all those washed ashore from across the far seas…
these writings are but a heap of abandoned dregs of weed.
Minbu, because she had not been in attendance for long, wrote:
kakisutsuru mokuzu o mitemo nageku kana / toshi heshi ura o hanarenu to omoeba
When I peruse even these abandoned dregs of writings—ah, I sigh,
to think how far away are those shores where I spent so many years.
TRANSLATED BY T. HARPER
(Sanbōe)
The Illustrated Three Treasures is a collection of Buddhist homilies compiled for the edification of an unhappy princess who was soon to enter holy orders as a nun. Princess Takako (Sonshi, 966–985) served from her third to her tenth year as the High Priestess of Kamo. In 980, her fifteenth year, she became a Dame of Honor (nyōgo) to the Enyū Emperor (959–991; r. 969–984). Barely a month after her arrival, the imperial palace burned down, and many people apparently blamed the disaster on the princess. Two years later (982), after the death of the uncle who was her last living backer at court, she secretly fled the palace and cut her hair short. At this point, someone seems to have commissioned the scholar Minamoto no Tamenori (941?–1011) to compile a collection of homilies that might guide the young lady to a somewhat happier life.11 A profusely illustrated edition of the Three Treasures was completed in 984.12 In the following year, the princess took vows and shortly thereafter died of unknown causes.13
The argument of this particular homily is the seemingly universal one: that fiction seduces and misleads the imagination, encouraging not only immoral behavior but also a waste of time on frivolities that might better be spent in spiritual pursuits.
T. HARPER
To pass the time of day at a game of go may be diverting, yet how fruitless to waste one’s thoughts in striving and contention. The koto, too, can be a pleasant companion of an evening, but one is apt to grow overfond of its music.14 And romances—these are but for the amusement of women. They flourish in greater profusion than weeds on the wooded graves of old; they are as numerous as the grains of sand on the rocky strand. To creatures that lack the gift of speech they give words; to insentient objects they impart feelings—even to trees and grasses, mountains and rivers, birds and beasts, fishes and insects. Their words flow forth unchecked, as flotsam on the sea; unlike reeds at the river’s edge, they have no root in truth. The Old Trickster [Iga no taome], The Tosa Minister [Tosa no otodo], The Fashionable Colonel [Imameki no chūjō], [and] The Lady of the Inner Chamber [Nakai no jijū]—these and all their ilk describe the dallying of men and women as if it possessed all the beauty of flowers and butterflies. They are the very roots of sin. They count for not so much as a drop of dew in the Grove of Letters.
TRANSLATED BY T. HARPER
(Makura no sōshi)
This fragment from The Pillow Book is from Sei Shōnagon’s (b. ca. 965) description of an exchange with a lover, Fujiwara no Tadanobu (967–1035), who seems to be losing interest in her. Shōnagon’s sharp reply to one of Tadanobu’s messages, scrawled in charcoal at the bottom of the missive, quickly becomes the talk of the court, whereupon Shōnagon sets out to tell the empress of her triumph.15 When she arrives, however, she finds the empress and her gentlewomen in the midst of a heated discussion of The Tale of the Hollow Tree (Utsuho monogatari), and before Shōnagon can say a word about herself, she is asked to offer an opinion of the two rivals of the first section of this tale. The scene that Shōnagon alludes to, in the “Fukiage” chapter, describes a musical contest in which Fujiwara no Nakatada and Minamoto no Suzushi play the koto in the presence of the emperor at the Festival of Autumn Leaves. Both men have fine old instruments of illustrious lineage and are privy to esoteric techniques passed down secretly from great masters of the past. As a result, they play so consummately as to disrupt the course of nature itself. A wind arises to set the clouds racing; the moon and stars flicker unnaturally; hail the size of pebbles falls; thunder roars and lightning flashes; a blanket of snow covers the earth, only to melt the instant after it falls; and finally a heavenly maiden descends and dances to their music. As a reward for this stunning performance, the emperor grants the hand of his own daughter, the First Princess, to Nakatada, and that of Princess Atemiya, the most sought-after beauty in the land, to Suzushi.16 The episode provides a glimpse of the kind of reading material favored by ladies of the court before the appearance of Genji.
T. HARPER
On the Twentieth or So of the Second Month of Last Year (996)
When the sun had set, I went to the Empress’s chamber, where quite a number of people were gathered. Her Majesty was attended by her own gentlewomen, who were absorbed in an argument over which of the romances were good and which bad, and what it was they didn’t like about them. Even Her Majesty had something to say on the merits and demerits of Suzushi and Nakatada. “Come now,” someone said to me, “tell us what you think, and be quick about it. Her Majesty insists that Nakatada is ill bred.”17 “What?” I said. “Suzushi does play the koto well enough that a maiden came down from heaven to dance, but he’s a perfectly horrid person. And did the Emperor give him one of his own daughters, as he did Nakatada?”18 When I said this, the ladies partial to Nakatada took heart. “So there!” one of them said. To which the Empress replied, “Well, all that aside, if you had seen Tadanobu when he attended us today, I expect you’d have been beside yourself admiring him.” “Oh yes, indeed,” her ladies said, “even more the picture of perfection than he usually is!” “Well, it was he,” I said, “whom I came to tell you about in the first place, but all this talk of romances has prevented me.” Then I told her all that had happened.
