December 28th, 2022: I cannot believe I finished it! I also cannot believe how it just ended. The ending was just a cutoff and not a real ending. So disappointing. But then after such a saga, I cannot imagine how there could have been any resolution. It will take me a while to write a review. This was such an epic and it has taken me so long to read, I am going to have to do some pondering to decide even how to review it... It is a most remarkable book!



December 8, 2022: Even though I have been reading and/or listening to this book for over 6 months now and do not expect to finish it this year, I am still enjoying it very much when I do listen to it, which now is when I exercise, approximately 3 or 4 times @ week for 1/2 hour or so. At this point, Genji is dead, and the tale is about two sisters, the elder of which is also dead, and her relationship with two men, the Counselor and His Highness. Their actual names are rarely used, and only given at the start of the chapter. It is a story of high etiquette, appreciation and following of strict rules of behavior, yet great appreciation for beauty in its many forms: nature, human, music, art, poetry and even penmanship. Often as the reader, one is exasperated by one or more of the characters for his or her (usually her) extreme adherence to personal rejection of fate, but then there are always the dramatic options of escape to the monastery or dying in despair, which are both popular choices. I do not mean to make light of the story, because it is in a class of its own and is not meant to be read lightly or quickly, still it's not entirely possible for this 21st century reader to put off her chronocentric mindset and completely enter into that age and life, however much I might want to. Still reading...

I have had a copy of this on my shelf for ages... I found it in a secondhand book shop on a visit to my sister and tried to tell her what a find it was. She just looked at me and smiled as most non-readers do when book people try to tell them about special books. My copy is in EXCELLENT, brand new, condition, and I got it for only $20. I shall be handling it very carefully as I read it.

This is supposed to be the oldest known novel, from Japan and written by a woman. So far delighted with how readable it is! There was a very long introduction which was extremely helpful.

Genji seems to be something of a charming rake, at least so far.

A princess likes stories. One of her ladies-in-waiting is good at making them up. Over years, the lady spins a long, elaborate story containing the princess's favorite theme: hot dudes nailing chicks. Crucially, the lady writes it down and here we are with history's first novel, the origin story of Japan, their Homer and their Star Wars, the winding and weird Tale of Genji.

This is around 1000 CE. In Europe, someone was writing Beowulf about hacking the arms off monsters. The world of Japan couldn't have been more different. This was the Heian Period, an effete and decadent time where folks spent most of their time writing poetry to women hidden behind screens and then weeping about the beauty of a sunrise.



Things one might write a poem about
Sea grass
Tears
Chrysanthemums
Dew
Sleeves (wet, inevitably, with tears)
Autumn leaves
The phrase "How long must I..."

You can practice this at home. Try it!

How long must I wait until iHop opens
my sleeves wet with my tears

Sea grasses bend with the foamy tide
as I bend into my couch to binge Nashville

There's almost a poem a page in this book, so get used to it, unless you're reading one of the bullshit translations that duck the poetry altogether. I read Seidensticker's translation, and perhaps skipped a few parts here and there because listen, it is lengthy. The Scheherezadian author kept tacking chapter after chapter onto the thing; it ambles on into the next generation and it ends up being like 1100 pages and I will perhaps catch up with the rest of these poems after I retire.

That author, that lady-in-waiting, we never got her name so we call her Lady Murasaki after the primary love interest for our handsome prince Genji, and here's the first thing you should know about that love interest: she's like ten. I mean not forever, but definitely when Genji first notices her and goes like "what a babe," she's a babe indeed, and this whole book is squicky as all fuck. Not like Lolita squicky? He doesn't actually have sex with Murasaki when she's ten! He just kidnaps her and saves her in his palace for slightly later, which is also not great.

But hey, he also rapes and impregnates his stepmother, so. Rape is a little murky here - encounters that seem unambiguously to start with rape evolve into consensual affairs. I don't know if this was the time or the author or what. And this is as close as we're getting to a plot: Genji seduces a series of women with various levels of consensuality.



I mean, but it's not actually that simple, and this is the wild thing about this ancient book: Genji has real psychological depth. The characters are consistent and they change over time for logical reasons. There's a certain circularity; Genji's crimes will come back around to haunt him. The book seems to have more of a handle on how a novel might operate than other early experiments like Don Quixote, and I'm not fucking with Don Quixote, it's great, but certainly the second half is on a different trip than the first half is.

So Genji isn't just a historical landmark, it's for real good reading. The setting is like nothing you've ever read before - if you want some nonfiction on the Heian period, by the way, the unanimous choice is The World of the Shining Prince, which is pretty good. The characters are memorable, sophisticated, and ambiguous. And if nothing else, it's extremely easy to parody. Genji is just constantly moping about with a guitar, writing poems on fancy stationary that's described in exactly the same loving detail as the business cards from American Psycho, while women swoon over how good his handwriting is.

it's long and weird, but worth it
Like an autumn moonrise, or my dick.

