Analysis

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The Tale of Genji seems to invite analysis, and more than a thousand books interpreting it have been written in Japan. Since it has been translated into a number of Western languages, interpretive books and essays have appeared, and continue to appear, around the world. Probably nothing in the twentieth century has contributed more to its status as a world masterpiece than its translation into English by Arthur Waley, completed in 1933. Some scholars have criticized the freedoms that Waley took with Murasaki’s text, but they all acknowledge that his translation is itself a classic of English prose. In 1977, Edward Seidensticker produced a more accurate translation, and English readers are fortunate in having both versions in print. For readers intimidated by such a long novel—The Tale of Genji is nearly twice as long as Leo Tolstoy’s Voyna i mir (1865-1869; War and Peace, 1886)—abridged versions of both translations have been published.

Analyses of The Tale of Genji usually deal with the cultural breadth of its three-generational narrative and the psychological depths of its characterizations. Western commentators have admired Murasaki’s romantic idealism, especially as it is combined with keenly observed social detail. In Japan, it has been especially admired for its expression of classic aristocratic values, values that continue to be reflected as major themes in Japanese literature.

Its most prominent themes are an intensely melancholic sense of life’s beauty that grows from an awareness of its impermanence (mono no aware), the pain of unrequited love and the resignation of those bereft of love through separation or death, the impact of the passage of time on character, and the harmonizing of human moods and feelings with the seasons and other manifestations of the natural world. Other notable themes deal with social disillusionment, the limits to personal realization set by social circumstances, and the ultimate triumph of fate over desires and aspiration. For Buddhist Murasaki, fate reflects the working out of karma—the belief that behavior in successive phases of a person’s existence has consequences in this life. Genji frequently blames his bad fortune on his misdeeds in former lives.

Because The Tale of Genji is so long, Murasaki is able to dramatize the themes of her novel under various circumstances and over long stretches of time. The novel’s three-generation time span makes backward glances to better or more promising days almost irresistible and manifestations of cultural decline, as well as personal loss, inevitable. The first third of the novel deals with the young prince Genji’s triumphs and misfortunes as he contends for position in court and fulfillment in love. Although his father is the emperor, his mother is a relatively low-ranking concubine, and that makes Genji’s court position shaky. This fact, and some indiscretions in his many amorous adventures, force him into self-exile when the emperor dies and his son by his principal wife ascends the throne. Genji’s triumphant return to Kyoto and the great love of his life, Murasaki, when he is nearing his thirtieth year, is perhaps the high point of his life. Murasaki’s languishing death in the fortieth chapter (two-thirds of the way through the novel) sends Genji into seclusion. Two chapters later, he is dead, and the final twelve chapters, which take place eight years after Genji’s death, deal with his world in decline. The main setting for these last chapters has shifted from the capital, with its dazzling pageantry, to a gloomy rural district on the Uji river several miles from Kyoto.

The love themes of The Tale of Genji have probably attracted more attention through the ages than those of social and...

(This entire section contains 1812 words.)

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personal disillusionment, although they are closely related. The patterns of courtship and love in the Heian court were every bit as elaborate and intense as those depicted in the medieval romances of Europe. Love affairs in the Heian court, like those in King Arthur’s court, involve impassioned correspondence, seduction, adultery, and other forms of betrayal.

Yet unlike European medieval courts, which idealized the fealty and sacrifices of the chivalric lover, the Heian court tolerated a good deal of what Westerners would consider promiscuous behavior. As the people in traditional East Asian cultures did not find it difficult to embrace more than a single religious view (a Heian aristocrat was at once a Buddhist, Shintoist, and Confucian), they saw nothing unnatural about being in love with more than a single person. In the West, men who seek many romantic adventures are usually considered shallow “Don Juans,” but in classical Japan, if the feelings are sincere and the emotional commitments real, such behavior is not considered superficial. Genji, who was created as an ideal courtly lover, does not “love them and leave them.” He does not fall out of love, and to the best of his ability he fulfills his emotional commitments and maintains his relationships throughout all of his life.

The Tale of Genji

First published: Genji monogatari, c. 1004 (English translation, 1925-1933)

Type of work: Novel

At the height of Japan’s aristocratic Heian period, Prince Genji and his successors strive for personal and social fulfillment through love affairs, friendships, rivalries, and political intrigue.

