As a Westerner, I was astonished (and somewhat envious) to learn that the Japanese consider an 11th-century novel written by a woman to be the crowning achievement of their national literature. In the century after the author’s death, it was men who championed its merits, making it required reading material for the educated class. In the 20th century, the first Japanese author to receive the Nobel Prize said in his acceptance speech that “Even down to our day there has not been a piece of fiction to compare with it.” Needless to say, nothing like this happened for medieval women in the West.

This does not mean that Japanese women of the era were treated as equals (we do not even know the author’s real name, as girl’s names were not recorded in genealogies). But apparently, they did have the opportunity to publish and have their literary efforts taken seriously. The other famous work of this period, The Pillow Book, was also written by a woman.

During the Heian era, the Japanese Emperor would have relationships with many women – one wife (the Empress), then Consorts (women of high rank), and then Intimates (women of lower rank). Murasaki’s fictional Genji is born to the Emperor and a low-ranking Intimate. Though he is very handsome, talented, and the Emperor’s favorite son, Genji cannot by rights be granted a high-ranking position. The story covers his political and social progress, but is mostly concerned with his romantic exploits. Since poetry was essential for social communication in this era, both in and outside of romantic relationships, these exploits include many beautiful poems (795 within the whole book). Here is one written by a woman Genji loves who cannot be with him:

“Leave me, if you will, burdened with your bitterness for all lives to come,
but know your real enemy is your heart, and yours alone.”

Genji is a novel’s perfect vehicle – primed for conflict, never to be satisfied. He is a man of desire, spurred on by obstacles, quickly growing bored with and rejecting the easily obtainable. He courts many women but gives adequate attention to none.

I have heard it said that Madame de la Fayette’s The Princesse De Cleves (1678) is the first psychological novel, but surely Lady Murasaki’s work (more than 6 centuries earlier) deserves that honor, instead. The two novels even share the same themes of desire unfulfilled, and even one similar plotline (in which a woman who had desired and had been desired by the wrong man renounces the world and becomes a nun).

I read the abridged version (325 pages out of a total 1125), so I only got the story of the young Genji. But I admit that, even in this short portion, I was already becoming worn out with repetitive scenes. Genji courts a woman with poetry, the woman is seduced to her own doom, rinse, repeat. In between seductions are scenes where a boy or man is so beautiful that everyone cries, a work of art is displayed and everyone cries, a touching ceremony is performed and everyone cries (there are many “sleeves wet with dew” in the Emperor’s court). There are only so many irresponsible seductions and outpourings of tears that a girl can handle. But I was incredibly impressed with the novel's modern sensibility, its handling of desire, and its poetry and language. It’s clear that it deserves its status as a work of literary brilliance. I may come back and read it in its entirety at some point.

The Tale of Genji combines two genres prose and poetry and it is a tale of romance, court customs, rules and rituals. It also tells us about passions, desires, obsessions and frustrations. A lot of communication is done by poems, which allow to say what otherwise would stay hidden.
My reading assignment included: From Chapter I. The Lady of the Paulownia–Courtyard Chambers; From Chapter II. Broom Cypress; From Chapter V. Little Purple Gromwell; From Chapter VII. An Imperial Celebration of Autumn Foliage; From Chapter IX. Leaves of Wild Ginger; From Chapter XII. Exile to Suma; From Chapter XIII. The Lady at Akashi; From Chapter XXV. Fireflies; From Chapter XL. The Rites.

Of course, I haven't read the book in full as it consists as if of separate stories which often don't follow the timeline and overlap with each other but I enjoyed reading the world's first novel, especially parts with allusive poetry, pining for love and doomed relationships.

“When all life is dew and at any touch may go, one drop then the next,
how I pray that you and I may leave nearly together!”
[...]
“In this fleeting world where no dewdrop can linger in the autumn wind,
why imagine us to be unlike the bending grasses?”