I have decided to sit this one aside for the time being. I may come back to it one day in the future, it’s just not capturing my interest and reading time is limited!

Genji is a literary snapshot of life in Japan over 1,000 years ago. Following Prince Genji, a handsome and accomplished courtier who the author pictured as an ideal man, the book tells us of his rise through court life, often diverting to cover his many romances and the lives of people around him.

Lady Murasaki's work is remembered because, in my opinion, of her extraordinary insight into human nature. DO NOT read this book looking for heroes; you'll find characters you relate to, but everyone is flawed and usually sabotoges themselves with their own weaknesses, just like people in the real world do. Instead, read this book for a look at very recognizable people in a completely alien culture. Even the "romantic" Genji acts so stupidly at times you'll want to hit him, is rejected by certain women he's after, and ages like anyone else, rather than existing in a bubble of perfect, youthful beauty as is common in romances.

Able to see, and express, every side of each character's story, Lady Murasaki does nothing to romanticize infidelity or rape, showing the trauma they cause. Yet Murasaki was a product of her time, and assumed these things were to be borne with grace. She tells us her opinions: Tamakatsura (to take a side story from "Blue Trousers" for an example) is wise and genteel for accepting the misery of her marriage with a man she hates, and her husband Higekuro would naturally want to pull her away from all happiness because it takes her further from him. After all, he knew how much she loathed him, so what could he do? Letting her go never occurs to him, nor Tamakatsura's father or male guardian. And Lady Murasaki, despite her sympathy and affection for Tamakatsura, didn't expect them to.

It's incredible that Lady Murasaki, understanding Tamakatsura's anguish at Higekuro's hands, never thinks that perhaps her culture is flawed to allow the near-kidnapping and total domination that allow it to happen. The psychological honesty of her writing, however, let ME see it, and opens up a lot of questions about culture as a whole. If Lady Murasaki, so brilliant, was blinded by her ideas of "normal," what are we today missing?

Amazing, thought-provoking writing.

-Elizabeth Reuter
Author, The Demon of Renaissance Drive

This novel is a challenge on many levels. The biggest challenge of all is not resenting (or even despising) Genji himself. It is best read in conjunction with "The World of the Shining Prince" by Ivan Morris to understand the environment(1,000 years ago at the end of the Heian Period). Also read the Diary of Lady Murasaki. I wouldn't bother taking on 1,090 pages of Genji without the assistance of these works, which are much easier to digest.

Also read ALL the footnotes. When this book was written, the audience was assumed to have read all important Chinese and Japanese literature and poetry of the time and all proceeding. The endless references and allusions to other works makes the meaning subtle and complex in exchanges that would be otherwise banal.

If you're ever going to read The Tale of Genji, I'd recommend this Seidensticker translation. I've previewed a few others and I believe this system of actually naming the hundreds of unnamed characters helps.

I give this version 5 stars because Seidensticker did a magnificent job of translation, though it's really difficult to give Genji the character 5 stars (he's such a sh*t sometimes!).

So I finally finished The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu and I would just like you to all know that I HATED it. I definitely would not give it a place in my top 10 greatest novels of all time. I don't care if it is an 11th Century novel that revolutionized the genre by being the first novel to include feelings, and thoughts. It's horrible.

Why?

1)It has no point. The book basically follows Prince Genji throughout the course of his life and his many loves. The journey through these many loves doesn't seem to be sharing any great truth about life (well except for the fact that life is fleeting...or evanascent as the book liked to say over and over again). For me that wasn't enough of a moral or a pretext to get through all Genji's carousing and whoring around.

2) It is a chauvanistic story which includes, rape, molestation of children, multiple wives and a series of men "having their way" with women. For those of you who don't know, part of my job is to educate youth about the dangers of sexual exploitation. This book is just filled with men taking advantage of women. Genji brings in a young child because he reminds him of his fathers concubine who he once had an affair with and basically raises her until she is maaaybe 14 and forces her to become his lover. This is what he says of the situation "A man can shape and mold her as he wishes and becomes fonder of her all the while"

And here is another quote when he rapes one of his many loves. "He would make his way past the most unblinking of gatekeepers and hav ehis way with her"

And lastly of another tryst: "self loathing was not enough to overcome temptation"

3) Genji is a whining snivelling idiot who creates his own issues and then complains when they cause him trouble. For instance:

"It seemed that his life must go on being complicated" (This is only because his whoring around gets him trouble with the court, his many ladies and his family.

"He sighed, almost wishing it were not the case that each of his ladies had something to recommend her. It made for a most complicated life"

"All my life I have made trouble for myself which I could have avoided"

That all being said there are a few good points to the novel.

