"Gradually you are training yourself to see and think your way into a radically different world. And that is a rich reward."
My interest in Japanese culture came late. I only turned to the subject seriously when I was about fifty. Watching anime with my daughter spurred me to start learning the language (I had found anime subtitles highly implausible), and from there history, food and modern literature soon followed. Eventually I began visiting the country, making Japanese friends, and even wrote a book about the influence of British children’s literature on Japan.
Older literature, however, was still a closed book. Yes, I’d dipped into Sei Shōnagon’s The Pillow Book, and enjoyed its observations of nature and of manners, its wistful appreciation of fleeting beauty, and all those qualities that I had learned to think of as ‘quintessentially Japanese’. But for a long time I neglected that other great work of the Heian court, by Sei Shōnagon’s contemporary and rival, Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji. (It’s an intriguing fact that the two most famous writers of Heian Japan were women.)
When I did get around to The Tale of Genji, I expected it to be a tale of warriors, fighting monsters or each other and dying nobly. I knew that it had been written at around the same time as “The Battle of Maldon”, and for some reason assumed that everyone at the turn of the millennium must have been writing the same kind of story.
Such was not the case. The Tale of Genji is difficult to pin down in Western genre terms. We might call it a Bildungsroman, a story of manners, a tragi-comic romance, an essay in aesthetics, occasionally even a romp. The setting is the imperial Heian court, where Genji – handsome, charming and both sexually and romantically promiscuous – is the son of the Emperor by one of his lowlier concubines. As an imperial prince, with access to wealth and deference but with little in the way of political power, Genji devotes much of his time to romance. (Later chapters see political intrigues become more dominant, but the heart of the story – at least in the abridged form in which it is normally published in the West – lies in Genji’s youth.)
Heian court ladies were hidden from male view, and for a would-be lover to gain access demanded considerable ingenuity, not least in the writing of poetry, skill in which was one of the main means by which they could prove themselves worth the risk a lady ran by giving him admittance. That risk was considerable, but intrigue may have been one of the few ways to relieve what must (or so it seems to modern eyes) have been a life of sustained tedium. Some of Genji’s affairs are mutually pleasurable, some fizzle out or end in rejection or even tragedy. At times Genji seems sincere, at others shallow and careless. His character develops page by page and year by year. The challenge of understanding his feelings or those of his lovers at the distance of a thousand years and several thousand miles is considerable; but for me, the partial illegibility of the world of the story is what makes The Tale of Genji so fascinating. It’s like visiting a country where you are uncertain of the customs and assumptions. The chances of misunderstanding or making a faux pas are high, but gradually you are training yourself to see and think your way into a radically different world. And that is a rich reward.
Older literature, however, was still a closed book. Yes, I’d dipped into Sei Shōnagon’s The Pillow Book, and enjoyed its observations of nature and of manners, its wistful appreciation of fleeting beauty, and all those qualities that I had learned to think of as ‘quintessentially Japanese’. But for a long time I neglected that other great work of the Heian court, by Sei Shōnagon’s contemporary and rival, Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji. (It’s an intriguing fact that the two most famous writers of Heian Japan were women.)
When I did get around to The Tale of Genji, I expected it to be a tale of warriors, fighting monsters or each other and dying nobly. I knew that it had been written at around the same time as “The Battle of Maldon”, and for some reason assumed that everyone at the turn of the millennium must have been writing the same kind of story.
Such was not the case. The Tale of Genji is difficult to pin down in Western genre terms. We might call it a Bildungsroman, a story of manners, a tragi-comic romance, an essay in aesthetics, occasionally even a romp. The setting is the imperial Heian court, where Genji – handsome, charming and both sexually and romantically promiscuous – is the son of the Emperor by one of his lowlier concubines. As an imperial prince, with access to wealth and deference but with little in the way of political power, Genji devotes much of his time to romance. (Later chapters see political intrigues become more dominant, but the heart of the story – at least in the abridged form in which it is normally published in the West – lies in Genji’s youth.)
Heian court ladies were hidden from male view, and for a would-be lover to gain access demanded considerable ingenuity, not least in the writing of poetry, skill in which was one of the main means by which they could prove themselves worth the risk a lady ran by giving him admittance. That risk was considerable, but intrigue may have been one of the few ways to relieve what must (or so it seems to modern eyes) have been a life of sustained tedium. Some of Genji’s affairs are mutually pleasurable, some fizzle out or end in rejection or even tragedy. At times Genji seems sincere, at others shallow and careless. His character develops page by page and year by year. The challenge of understanding his feelings or those of his lovers at the distance of a thousand years and several thousand miles is considerable; but for me, the partial illegibility of the world of the story is what makes The Tale of Genji so fascinating. It’s like visiting a country where you are uncertain of the customs and assumptions. The chances of misunderstanding or making a faux pas are high, but gradually you are training yourself to see and think your way into a radically different world. And that is a rich reward.
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