TRANSLATED BY T. HARPER
(Genji monogatari)
Eawase
Beneath a veneer of aesthetic refinement and connoisseurship, “Eawase” is an intensely political chapter of Genji.19 In the aftermath of Genji’s triumphal return from exile in Suma and Akashi, the Suzaku Emperor is living in retirement, and the new Reizei Emperor, still a boy in his thirteenth year, has ascended the throne. As in every new reign, new opportunities arise for the exercise of power through the new sovereign. This time, the competitors are Genji and Tō no Chūjō, friends and rivals since boyhood, but with the stakes so much higher now, their rivalry is no longer as friendly as it once was. The new emperor is in fact Genji’s son by his father’s wife, the Fujitsubo Empress, but since even the emperor himself is unaware of this relationship, it affords Genji no political leverage. Moreover, Tō no Chūjō has already placed one of his daughters in the palace as the new Kokiden Dame of Honor, and the emperor has taken quite a liking to her. Should their union produce a son, Genji’s chances at supreme power would be seriously threatened. Accordingly, he and the Fujitsubo Empress Mother decide that Genji should adopt the daughter of another of his former lovers, the late Rokujō Consort, and place her in the palace as the Umetsubo Dame of Honor. The only problem with this stratagem is that the new lady arrives on the scene after a long period of service as the High Priestess of Ise, and she is already in her twenty-second year, nine years older than the emperor. Something will have to be done to make this grown woman more attractive to the boy than a girl of his own age and entice him to spend his time with her. Just as in the real world described by Murasaki Shikibu in her diary, this sort of seduction is accomplished by means of art and literature, lavishly patronized by the backers of both ladies.
T. HARPER
The Empress Mother, too, was in the palace. When His Majesty heard that someone unusually lovely was coming, he took a very charming interest in it all. For his age he was quite knowing and grown up. The Empress Mother had told him, “With so grand a lady as she is, you must be very well behaved when you meet her.” Secretly he worried that he might feel uncomfortable with a grown-up. But when she arrived at the palace, far into the night, it turned out that she was very modest seeming and dignified and looked so small and frail that he thought her quite lovely.
By now he was on such familiar terms with the lady in the Kokiden that he felt very close to her and, in a touching way, at ease in her company. But this new lady was so dauntingly serene of manner, and the Minister [Genji] treated her with such respect and deference, that he knew he hardly dared slight her. Accordingly, at night he allowed both to attend him in equal measure, but by day, for more carefree and childlike amusements, it was to the other quarter he was most likely to go. The Acting Middle Counselor [Tō no Chūjō] had plans of his own in begging this favor for his daughter, and the new arrival, challenging her, left him feeling, in countless ways, ill at ease…. And so the two vied, each in her own way, for the imperial favor.
His Majesty delighted, above all else, in pictures. Perhaps because he took such particular interest in this art, he was exceptionally skilled at painting. Because the former High Priestess of Ise, now his Dame of Honor, painted beautifully, his affections shifted to her. More and more it was to her that he went, and as they painted together, they drew ever closer. He had been partial, as well, to some of the young Privy Gentlemen who were students of the art. But this was nothing compared to the way he was smitten by the charming sight of this lovely creature, absorbed in her painting, so individual in style, reclining fetchingly there beside him, when now and again in such an attractive way she would pause with her brush poised. He went to her very often now and favored her far more than he had before.
When the Acting Middle Counselor heard of this, fiercely competitive and thoroughly modern man that he was, he raged to himself, “Am I to let them leave me in the lurch?” He summoned the most skilled artists, enjoined them to strict secrecy, and had them paint a collection of magnificent pictures on papers of unparalleled quality. “Pictures based on tales are what will most appeal to him,” he told them. Then, carefully selecting all the most interesting texts, he had them illustrate them. There was also to be a set of familiar scenes of the successive seasons, which he arranged in an original way, joining them with passages of text, for presentation to His Majesty. They were so well done that His Majesty wanted to view them with the other lady, too. Yet the Acting Middle Counselor would not willingly let them go but kept them strictly to himself, guarding them jealously from being taken.
When he heard about this, the Minister [Genji] smiled. “It seems the Acting Middle Counselor will never grow up,” he said to the Emperor. “He’s as childish as ever. It’s quite shocking he should cause you such distress, purposely hiding his pictures and not giving you the chance to share them. Well, I have some much older pictures; let me give you those.”
