Guest review by Catherine Butler: THE TALE OF GENJI by Murasaki Shikibu, translated by Kencho Suematsu

 

"Gradually you are training yourself to see and think your way into a radically different world. And that is a rich reward."

Catherine Butler is Professor of English Literature at Cardiff University. Her academic books include Four British Fantasists (2006), Reading History in Children’s Books (with Hallie O’Donovan, 2012), Literary Studies Deconstructed (2018), and British Children’s Literature in Japanese Culture: Wonderlands and Looking-Glasses (2023), as well as several edited collections, the latest of which (on Watership Down) will appear in 2026. She has also published six novels for children and teenagers. Catherine is Editor-in-Chief of Children’s Literature in Education.

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.

The Tale of Genji is published by Tuttle Publishing.

Guest review by Jon Appleton: MEMORIAL by Bryan Washington

 

"Memorial is about the impossibilities of love as well as its opportunities ... sometimes tragic, often very funny, always true."

Jon Appleton is a freelance writer and editor based in London.

Just when Benson and Mike consider their relationship has run its course, but are afraid to call it quits (for the reasons that keep couples together), two significant things happen to Mike.

His mother, Mitsuko, arrives from Japan for a visit while his estranged father lays dying in Osaka (Mike is Japanese-American). Mike flees his life in Houston, Texas, leaving Ben with Mitsuko. Something big has already happened to Ben, before he met Mike, which we discover halfway through the story – something he has learned to accommodate but not entirely.

The first part of Memorial is narrated by Ben and deals with his experiences at work, with his friends and family, and his new unlikely flatmate, the dour and laconic mother-in-law. Ben adjusts to living without Mike in their apartment but can he move on without Mike in his life?

The second part of the novel is from Mike’s point of view in Japan. Whereas Ben’s paragraphs are bite-size and brittle (his voice is caustic at times), Mike’s are longer, more elliptical. It is through Mike we learn the story of their coming together and their falling apart.

As his father’s health deteriorates, Mike must take charge of the restaurant he runs – ironically, poignantly, the restaurant is named after his former wife. Mike negotiates new relationships with customers and staff and, like Ben, is offered the chance of new love. But he faces his lover’s dilemma: what does he want?

In the third section, Mike returns to Texas and both men have to make decisions – or do they?

Memorial is about the impossibilities of love as well as its opportunities. The novel challenges the foundations on which we construct our adult lives (including how we re-cast our parents). It poses the question: what is home? Mike writes:

‘I used to wonder what Ma meant when I asked her about Japan, because I could only remember so much of that shit from when I was younger, and she’d tell me it was different from home, but also the same. It was her home, not mine. But it was still home. Whatever that means.’

He also suggests that ‘You shouldn’t make a home out of other people’; people change, but ‘you’re stuck in whatever your idea of home was.’ He says this to his new lover, who doesn’t think it’s a problem. ‘We’ll all have plenty of homes in this life. It’s when you don’t that there’s an issue. That’s settling.’ Another acquaintance challenges Mike’s right to claim Japan as home: ‘But you’re not from here. You get to leave.’

For all his bluster, Ben is equally flummoxed. He tries to pin their projected break-up on Mike but Mitsuko is having none of it.

‘So Mike’s going home, I say and Mitsuko looks my way.

You could also say he’s leaving it, she says.’

Words trip over each other in quickfire banter. The novel brilliantly shows how language gets in the way of how we act and feel. Parents and children tiptoe round each other, wary of causing offence and intruding but equally wanting to make their bedrock beliefs crystal clear.

The novel is full of truisms, line after line, but in Washington’s hands they are never trite but malleable. Early in the book, Mike says, ‘Just because something isn’t working doesn’t mean it’s broken. You just have to want to fix it.’ Easy, right? Can you fault the logic of ‘We take our memories wherever we go, and what’s left are the ones that stick around, and that’s how we make a life’? Other arguments include: is good enough good enough? What about the policy that if something happens we deal with it? Words can be both weapons and shields.

Sometimes, you forget how people are, Mike suggests. And then they remind you. But there are some things you can never forget. Ben, an African-American, is all too aware of hard-line and casual racism. Both men acutely sensitive to homophobia. This is America in 2021 – this is life.

Memorial is sometimes tragic, often very funny, always true. A vital novel, which I’m so glad I’ve read and happily recommend.

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Memorial is published by Atlantic Books.

Jon is a regular reviewer here. Read more of his choices:

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stewart

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

The Biscuit Factory Girls by Elsie Mason

An Honest Man by Ben Fergusson

Clock Dance by Anne Tyler

Carnivore by Jonathan Lyon

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett