Tales of Genji

Tales of Genji is seen as an early modern novel in world history. Not much is known about Murasaki Shikibu. The book was written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1012 in the Heian Period of Japanese history.

I'm taking a class in translation with Hidenori Jinno on EdX. It's a fairly short course that took me several days. I was expecting to complete a section but I finished the whole things.

The EdX course is using the more recent (2001) Tyler text, and I have a copy of the 1976 Seidensticker translation. Yet another translation has come out in 2015. The Librivox one is of course even older. 

My book is over a thousand pages, and includes artwork by Yamamoto Shunsho. 

The Tale of Genji has 54 chapters. 1-33 are a rise in power of Genji chapters. 34-41 Genji's power is in decline. 42-54 are Genji's descendents Niou and Kaoru. 45-54 make a block, and 42, 43 and 44 are transition chapters. I can't imagine comparing the three versions, or the ones before it. It was often presented in a trousseau version, where drawers had sections of the book.

The editions we have today, that are translated today, were 100 years after the tale was written. Like all things coming out of the mist of time, there could be tampering, insertions, deletions and whatnot. Further the old Japanese is translated into a more modern translation that then is translated into English. Like the Pali Canon, Homer's work, so many ancient texts, there are lots of questions to exercise scholars.

To put this book on a timeline with English literature, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales came out in 1400, Shakespeare was 1600. Tale of Genji came out before 1021. The Golden Ass came out in around 180, so it's claimed to be the first novel.

While not directly a Buddhist text, people often retreat into a monastery when they're done with the shenanigans in the palace and worldly romance. It's as though the life of a sleep-around leads to being cheated on, and a rather dubious legacy. 

Genji has enjoyed a sensuous life, perhaps at the expense of women, who have a dubious status. While supposedly a woman wrote this story, perhaps it highlights the precarious position they occupy. At least she is the artist who highlights this. Classifying various chapters into groups is one way of understanding the whole story group. The Eighth Prince goes off the study Buddhism. It's unclear whether the Buddhist themes are in the works, or just in the atmosphere, and I'm drawing my own Buddhist conclusions.

Such a huge sprawling novel is about many things. About love and loss, power lines, palace intrigue, lots of references to the surrounding culture to express situations.

Links:

Genji Monogatari Sennenki (Anime of Tale of Genji)(Wikipedia) YouTube (Poor quality, subtitled). It can only focus on a few events.

List of Characters (Wikipedia)

Genealogical Chart

New Yorker review of a new translation.

Tale of Genji in a World Literature course.

Dec. 19 2020 Article: Thoughts on healing from the Heian Period

Kyoto: The novel takes place in what is called Kyoto now. There is the Tale of Genji Museum. That website has a really good links list.

4 Historical Emperors that seem to be obliquely referred to in work according to the EdX class.

Emperor Daigo (885-930)

Emperor Suzaku (930-946)

Emperor Murakami (946-967)

Emperor Reizei (967-969)

Daigo and Murakami were seen as excellent reigns.

Things I looked up that were referred to:

An Lushan Rebellion: One estimate is that 36 million people died, perhaps the greatest death toll every, a sixth of the Earth population. The estimate has since revised down to 13 million died. It is hard to know with such loss, the systems broke down that took census. 

Yang Guifei: A kind of Helen of Troy, for the above rebellion, but not really, different.

There is a history of female emperors of Japan (7) but none during the Heian period.

Cultural concepts

Filial Piety