Thus are established the terms of the competition between the two ladies for the emperor’s affections. The emperor is fond of pictures, and still being a boy, he will find pictures that go with stories the most enjoyable. Both ladies will therefore be lavishly equipped to please him: Tō no Chūjō’s daughter with newly painted scenes in the modern style, and Genji’s ward with the finest of old paintings. The next level of escalation is carried out by the empress mother herself, who arranges that the rivalry be brought into the open with all the highly ordered formality of a poetry contest.
When he heard that Genji was assembling a collection of paintings, the Acting Middle Counselor went to even greater lengths to equip his own with decorative spindles, covers, and cords. It was a lovely time of year, around the tenth of the Third Month, when skies are clear and hearts free of care; and at court there was a hiatus between ceremonials, with the result that both ladies were spending all their time in pursuits of this sort. “If that’s how it’s to be,” Genji decided, “I shall show His Majesty some pieces that will delight him even more.” And he set about collecting with even greater determination. Both sides now had a great many pieces of several sorts. Illustrated tales seemed to be what they found the most deeply touching and enjoyable. On the Umetsubo side they concentrated on the best known and most interesting of the old tales, while in the Kokiden they chose to illustrate those that dazzled and charmed their own day, the modish flair of which, at a glance, was far greater. All the Emperor’s own gentlewomen who took an interest in such things likewise busied themselves passing judgment this way and that.
It was a time when the Empress Mother, too, had come to the palace, and, having seen all that was going on, she was loath to miss out; so, to the neglect of her devotions, she turned to viewing paintings. Hearing His Majesty’s gentlewomen debating the merits of this one and that, she divided them into two sides, Left and Right. On the side of the Umetsubo, there were Hei no Naishi no Suke, Jijū no Naishi, and Shōshō no Myōbu; and on the Right, Daini no Naishi no Suke, Chūjō no Myōbu, and Hyōe no Myōbu. These were some of the brightest and most knowledgeable women of their time, and Her Majesty listened with fascination to the wit with which each argued her own point of view.
First, that “great progenitor of all tales,” The Old Bamboo Cutter, was matched against the “Toshikage” chapter of The Hollow Tree. “In its very antiquity, as age after age piles up on it, like the joints of the pliant bamboo itself, this work may be somewhat lacking in glamour. But the story of Princess Kaguya, unsullied by this sordid world, destined to rise nobly to the lofty heavens, seems something out of the Age of the Gods, something no frivolous sort of woman is ever likely to comprehend.” The Right responded: “The heavens to which Princess Kaguya rose may well be beyond us, indeed incomprehensible to anyone. But her destiny in this world is tied to the bamboo, which suggests low birth. She may have illumined a single household, but never did she stand alongside the brilliance that shines within the august precincts of the palace. Abe no Ōshi throws away thousands and thousands in gold, only to have his hopes for the skin of the fire rat vanish in flames within an instant. How very depressing. And Prince Kuramochi, who knows full well the depth of the princess’s feelings, that she is as unattainable as the land of Hōrai itself, nonetheless makes a fake jeweled branch and then ruins it. There’s still another defect.” The paintings were by Kose no Ōmi [fl. 901–922] and the text was in the hand of Ki no Tsurayuki [881?–945?], both done on official court papers backed with patterned Chinese silk, with a cover of violet tinged in red, on a sandalwood spindle, a perfectly ordinary sort of mounting.
“Now Toshikage,” they went on to say, “though nearly drowned by violent wind and waves, then cast away in a strange land, nonetheless accomplishes the goal he has set out to attain. Ultimately, he displayed, both in the foreign court and in our own land, the magnitude of his rare talent, for which he shall always be known. And in keeping with the profound significance of this tale, the pictures, too, combine the styles of both China and Japan, the many points of interest in which are beyond comparison.” They were done on a stiff, gleaming white paper, mounted with a cover of blue on a spindle of yellow jade. The paintings were by Tsunenori [fl. 946–967] and the text in the hand of [Ono no] Michikaze [894–966], all so modern and glamorous as to dazzle the eye of the beholder. The Left had no cogent counterargument.
Next The Tales of Ise was matched against Jōsanmi,20 and again it was no simple decision. Here, too, the Right’s choice was appealing and lively, depicting scenes in the modern world, particularly in and around the palace, which made it all the more worthy of attention. Hei no Naishi:
ise no umi no fukaki kokoro o tadorazute / furinishi ato to nami ya ketsubeki
“Without our ever even exploring the depths of the sea of Ise,
must the waves wash away all those traces of the past?
Are we to sully the name of Narihira in favor of some common tale of dalliance set forth in meretricious finery?” On the Right, Daini no Naishi no Suke:
kumo no ue ni omoi noboreru kokoro ni wa / chihiro no soko mo haruka ni zo miru
“To the heart of one whose aspirations soar to heights above the clouds21
even the vast depths of your sea seem far distant below.”