Non sapevo dell'esistenza di questo testo, scritto più di mille anni fa da una studiosa di letteratura cinese e giapponese legata alla corte imperiale. Mi sono fidato dell'opinione di Marguerite Yourcenar: "Nessuno mai ha scritto un romanzo migliore...magistrale ricreazione di avventure maschili e umiliazioni femminili". Niente di più vero. A cena con due amiche giapponesi, non potevo non chiedere notizie su La storia di Genji (si pronuncia Ghenzi) lo Splendente che per loro è una sorta di Divina Commedia o Promessi Sposi, un testo classico che hanno studiato a scuola intorno ai 14-15 anni, imparandone molti brani a memoria. Nonostante le mille e più pagine, ho avuto una sensazione di vuoto una volta finito. La capacità di Murasaki Shikibu di evocare atmosfere rarefatte in cui la natura domina con i suoi colori, fiori, odori, suoni e di usarle come sfondo poetico e metaforico per descrivere attraverso brevi epistole le emozioni e sensazioni dei vari caratteri, nonostante la ripetitività delle situazioni, è tra le più raffinate. L'autrice coglie e rappresenta in modo delicato l'amaro e infelice destino delle donne "esseri insignificanti, gradevoli per un piacevole passatempo" ma colpevoli di turbare il "prepotente e ostinato" cuore degli uomini. Sopraffazione, arroganza che il più delle volte sfocia in rapporti non consensuali e con più donne nello stesso tempo. Storie di ieri?

Some Notes On A First Reading:

Remarkable. We are transported back to the Imperial court of 11th century Japan. My thanks to G.G. for recommending this translation. I had had so many false starts with Edward Seidensticker’s version. Big differences between editions are the length of the sentences, Seidensticker uses short choppy ones, and the incomparable peripheral documentation here.

The illustrations, maps, layouts of houses, footnotes which explain poetic references, and dramatis personae for each of the 54 chapters, beautifully enrich one’s reading. The prose is already excellent, so to have these adjuncts makes for an uncommon reading experience.

Genji is borne to one of the Japanese emperor’s intimates, the Kiritsubo Consort. The emperor is so close to this woman, they achieve such an astonishing rapport, that he always wants her with him. This inspires gossip among his other women and the palace fuctionaries. For if the emperor is spending time with her, he isn’t spending time with them. Then the woman dies. The emperor’s grief is so great that he’s remiss in some of his imperial duties. Then he thinks of the son, Genji, living elsewhere, and has the boy brought to him.

P. 89 of 1100.

We often read of older men in the east marrying young girls, children really. But the persistence with which Genji (19) pursues little Murasaki (10) is surprising. No doubt his imperial parentage ensures that his overtures are always politely entertained, if at first refused. His purpose he says is to train her to his liking. We can only imagine what that means at this point.

Then little Murasaki‘s guardian grandmother dies. Her father – a Buddhist monk – is soon to take the girl back to his mountain retreat. Before he does though Genji swoops in and plucks her from her run down house. Genji worries about whether he will gain a reputation for debauchery, but the more I read the more I think he is permitted anything.

Perhaps with this exception: he cuckolds his father, the emperor. He impregnates the emperor’s new intimate, Fujitsubo, a woman brought to the palace because of her close resemblance to Genji’s much beloved and departed mother, the Kiritsubo Consort. There is high anxiety as she begins to show, but the emperor accepts the child as his own and Genji manages to keep it quiet.

It’s interesting how self-deluded Genji is. He speaks of his honorable intentions. But when he finds a woman who isn’t interested in him, or feigns disinterest, he begins to strategize until he conquers her, or a prospect promising greater physical immediacy is revealed.

“It is extremely irritating of her to turn me away like this without even hearing me out,” he said. “She must suspect me of wanting only to amuse myself, whereas in reality I am not frivolous at all. Things cannot help going wrong and the other person assumes the worst, and it always ends up being one’s own fault. I should have thought someone well disposed, someone living in peace without parents or brothers and sisters to bother her, would be far more attractive.” (p. 118)

The mythos and Buddhist spirituality underlying this book actually has a basis in fact. The book, though it seems at times fantastic, is for the most part realist fiction.

The book can be lacrymose. It is almost morbid at times. And then the author breaks into broad comedy. I am referring to the scene with the Dame of Staff, described as “randy,” who gets her hooks into the sybaritic Genji and won’t let go. His friend the Secretary Captain then comes along and catches him in flagrante delicto with the old girl. Suddenly we’re in the Marx Brothers’s “Night at the Opera.”

Genji is now 20. There’s no way around the truth, he is a pig. Astonishing how he goes about virtually raping women, who are then overawed with gratitude. It is difficult, as Vladimir Nabokov showed us with Humbert Humbert, to take a reprehensible figure and make him interesting to the reader despite his failings. The author makes him suffer for his dalliances, and his suffering is balanced by his libidinousness. He conquers but he pays for it.