Except for a short diary, The Tale of Genji is Murasaki’s only literary work, but it is generally considered Japan’s most important literary achievement. While it is difficult to summarize its eleven hundred tightly printed but loosely plotted pages or to consider the nearly one hundred characters that move through this vast novel in a brief discussion, one can say that it focuses mostly on the life of its introspective hero, Prince Genji. The novel traces rather obliquely his rise, as the son of a minor consort of the emperor, to a position in society second in importance only to the emperor. It deals much more directly, however, with Genji’s life as an adventurous exploration, even a quest, for the ultimate possibilities that can be realized in the cultivation of personal relationships—wisdom, excitement, love, friendship, rivalry, and the private and shared experience of beauty and joy, triumph and tragedy. Somehow, to the extent that one person can be fulfilled as a human being living by the values of the Heian court, Genji succeeds.

Genji’s career consumes more than two thirds of the novel, during which he struggles to establish and maintain his position in court. Probably more significant to him, as well as more interesting for the reader, however, are his intimacies with a number of women. While still an adolescent, he falls in love with Fujitsubo, his stepmother and the emperor’s consort. Their very secret affair results in the birth of a boy who, because he is presumed to be the emperor’s son, eventually becomes an emperor himself. At about the same time that Genji is attracted to Fujitsubo, a marriage is arranged for him to the sister of his best friend, To no Chujo. Genji’s relationship with his wife, Princess Aoi, is probably the least satisfactory in his long experience with women. Aoi dies shortly after giving birth to their son, Yugiri, when Genji is about twenty-three years old. After Aoi’s death, Genji’s most important relationship, and the main focus of his affection for the rest of his life, is Murasaki, the young niece of Fujitsubo. Since the Heian aristocracy was not only exclusive but also small, each character in the novel is related in one way or another to every other character.

Despite his abiding affection for Murasaki, Genji is intimate with many other women throughout his life. His most important liaisons are with Yugao (the mistress of his friend To no Chujo), Lady Rokujo (an imperious aristocrat whose jealousy results in the death of both Yugao and Aoi), and the secluded Lady of Akashi. Genji’s daughter by Lady Akashi later marries an emperor, and their son, Niou, becomes a central character in the last section of the novel.

Toward the end of Genji’s life (he dies during his fifty-first year), he is betrothed to Nyosan, the daughter of an emperor who wishes to see her well married before he retires. It was customary at that time for emperors to retire soon after they had reared an adolescent son. Nyosan deceives Genji by taking a lover, Kashiwagi, the son of Genji’s friend To no Chujo. The child of this illicit relationship is Kaoru, another of the central characters of the last section of the novel. The Kashiwagi-Nyosan affair echoes Genji’s affair with his stepmother and is viewed by him as a kind of karmic retribution for his own transgressions. Many such relational echoes occur over the three generations of characters who inhabit The Tale of Genji.

After Genji’s death, eight years pass before the narrative resumes. The main setting has shifted from the capital, with its dazzling pageantry, to a gloomy rural district near the Uji river, about ten miles from Kyoto. This last section, which for most readers is also the most compelling part of the novel, is integrated with the main section by having the spirit that ennobled Prince Genji continue to live, albeit divided and denatured, in the characters of his amorous grandson, Niou, and his son (or, more accurately, his wife’s son by her lover), Kaoru. The creative tension generated in these sections by the hero’s amorous impulses, on the one hand, and his concern for the properties of Heian society, on the other, is transformed into an unbalanced rivalry between the impetuous Niou and the sensitive but indecisive Kaoru. Still, with Genji gone, much of the life-enhancing spirit of romance has dissipated from court life, and with it respect for social forms also degenerates. While courtship retains its elaborate pattern and society its traditional form, these social structures grow ever emptier. Niou is no ideal courtier and lover but a dashing Don Juan bent on conquest for its own sake. The combination of Niou’s unerring successes in court and in bedchambers, together with Kaoru’s inability to exert his sensitive nature in any way that advances his own or anyone else’s life, bears dramatic witness to a civilization’s decline.

The novel ends inconclusively with the woman whom Niou and Kaoru have courted for more than a hundred pages, Ukifune, contemplating the taking of holy vows and entering a Buddhist nunnery. The social and emotional stress of their courtship has so harassed her that she desires only to escape the complications of courtship and society for the simplicity of temple routines. That, too, recalls Prince Genji, who frequently contemplated “leaving the world” for Buddhist retirement. Only his responsibilities for others prevented him from following this path, the one followed by many Heian emperors and high officials. By Ukifune’s time, Murasaki’s tale suggests, there is even more reason to consider this retreat.

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Analysis: The Tale of Genji

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