“To be sure,” said the Empress Mother, “the lofty aspirations of the Palace Guardsman’s elder daughter are not to be slighted, yet neither dare we defame the name of Narihira, the Ariwara Colonel of the Bodyguards.
miru me koso urafurinurame toshi henishi / ise o no ama no na o ya shizumemu
Worn and shabby it may, at a glance, appear; yet after all these years
is the fame of the fisher from Ise now to be sunk?”
And so this women’s talk raged on inconclusively, in a dispute that elicited poem after poem yet failed to decide on any one scroll. The younger gentlewomen, who knew very little of such things, were simply dying to see them. But no one, whether in the service of the Emperor or the Empress Mother, got even so much as a glimpse, so jealously were they guarded.
The Minister had arrived at the palace and was much amused by the reckless spirit with which these arguments flew to and fro. “If it is all the same to you,” he ventured to say, “shall we settle this matter in the presence of His Majesty?” He had anticipated that this was how things might turn out and had purposely held back the choicest pieces in his collection, to which he had added, for reasons of his own, those two scrolls from Suma and Akashi.
This round ends in an uneasy draw, the supporters of the classics saved from near total defeat only by the forceful intervention of the empress mother. But Genji is unruffled; this is all as he has planned it. The final round, and the final decision, must be witnessed by the emperor himself in the presence of all the notables of the court. Ultimately this contest is not about romances or pictures at all but about which of the two young ladies, now ranked equally as dames of honor, will be appointed the new empress. And that will be determined by whichever of the two competing backers can prove himself the more powerful in this contest. When Genji decides to deploy not only the wealth of his collection but also his own overwhelming talents in the cause of the Umetsubo Dame of Honor, by displaying the scrolls he himself painted while in exile, the victory of his candidate is virtually ensured. Two years later, the full implications of the “picture contest” become apparent. The Umetsubo lady, with Genji’s backing, is proclaimed the new empress, and Tō no Chūjō, furious at the humiliation of his own daughter, withdraws the Kokiden lady from palace service.22
TRANSLATED BY T. HARPER
The following passage from the “Hotaru” chapter of Genji is often described as Murasaki Shikibu’s “defense” or “discussion of fiction” (monogatari-ron).23 There is a sense in which such a description is entirely just, yet it is important to keep in mind that this is not simply literary criticism couched in the voice of a fictional character. It is first and foremost a piece of dramatic writing, and any ideas that find their way into it are inevitably inflected by their literary function.
Genji has amorous designs on Tamakazura, the long-lost daughter of Yūgao, one of his youthful loves. The girl is living in Genji’s Rokujō mansion, having arrived in the capital only a few months earlier after living for many years in Kyushu. As the rainy season wears on and Genji’s women while away the tedium with illustrated romances, Tamakazura takes a particular fancy to this new (to her) form of entertainment. Genji’s discussion of fiction begins, therefore, when he finds the girl utterly engrossed in these romances and, for reasons of his own, wants to discourage her from taking what she reads too much to heart. His first ploy is to denigrate fiction as deceptive and untrue, but when she reacts defiantly to this charge, Genji quickly concedes that she may well have a point and proceeds to fabricate a defense of fiction that he hopes will be more to her taste and make her more amenable to his advances. In the end he fails, and we see from his demand that his own daughter not be exposed to any love stories that his “defense of fiction” was entirely insincere.
This is not to say, however, that the ideas expressed in this passage must not be associated with Murasaki Shikibu, for in fact she talks about fiction here in ways that it had never been discussed before. In The Pillow Book, and even in “Eawase,” the worth of romances is determined by entirely extraneous qualities, such as the birth, accomplishments, and likability of the characters. Here, for the first time, fiction is discussed in terms of its intrinsic qualities and its possibilities. Whatever the dramatic function of this discussion, its content is revolutionary.
As we shall see further on in this volume, Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801) was the first commentator to single out this passage and explicate its literary significance. One wonders, of course, why commentators of the medieval era, many of whom were extremely intelligent readers of Genji, did not do this earlier. But perhaps this “oversight” is only an indication that their awareness of the dramatic qualities of the passage was more acute than Norinaga’s.