Lady Rokujō is the widow of Prince Zembo and a longtime mistress of Genji. She has great pride, and her jealousy is so strong that subconsciously her ikiryō (wandering spirit) kills Yugao and Lady Aoi, and attacks Murasaki. (from Wiki)

P. 200

Few of these noblepersons have names. I’m a little slow getting used to their titles which seem blandly unmemorable at first. Fortunately there’s a little dramatis personae at the start of each chapter which helps you keep them straight, and a grasp on this detailed thread you must never lose or you’ll be completely at sea. Genji is a dense but very satisfying story that requires a careful reader.

Bodice ripper’s are by their nature poorly written. But if one could write one well in 11th century Japan, I realize this is ahistoric, this might be it. The unrelenting seduction here is certainly “bodicy,” but not the prose. So perhaps it’s more precise to say there is a thread of bodice ripper running through this novel - and it’s really hot stuff.

Must finish. . .

This very long and very old book was written 1,000 years ago during the famous Heian period of Japan. Without turning all geeky and writing out a no-doubt poorly understood bit of history, it’s sufficient to say that this was, like many periods of history, a time of astonishing beauty and artistic achievement yet also absurdly dangerous, unhealthy and exploitative. It’s well worth reading up about it on the Internet because you will be enamoured.

This book is unusual for those in the West because not only is it very old, but it was also written by a woman. However, the Heian period is famous for pumping out quite a lot of women’s fiction and I believe that this is because the Heian period was when the Hiragana syllabary was developed by women, for use exclusively by women. FWBW.

It concerns the Shining Price Genji and his development from boy to old man. It is sensual, sexual, poetic and moving. Poetry is in fact the key point here – the story contains over 700 individual poems, sadly mostly very underwhelming due to the difficulties in translating from one language to another. However, the copious notes go some way towards explaining the meaning and word trickery that takes place in the original language and if you’re in the right frame of mind then it is possible to vaguely understand the overreaching concept of what’s happening in that try-not-to-focus-on-one-point-too-hard manner familiar to anybody who has spent time reading about various art movements or, in fact, any book written by Alfred Bester.

I can only speak for myself as a Westerner, but this book provides a double hit of culture shock curiosity. I read a lot of Japanese fiction and I still come across prose – even in contemporary fiction – that make me realise that in many arenas, some subtle and some not, our societies developed in very different ways and have not really converged yet. Perhaps they never will.

Being Japanese, The Tale of Genji frequently shows motivations and outcomes to thought processes that leave me a little puzzled and occasionally mediating on why I think in the way that I do that is so at odds with the characters I’m reading about. However, it also gives this the even more compelling/frustrating (delete as appropriate) twist of describing this within a society that is entirely alien to all but the experts in Heian culture.

To make things even more difficult, plenty of the chapters overlap each other and incorporate different characters or points of view. The careful reader will go mad trying to fit this into their mental timeframe. I just ploughed ahead as I always do and made it fit retrospectively.

It would be a waste of time to go into too much detail. Suffice to say that I’m talking about the bewildering amount of official, non-official titles and alternative names that each character carries but the very drives and ambitions and reactions to situations that are a fundamental part of a person’s being. We are talking about a society that on one hand judged a woman’s worthiness on the quality of her handwriting while on the other was perfectly happy to have these extremely delicate living monuments to a beautiful ideal shit in a box in the corner of the room.

Normally I wouldn’t bother to discuss this kind of thing and focus instead on what makes the story and characters worthy of your time, but The Tale of Genji is steeped in an ancient and mysterious culture that is at once gorgeous to behold and terrifying in its callousness. It’s the same length as War and Peace but will take you twice as long to read. It’s important to know what you’re getting yourself into with this.

Personally I found the first 300 pages or so to be engaging and insightful. As ever with a very old book, it was a thrill to read and recognise parts of modern humanity among the dust, and the Heian period, for all of its many, many faults, gives the story a powerful, moving, almost erotic charge. The next 400 pages were a struggle. There was a point where I was reading 4-5 pages a morning on the bus to work and falling asleep for the rest of the journey. While I could understand how it was a good read on a technical level, it was too much of a product of its time, delving into the detail of diplomatic affairs and subtleties of relationships that, to my shame, left me flummoxed. The rest of the book picked up again though, and I was hesitant to turn over the last page.

