250 word summary

A story may not relate things exactly as they happened out of consideration for the circumstances of its characters. Yet at those moments when one wants to pass on to later generations the appearance and condition of people living in the present…both the good and the bad, which are the things you never tire of reading about no matter how many times you’ve heard them…it is difficult to keep them shut away in your heart. And so you begin to tell stories about them. (Norton 1486)

� � Author � Date/Time of Composition � Context � Form � Themes

Preview

� Author

� Murasaki Shikibu was born ca. 973 CE; died ca. 1014 CE

� We don’t know her actual name � “Shikibu” means “Bureau

of Ceremonial” and refers to a post held by her father

� “Murasaki” (“lavender” or “purple”) is the name of a heroine from Tale of Genji… Or it could refer to the emblem of her clan, the wisteria

(Lady Murasaki Writing, 1767 via Wikimedia Commons)

� � Murasaki Shikibu was the daughter of Fujiwara no

Tametoki, a poet and scholar of Chinese � He also served as governor of Harima

� The Fujiwara clan dominated the throne by ruling as regents and marrying their daughters into the family

� Murasaki Shikibu served in the court of Empress Akiko (also Shōshi) as a lady-in-waiting � She was called in as a Chinese tutor for the empress

Author

� � From Murasaki’s diary:

“When my brother, the Secretary at the Ministry of Ceremonial, was young and studied the Chinese classics, I used to listen to him and became unusually good at understanding those passages which he found too difficult to grasp. My father, a most learned man, was always lamenting this fact ‘Just my luck!’ he would say. ‘What a pity that she was not born a man!’ (Norton 1379)

Author

� � Date of composition is uncertain because no

manuscripts from Murasaki Shikibu’s time have survived

� Murasaki Shikibu most likely began writing Tale of Genji after the death of her husband in 1001 CE

� Earliest fragments = a series of illustrations called Genji monogatari emaki (late 12th century CE)

Time/Date of Composition

� Time/Date

(Landscape scene from Chapter 16, “Sekiya” (“At the Pass”) in Genji monogatari emaki via Wikimedia Commons)

� � Modern versions of Tale of Genji are based on a 13th

century version called Aobyōshi-bon (“blue cover text”) � This version of Tale of Genji was collated by a

renowned Japanese poet called Fujiwara no Teika � Collate means to combine texts in their proper order � Fujiwara no Teika collected existing versions of Tale of

Genji and collated them in order to undo the damage caused by centuries of copying

Time/Date of Composition

� Contextual Information

Names. � Narrator in Tale of Genji

rarely calls characters by their real names; most of the time, they use their official title � Genji is the only

character with a traditional name

(17th century illustration from Chapter 5 of Tale of Genji via Wikimedia Commons)

� � Regarding the absence of personal names :

“The absence of personal names from the narration is another distancing device that screens a lord or lady’s person from the outsider’s gaze. The holder of an official title, man or woman, could properly be identified by that title or, sometimes, by residence, but a personal name, even if recorded in a genealogy, was too private to use in speech. The way the narrator refers to people affirms less their individuality than their position in a complex of communally acknowledged relations that was of absorbing interest to all” (Tyler xxiii)

Contextual Information

� � Women have a meshina (“service name”): “alludes to a

government organ or post associated with a male relative” (Tyler xxii) � Many women in Tale of Genji have the same meshina because

their relatives have the same position � Women without a meshina usually don’t have names in Tale

of Genji. Example: “Aoi,” Genji’s first wife � Aoi means blue in Japanese

� Aristocratic women’s names were also associated with where they lived. Example: “Fujitubo” means “Wisteria Pavilion,” a part of the imperial palace compound.

Contextual Information

� � Murasaki Shikibu wrote Tale of Genji in Japanese

because it was considered unseemly for a woman to write in Chinese � “When Chinese was introduced into Japan, educated

people continued to speak their native tongue but learned to write in Chinese” (Gnadt 47)

Form

� � Tale of Genji is sometimes considered the first novel –

what do you think? Does it seem “novel-like” to you? � Note: we discussed last week that novels and the

genre of romance are closely related… But novels are also related to genres like: histories, epistolaries, and the news (Mikics 210-11)

Form

� � First influence on Tale of Genji: Chinese poetry � Poetry was considered an important art during the Heian

Period; all early Japanese literature includes poetry � Tale of Genji has 795 poems!

� Poems in Tale of Genji are called: tanka (“short song”), waka (“Japanese song”), or uta (“song”) � Characterized by five subunits of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables � No rhyme � Example: Now in deepest sorrow as I contemplate

Our diverging roads, this fork where we must part How I long to walk the path of the living (Norton Anthology, Vol. B 1162)

Form

� Form

� Second influence on Tale of Genji: women’s diaries

� Murasaki read women’s “confessional diaries” à a form popular in the Heian Period � They were characterized

by nuanced expression and psychological insight (Norton 1349)

(Heian Court Lady in Full Dress (Kokushi Daijiten) via Wikimedia Commons)

� � Example from a woman’s confessional diary:

I was brought up in a distant province which lies farther than the farthest end of the Eastern Road. I am ashamed to think that inhabitants of the Royal City will think me an uncultured girl.

Somehow I came to know that there are such things as romances in the world and wished to read them. When there was nothing to do by day or at night, one tale or another was told me by my elder sister or stepmother, and I heard several chapters about the shining Prince Genji. My longing for such stories increased, but how could they recite them all from memory? I became very restless and got an image of Yakushi Buddha made as large as myself. When I was alone I washed my hands and went secretly before the altar and prayed to him with all my life, bowing my head down to the floor. "Please let me go to the Royal City. There I can find many tales. Let me read all of them.“

from “The Sharashina Diary” in Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan; 1009 – 1059 CE

Form

� � Love and lust

� Consider Genji’s marriages and affairs � Poetry & writing

� Consider the role of poetry and letter-writing � Transience/death

� How do the deaths of Fujitsubo, Lady Rokujō, and Lady Murasaki, affect Genji?

Themes