T. HARPER
The rains this year had persisted much longer than usual, and the ladies of the household were amusing themselves whole days at a stretch with illustrated tales. The Akashi lady had produced some very nice work of this sort, too, which she would pass on to the young lady, her daughter. But the lady in the Western Wing [Tamakazura] was even more intrigued by such things and would spend night and day copying and reading. She had a number of young gentlewomen who were quite proficient and who had told her all sorts of astonishing tales of people’s lives. Yet in none of them, it seemed to her, whether fact or fiction, was there anyone at all like herself. For some reason, the young lady in Sumiyoshi,24 a heroine, of course, at the time of her adventures, seemed still to be highly regarded in the present day, though her narrow escape from the Superintendent of Finance did call to mind the ferocity of the Viceregal First Secretary.25
His Lordship [Genji] found her unable to take her eyes off these things, which were scattered everywhere around the room. “What a mess!” he said. “You women seem to have been born only to be deceived by people, and without your even raising a complaint. You know perfectly well that there’s very little truth in any of these, and yet here you are, captivated and deceived by all this nonsense, copying away as if you were quite unaware that it is a stifling hot day and your hair is all in a tangle.” He smiled and went on. “Yet without these old stories, how indeed would you while away this interminable tedium? For among these fabrications are some that show us people’s feelings in so real a manner as to make us feel that this is life as it really is. One thing follows another so plausibly that even though we know it to be sheer nonsense, still, for no good reason, we are deeply moved. And so we may see some lovely little lady stricken with grief and find that we ourselves are quite caught up in her woes. And then, there are those who so dazzle us with their grandiloquence that we are taken in by things we know could never happen. Upon a calmer hearing we would only be annoyed; yet, incredibly, we still appreciate whatever it was that so fascinated us at first. Lately when I have stopped to listen to our young [Akashi] lady’s women reading to her, I have been struck by what extraordinary tellers of tales we have these days. Such stuff could come only from the mouth of someone well accustomed to lying, it seems to me, but perhaps I am wrong.”
“Isn’t it rather that it takes a person who is quite accustomed to lying even to imagine such things?” she asked, pushing away her inkstone. “For my part, I accept them as completely true.”
“That was rude of me to run them down so, wasn’t it? As they say, everything that has gone on in the world since the Age of the Gods is recorded in [these tales]. The histories of Japan are really very one-sided. But these must give you all the choice little details,” he said with a smile. “It isn’t that they describe the events of some person’s life exactly as they happened. But rather that some things one sees and hears about people as they go through life, whether good or evil, are so intriguing and over-whelming that one cannot shut them all away in one’s heart but wants to pass them on to subsequent generations—and so sets out to tell the story. Should one mean to describe someone favorably, one may select every good quality imaginable. Or instead one may defer to the tastes of others and gather in all manner of evils and marvels. But in neither case will these depart from the realities of this world we live in. In other courts, their scholarship and their styles of writing differ from our own, while even in this land of Yamato, works of old differ from those of the present day. To be sure, there is a distinction to be drawn between deeper language and shallow language, yet to dismiss them all as empty fabrications runs counter to the facts of the matter. Even in the Holy Law that the Buddha in his beneficence has expounded for us, there are what we call the Expedient Truths [hōben], which, owing to the contradictions they contain, the unenlightened doubtless view with suspicion. In the Vaipulya sutras [Hōdōkyō], these are quite numerous, but in the final analysis they all share a single aim. And this disparity between enlightenment and delusion, you see, is comparable to the difference between good and evil in these people. Given its fair due, then, nothing whatever is utterly bereft of benefit, is it?” He made quite a case for tales as something of particular value.
“But where in any of these old stories will you find a tale of such an earnest old fool as I? Even the most distant of those young ladies could hardly be as coldhearted and oblivious seeming as you. But come,” he said, drawing closer to her, “let us create a story that never before has been known, and let it be told to all the world.” She cringed and hid her face. “Even if we do nothing of the sort,” she said, “this alone is bizarre enough to set everyone gossiping.”
“You think this is bizarre? You really are one of a kind, it seems to me.” He slid still closer until he sat right at her side, in a manner that was terribly suggestive.
omoiamari mukashi no ato o tazunuredo / oya ni somukeru ko zo tagui naki
“Overcome with longing, I have searched through the records of the past, yet
nowhere do I find a child so heedless of her father.
Even in the Way of the Buddha there are dire warnings against unfilial behavior.” When she refused to look up at him, he stroked the hair away from her face. So bitterly reproachful was he that finally she managed to say,
furuki ato o tazunuredo ge ni nakarikeri / kono yo ni kakaru oya no kokoro wa
“Search the annals of antiquity though you may, indeed there are none:
no parents in all the world who harbor such thoughts as these.”
He felt shamed and troubled her no further. But now that this had happened, whatever was to become of her?
Lady Murasaki, too, had quite a penchant for tales, which she procured on the pretext that they were for the young lady [from Akashi]. “My, but these are beautifully painted, aren’t they,” she said, looking at an illustration of The Tale of Kumano.26 It was a picture of a little girl, innocently napping, that brought to mind memories of her own past. “How precocious they must have been,” Genji said, “even little girls like this! You know, I really should be regarded as something of a model; I’m sure few others would have exercised such patience as I did.” True enough; not many others had assembled such a collection of amours.
“I do hope, though,” he went on, “that you won’t read any tales of such loose behavior to our young lady. It’s not that she would admire those girls who carry on clandestine affairs, but it could prove disastrous should she come to think it entirely normal that such things go on in this world.” Well, isn’t that just the limit! The lady in the Western Wing [Tamakazura] would surely have fumed, could she have heard him say this.