The Tale of Genji is, according to the 2 Japanese people I know who have read it, a tough, complex read that not many people finish. The English translation wasn’t convoluted or knotted in any sense – indeed, the language is simple enough and there are plenty of notes that explain some of the more obscure scenes (perhaps too many, but this is a frequent complaint of mine with Japanese books). It’s just a bit of a drag in places. I can’t even pretend that I’ll read it again any time soon, but one thing is certain – I’m very glad I have read it and don’t consider the considerable amount of time it took me to be a waste. It’s an incredibly valuable insight into a very strange society and so rich in detail and imagery at times as to be quite staggering. It is, objectively, a beautiful achievement. It’s just not that entertaining.

Supposedly, the first novel ever written. That fact alone compelled me to read it, to check it off my classics list. Parts of it were interesting from a cultural and historical aspect, but it was long and boring for the most part. I generously gave it 3 stars because it's 1,000 years old.

I have done it! Took 8 months but wow feels good, we love goal achieving! This was mayyybe the hardest book I’ve ever read? The prose itself is lovely and not super tricky, but ancient Japanese court life is unbelievably complicated and it took me most of the book to begin to understand the customs that dictate the plot. For example, most of the characters communicate with each other through modifying ancient Japanese and Chinese folklore poetry to their specific situation and if you don’t have a base knowledge of this then you have no idea what people are saying to each other. Like if someone mentions reeds, then they are referring to a famous poem about in which lovers meet in a field of reeds, so that’s actually a very sexy remark even if they just say “reeds.” That’s not an actually example, I made that up but that’s how it works!! And none of the characters have names, men are all referred to by their rank or job and the women usually by what color they wear, and everyone is always getting promoted or changing their outfits so everyone’s name is changing every chapter almost and there are literally hundreds of characters bc this books spans many decades so logistically very difficult to remember who is who. That all being said, I enjoyed it far more when I was reading it every day because I remembered way more details and could appreciate the moving plot lines and the fun jokes. I love that after genji’s death the focus of the book switched to the “fragrant captain” so called because he was a captain who smelled very good and was causing all sorts of mischief by visiting the ladies and stinking up their houses and clothes. This book is all about being naughty and sleeping with people you shouldn’t be sleeping with! I learned an incredible amount about ancient Japanese culture from this book and I am proud of myself for persevering and have no regrets!!!!!!

I have read and reread parts of this saga (though never the entire thing) several times over the years after first reading the Waley translation all the way back in 1975. I recently became intrigued by the problems the book sets for translators after reading a New Yorker article by Ian Baruma on various translations. Irritatingly, Goodreads doesn't seem to have a way for readers to add new reviews to books they've read before without eradicating the original review. Here is my original review entered at Goodreads, and I hope to update it after reading more of the Royall Tyler translation.

I've come back to this huge saga repeatedly over the years, but I never actually have finished it. (I peter out around the time that Genji dies and the story continues with his son.) But it doesn't matter, as this novel is so episodic it can easily be read in installments.

I first read the Arthur Waley translation in the Modern Library edition, and since that time have also read parts of the Seidensticker translation, and more recently I have also read bits of Helen McCullough's combined Tales of the Heike/Tales of Genji volume. I must say that for purely sentimental reasons, I prefer Waley, though it's said his version is the least accurate. To my mind, however, it is the most poetic.

Anyone hoping to gain insight into the Japanese sense of aesthetics would do well to read just a few portions of this book, but I'm willing to bet that many will be drawn in as I was into Murasaki's Heian world and the romance of Genji.

Utterly meaningless star rating alert: what else could you give it?

Now, granted, I suspect a lot of readers are just like me, in that we'll go hunting for really good things about this book, even if, on the surface, it perhaps does less for us than most 1400 page medieval tales. And I'm not afraid to admit that the overwhelming impression I have now is that this is astonishingly long, and astonishingly old, and despite those two things is easily readable as what we today call a novel.

The problem is that we today are not accustomed to reading books like this. Genji is more like a successful '90s television series: it's pretty good, it's best taken one hour per week, there turns out to be very little variation but who cares because you're only reading it for an hour a week, and then the show-runners, who never had any real idea of how to end their now twenty year old 'artwork' just kind of stop making it. That's just like a lot of books that we now read as old novels: they weren't meant to be read cover to cover in a short period of time, they were meant to be dipped into, lived with, were meant to sink into the reader rather than be swallowed like a nice cherry. I admit, I've been formed by the modern novel, and I like to eat. Besides, if I spent years reading a book, I'd never get to write a goodreads review, and then my life would have no meaning.