TRANSLATED BY T. HARPER
(Murasaki Shikibu nikki)
The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu contains a number of references to The Tale of Genji, as well as other unnamed fictions.27 The first of these is a comment by Fujiwara no Kintō (966–1041). Kintō is nowadays best known as a man of letters. As the compiler of Chinese and Japanese Poems for Chanting (Wakan rōei shū, 1013), he played an important part in the popularization of the Hakushi monjū (Bo Juyi’s Collected Works) in Japan, and his treatise The Newly Compiled Essence of Poetry (Shinsen zuinō, date unknown) became one of the most frequently cited authorities by composers of waka. He is also the compiler of the third imperially commissioned anthology of Japanese poetry, the Shūishū (ca. 1005–1007). Here, however, it is not as a man of letters that he speaks. The occasion of his remark is the fiftieth-day celebration of the birth of a prince (1008) to Empress Shōshi (988–1074), which, according to Murasaki Shikibu, very early on showed signs of becoming a “frightfully drunken evening.” Murasaki writes:
The Commander of the Left Gate Guards, Kintō, peered in. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “but is our little Murasaki in attendance hereabouts?” “There’s certainly no one in sight that bears any resemblance to Genji,” I thought to myself as I sat there, “why then should his lady be here?”
Kintō clearly has read enough of The Tale of Genji to address its author jokingly as “little Murasaki” (waka-Murasaki). Indeed, it may be that the nickname by which we now know her, “Murasaki Shikibu,” originated in references of this sort. It is likely, too, that Kintō was aware of the project that Murasaki describes shortly thereafter in her diary, the production of a luxurious edition of Genji that the empress planned to present to the emperor on her return to the palace. As with so many works of art and literature of the time, the aim of this project was not simply aesthetic but political as well. For Fujiwara no Michinaga, the father of the empress, to perpetuate his rule over the land, it was essential that his daughters continue to produce male heirs through whom he, as regent, could wield power. To this end, he spared no expense in equipping his daughters with paintings, furnishings, books, and the like that the emperor might find entertaining and entice him to spend his time with the woman who possessed them and not some rival nobleman’s daughter. In this sense, the first edition of The Tale of Genji was very much a tool of seduction, and it is highly likely that Murasaki’s talent for writing such tales was the reason she was summoned to serve Michinaga’s daughter Shōshi in the first place. She herself laments that a reputation for being “fond of her tales, conceited, always with a poem at the ready” had preceded her and that it took some doing to counter this (as she saw it) misapprehension. This passage also makes it clear that at this point in the textual history of Genji, at least two versions of the tale were in circulation. Scholars now reckon that the version presented to the Ichijō Emperor was little more than half the length of the present fifty-four-chapter Genji and that the purloined version probably contained additional chapters that were not considered suitable for such a felicitous occasion as presentation to the emperor.
T. HARPER
Though the time had drawn near for Her Majesty to return to the palace, her people were rushing frantically about while the Empress busied herself with bookbinding. At daybreak I would wait upon her, and we would first pick out the papers in a variety of shades, put them in proper order, attach the texts of the tale, write to the persons concerned, and distribute them. Then we would spend the day at the task of assembling the pages and stitching them together. “What’s this?” His Lordship said. “You with a child, and doing all this out in the cold!” Even so, he would bring us fine thin papers, brushes, ink, and even an inkstone, which Her Majesty gave to me. He made a terrible grudging fuss over this. “You’re always in here waiting on her,” he scolded me, “and now you make off with this.” But then he gave me some excellent papers and brushes.
In my room I had hidden some texts of the tale that I had sent home for, and while I was in the presence, His Lordship slipped in there, rummaged about for them, and gave them all to the Chief Palace Attendant.28 I lost every one of the texts I had revised so carefully, which made me quite apprehensive about what this would do to my reputation.
The little prince was making gurgling sounds [on-monogatari] by now. No wonder His Majesty was so eager to see him.
Once this task is completed, she leaves briefly to visit her own home before returning to the palace. The change of scene brings back depressing memories of listless days between her husband’s death and the time she was summoned to serve the empress, which in turn make even her accomplishment in writing Genji pale in her own eyes.
As I gazed out at the dreary grove in the garden here at home, I was beset with confusion and melancholy. The tedium of all those years I had spent, day in and day out, amid the color of the blooms and the song of the birds; gazing, spring and autumn, at the changing patterns in the sky, at the moonlight, the frost, and the snow; hardly aware of anything but that one season or another had come; all the while helpless to dispel the forlorn thought of “what, oh what”29 was to become of me? Still, there were those of like mind with whom I could discuss this frivolous tale of mine, and it was comforting to correspond with them. There were those, as well, whom I could approach only through somewhat distant connections. Yet all the while I was only pottering about with this thing [The Tale of Genji], whiling away the tedium with worthless words. I felt I hardly counted for enough to go on living in this world, but for the moment at least, I had avoided doing anything I need be ashamed of or regret. How dismal my lot is now that I’ve tasted all these things to the fullest. I made an attempt to read the Tale again, but it no longer seemed what it once had, and that was depressing. How worthless and shallow I must now appear to those with whom I’d found such comfort in discussing it. The very thought fills me with such shame I’m no longer able to write to them.