All of that said, Murasaki was clearly a woman of genius. That she can keep someone even moderately interested, despite the book's lack of variation, (what we now think of as) shallow characterisation, and formlessness is a testament to that. The real flaw of the book, from this modern reader's perspective, is none of these things, but the final third. Here, we have a story following the generation following Genji's. It's a fine story, about two young men and three young women, lots of love, conflict, and so on. But it suffers in comparison to the story of Genji himself for two reasons. First, the Genji part is very narrowly focused on Genji himself, which means that for all the proliferation of characters and incident, we have a firm base. The later chapters lack this strong focus, and it's not clear to me that Murasaki (if she actually wrote those chapters; apparently there's some debate) had as much control there as she did earlier. Second, the second part is very similar to the first. It's a bit as if Proust had put Swann in Love at the end of his novel: all the themes and dilemmas are there for you to see, but instead of being a little introductory taste, it's more like being served another main course after your main course.

All that said, a scholar will be able to tell me why I'm wrong about these flaws, show me how important they are to Murasaki's art and so on.

A scholar will not be able to convince me, though, that you should read Washburn's translation. Leaving aside the very odd decision not to have a list of characters (which becomes incredibly irritating in the later chapter, when everyone's being referred to by family associations), the prose is workmanlike at best. Nothing is ever unclear, which is nice, but there are so many sentences of the "There was one thing that Mr. Spot didn't like to do, and that is write calligraphy" type (where any competent writer or editor would have condense them down to "Mr. Spot didn't like to write calligraphy") that I sometimes wondered if anyone had proofread the thing at all. They obviously did, since there are only a couple of typos. But there's no way you could read this book and know that Murasaki is meant to be a master stylist. I don't know if the Penguin translation is any better, but I have to assume it is, and recommend that to people instead of this one.

"The Tale of Genji is a novel written by an aristocratic woman for other women of her rank -- men at this time read history and poetry, sometimes theology, but not fiction -- which presents the first challenge to reading it. It wasn't written for you, dear reader, but for select contemporaries who instinctively understood everything that now needs to be spelled out in annotations and commentary. . . . The modern reader doesn't so much listen to the story as eavesdrop on it, spy on it, like the courtiers in Genji always peeking through gaps and peepholes to catch glimpses of the young beauties indoors. The reader of Genji is not an invited guest but a voyeur." -- Steven Moore, The Novel: An Alternative History: Beginnings to 1600, p544.

I conquered The Beast, together with Shawn, and it only took us 2 months.

This is a one of the examples why I decided not to rate any books starting from the next year. I've experimented with it a bit these last few months and I think I've grown enough on this site to get rid of stars.

This is not really "a proper" review - I am in hurry to decrease my unreviewed pile:-) And also this is the only book I've marked completed but in reality I am still reading. The reason is I do not think my opinion would not change about it: it is a type of a novel which was very popular in the 19th century. It is very hard to believe it was written in the 11th - it is so much well ahead of its time. But it is also similar in a way that it was serialised - distributed by instalments as far as I understood. As a result, for me it reads a little similar to Dickens - if I read too much of him it becomes a bit too monotonous. The same here: the plot is simple: Genji, a main character is our romantic hero. Each chapter is his new adventure with a woman. So it might get a little repetitive. But it is a groundbreaking stuff in a literary terms. The depth of Murasaki's psychological insights, the way how he creates her characters, the atmosphere, the interiority - all of it is amazingly modern. On the top, the novel is very intertextual. People familiar with Chinese Canon would be absolutely delighted. It made me to pick up an anthology of Classical Chinese poetry - I've never thought I would do it. It also has opened my eyes how different was the medieval culture of Japan, especially in terms of romantic relations (women were much freer compared to the West), the standards of beauty (they shaved eyebrows and blackened teeth) and the value of written word (women were appraised by men and vice verse based upon their calligraphy and ability to compile a verse rather than a physical beauty). In general, Heian period was a pretty decadent time but the arts flourished beyond any limits.

I will continue reading a chapter a week or so when I feel like it and probably will come back to this not-review:-)