On another visit home, some disused books catch her eye.
There are two large cabinets, both piled full to capacity. One is filled with old poems and romances that have become a nest of the most unspeakable insects that go creeping and scampering so repulsively that no one ever opens it anymore. In the other are Chinese books that no one has touched since the person who so carefully stacked them there passed away. When loneliness threatens to overwhelm me, I take out one or two and look through them, at which point my women get together and mutter behind my back, “If Madam’s going to go on like this, she’ll come to no good. What sort of woman is it who reads books in Chinese? Once upon a time they used to stop us reading even the scriptures.” When I hear them, I want to say, “Well, I’ve never seen one of these women who’s supposed to have lived to a ripe old age because she’s abstained from everything she’s supposed to.” But that would be thoughtless. They may even be right.
In the following year (1009) she relates an incident involving the Ichijō Emperor and one of her fellow gentlewomen.
There is a certain Lady Saemon no Naishi who for some strange reason has decided that she dislikes me and, without my knowledge, has been saying the most unpleasant things about me behind my back. Once, while His Majesty was having The Tale of Genji read to him, he remarked, “This lady must have been reading The Chronicles of Japan.30 She is very learned indeed.” Whereupon this woman, on no more than her own whim, immediately spread it about among the Privy Gentlemen that I had been “putting on the most pretentious airs of learning.” Then she began calling me “Lady Chronicles.” How perfectly ludicrous. I have always been careful to avoid that sort of thing, even among the women of my own household. Why would I ever presume to make a display of my learning in such a place as this?
In the same year, she also records an exchange of poems with Fujiwara no Michinaga, the father of Empress Shōshi and the patron of the luxurious first edition of Genji. Michinaga seems to assume, at least for purposes of the mischief he intends, that the author of a tale of the amours of the Shining Genji must herself be strongly inclined that way.
His Lordship saw The Tale of Genji there in front of the Empress, and after making the usual senseless jokes, he wrote upon a piece of paper upon which were placed some plums:
sukimono to na ni shi tatereba miru hito no / orade suguru wa araji to zo omou
Known as she is as a wanton, as is the plum for its bitterness,
there must be none who pass her by without plucking the fruit.
I replied:
hito ni mada orarenu mono o dare ka kono / sukimono zo to wa kuchi narashiken
When no fruit has ever been plucked from this tree, who is there who can say
that I might be quite as wanton as the plum is bitter?31
Shocking! At night, when I was asleep in the room on the bridgeway, I heard someone tapping on the door, but frightened, I made not a sound the whole night through. The next morning:
yo mo sugara kuina yori ke ni naku naku zo / maki no toguchi ni tatakiwabitsuru
The whole night through, more even than the water rail did I cry and cry
tapping tapping wearily away at your cedar door.
I replied:
tada naraji to bakari tataku kuina yue / akete wa ika ni kuyashikaramashi
Tapping tapping at my door as persistently as did this water rail,
had I opened it, how much might I have to regret.
TRANSLATED BY T. HARPER
(Sarashina nikki)
The Daughter of Sugawara no Takasue (b. 1008), born in the year that the luxurious edition of The Tale of Genji was compiled and presented to the Ichijō Emperor, provides the earliest-known description of the experience of reading the tale. Her Sarashina Diary,32 of course, is not a diary at all but a memoir, written when she was fifty-one or fifty-two, shortly after the death of her husband. Hence, all the events she describes are seen in retrospect and, moreover, are colored by her grief at her recent bereavement. To judge from the frequency with which she refers to Genji, however, and the amount of space she allots to it in a journal covering almost forty years, her involvement with Genji must have been one of the most deeply felt experiences of her life.
T. HARPER
I was born and brought up in a province more remote than the far end of the Eastern Sea Road, so you can well imagine what a countrified creature I was. How I first came by the notion I do not know, but I had heard there were these books called tales, and oh! how I longed to read them. On days and evenings when time hung heavy on our hands, I would listen to my elder sister and my stepmother talking of this tale or that, or of Genji the Shining One. This only made me long to hear more, but I could hardly expect them to recite them from memory. In my impatience I had a life-size statue of the Healing Buddha33 made, and when no one was around, I would go in secretly to it, kneel down with my head to the floor, and pray fervently: “Grant that I may soon go up to the capital, and there let me read all the tales there may be.”
In the same year, both her wishes came true: after an arduous three-month journey, she and her family arrived in the capital.
We were not yet settled and the house was still in turmoil, but I was so impatient that I pestered my mother repeatedly to find some tales for me to read. She wrote to a relative in service at Sanjō Palace, Emon no Myōbu, who, surprised and delighted to hear of our return, sent us some lovely booklets that the Princess had given her, all packed in the lid of a writing box. I was overjoyed and read them night and day. That was the start, and soon I began to wish for more, but we were not yet settled in the capital, and who was there to seek out tales for me?
An epidemic in the spring of the next year, 1021, claimed the life of her nursemaid. This disaster so saddened the author that she “lost all interest in tales.”
When I continued in this downcast state, my mother took pity on me and tried to console me by obtaining some tales for me to read, and then I began to recover my spirits. I read about little Murasaki and yearned to read the rest, but there was no one whom I could ask, and since we were still not settled in the capital, we could not find a copy. I was most impatient and curious, and in my heart I would pray, “Let me see the entire Tale of Genji, from the very first volume.” When I went with my mother on a retreat to Uzumasa,34 I could pray for nothing else. As soon as we returned home, I felt sure that I would then be able to read it through, but I never got to see it. I was completely downcast, but while still bemoaning my fate, I went to visit my aunt, who had just returned from the country. “What a lovely girl you’ve grown to be,” she said, making a great fuss over me. Then just as I was about to leave, she said, “What shall I give you? Nothing terribly practical, to be sure. Let me give you something you really want.” And she gave me the fifty-odd volumes of Genji, all in their own box; and Zai Chūjō, Tōgimi, Serikawa, Shirara, and Asauzu35 as well. She put them all in a bag for me, and I was overjoyed to have them to take home for my own. Before I had been able to read only bits and pieces, and didn’t really know how the story went. Now I had the whole Genji to read from the very first volume. When I lay down alone behind my screens, drew it to me, and started to read, I would not have changed places even with the Empress. All day and as far into the night as I could keep my eyes open, I read with the lamp close by me. And since I did absolutely nothing else, I soon knew parts of it by heart, a grand accomplishment, I thought. But then I had a dream in which a monk in a yellow surplice came to me and said, “Study the fifth scroll of the Lotus Sutra immediately!”36 I told no one; neither did I make any attempt to study it. Tales consumed all my attention. I thought myself terribly unattractive at the time, but when I grew up, I thought, I would be beautiful, with very long hair. Surely I would grow up to be like Genji’s Yūgao or Kaoru’s Ukifune, I thought, silly fool that I was.
Ten years later, she seems not to have changed her ways. Though in hindsight she felt she could have spent her time to better advantage, at twenty-three she remained as addicted to reading tales as she had been at twelve.
And so I went on wasting my time on the most frivolous thoughts. When I did happen to make one of my rare pilgrimages, it was not to pray, as others did, that I might become a better person. In those days most people began to read the sutras and to perform religious devotions at age sixteen or seventeen, but such things did not interest me in the least. All I could manage to think of was how I might live hidden away in the mountains like Ukifune. And there would be some very noble and handsome gentleman, like Genji in the tale, who would call on me perhaps once a year. In my loneliness I would gaze out upon the cherry blossoms, the autumn leaves, the moon, or the snow while I waited for one of his charming letters. I actually thought this would come true someday.
In 1036, her parents, much against their better judgment, were persuaded to let her try a term of service at court. Her first stay was to be for one night.
I was so absorbed in tales that I maintained no social relations with friends or relatives. I spent all my time at home with my old-fashioned parents and never went out other than to view the cherry blossoms or the moon. And so when I went to court, it all seemed more like a dream than reality.
Four years later, after the death of her father and probably after her marriage to Tachibana no Toshimichi (1001–1058), her tone begins to change to one of disillusionment.
Thereafter, other things seemed to keep me occupied. I completely forgot about tales and became more serious and sober. How many years and months I had utterly wasted, all the while neglecting my devotions and making no pilgrimages! And what about all those hopes and dreams I had had—could such things really exist? Is there really anyone like Genji to be found in this world? Certainly it is no place where you will find anyone like the lady whom Kaoru kept hidden away at Uji. What a lunatic I had been, I thought.
In 1046, she makes a pilgrimage to Hatsuse, and when passing through Uji she remarks:
We arrived at the ferry at Uji…. It seemed the boat would never come to take us across, and as I looked around, I was very curious to know where the daughters of Prince Hachi no Miya had lived and where Kaoru had ensconced his lady. It was every bit as lovely a place as I had imagined. Then at long last we crossed and went to see the Uji Mansion,37 where I could not help thinking that the Lady Ukifune must have lived in just such a place.
Her last mention of tales comes in the entry for 1058, shortly after her husband’s death.
If in the past I had not spent all my time thinking about worthless tales and poems but had devoted myself night and day to the performance of my devotions, then perhaps I might not have suffered such a fate.
TRANSLATED BY T. HARPER
Notes
yo no naka o kaku ii-ii no hate hate wa / ika ni ya ikani naramu to suramu
Having said this of life and then said that, in the end, the very end,
what, oh what, do you suppose is to become of us?