1)As a study in 11th century Japan it is fascinating. I loved how men and women spoke to each other in poetry mostly just hinting at their meaning. Here are a few of my favorites:

"Like snows that wait for their comrades to return" (how cute is that??!!)

"Go we late or soon more frail our lives than dewdrops hanging in the morning light"

"startled from my dream by a wandering gusyt of teh mountain gale. I heard the waterfall and at the beauty of its music wept"

2)The description of the changing seasons and flowers made me really want to see (and smell Japan). The talk of cherry blossoms, plum blossoms and wisteria left me thinking that it must be a very beautiful place. This left me particularly sad in light of the recent earthquake and tsunami.

"A willow trailed its branches in a deepening green and the cherry blossoms were rich and sensuous"

3) The novel had some interesting things to say about relationships . I loved this quote:

"we all have our strong points-or in any event I have never myself seen anyone with none at all. Yet when you are looking for someone to fill your whole life there are not many who seem right"

"it is in general the unexplored that attracts us, and Genji tended to fall most deeply in love with those who gave him least encouragement".

I definitely identify with that one. I have always tended to be interested in people who have no interest in me.

4)The book also talks about some Buddhist tradtions that I found very interesting. In 11th century Japan at least the characters all felt at the end of their lives that they needed to become nuns or monks and spend the last few years of their lives preparing for the afterlife in the hope that they might find a place in the afterworld. As a Christian who doesn't have to work for my salvation I found the thought very sad that they needed to strive so hard for the next life.

"if you join the competition for salvation which we see all around us"

"even in writ which the Buddha drew from his nobel heart are devices for pointing obliquely at the truth...if one takes a generous view, then nothing is empty and useless"

That quote I actually like!

Okay, that's all. I am done. I don't want to spend another second on this horrible book!!! The next novel I am reading is Emma. I have never wanted to read Jane Austen, mostly because I am stubborn and like to be counter culture, but I am actually excited to see what all of the fuss is about. This book, is much smaller and I should be done in 2-3 weeks no problem.

La poésie veut quelque chose d'énorme de barbare et de sauvage.
(Poetry craves something enormous, barbarous and wild).
-Diderot

I would much rather meet Murasaki than I would the quirky and observant Sei Shonagon or the sexually charged, emotionally volatile, religiously inspired Nijo, fun though those two might be, as the more substantive woman of the tradition. It would take some time breaking down her barriers, but once through them the culture she'd impart would be tremendous. I know I am of a like mind with her when she complains and gossips in her diaries (in order to instruct us) about Sei Shonagon,
(she's) dreadfully conceited. She thought herself so clever and littered her writings with Chinese characters; but if you examined them closely, they left a great deal to be desired. Those who think of themselves as being superior to everyone else in this way will inevitably suffer and come to a bad end, and people who have become so precious that they go out of their way to try and be sensitive in the most unpromising situations, trying to capture every moment of interest, however slight, are bound to look ridiculous and superficial. How can the future turn out well for them?
Well enough that Sei Shonagon is used as an example in Japanese schools today as the epitome of excellent style in expression. But I think that despite that we could still have some good laughs about the silliness and illusions these children are being taught as we banter back and forth knowingly about the accessible cast.



Translation Issues

This has been an outstanding reading experience for me despite the English versions being a major barrier to enjoyment. Begun over two and a half years ago I've been reading it slowly, slowly, at a kind of pace as if I've been living within Murasaki's court. Now that I've almost finished the tale I feel that I can finally begin to read her in her splendor: after having read the first 400 pages in the Royall Tyler translation, the second 400 pages in the Arthur Waley translation, the next 150 pages or so in the Edward Seidensticker translation I realized just last month while browsing the Yosano Akiko modernization at Schoenhof's in Harvard Square that the years of studying Japanese have actually born some fruit. With great joy I discovered hers isn't so difficult to read - Yosano Akiko's own letters, essays and poems actually contain more classical elements than her version of Murasaki. With this one I can feel rest assured that the poems will be poems and not the weird approximations that we find with the English. Waley, for instance, pitches up the tone when the prose shifts to poetry so that there are many thees and thous and hithers and thithers, as we are brought back to some corner of Elizabethan England to look for a match. Tyler turns Murasaki's poetry into bland prose - you can skip past these "poems" and nothing would be lost. Seidensticker pretty much admitted in his memoir (which I read last month) that he has little interest in poetry to begin with (an astonishing thing to reveal). There's an unintentionally telling and amusing anecdote in his memoir that says while translating Kawabata he would often ask the novelist for explanations of his ambiguities... only to get blatantly ignored: you picture Kawabata thinking, if you cannot handle these on your own what are you doing translating us?

I have spent the past two years plus, basically, reading no more than a one thousand page introduction to Murasaki's tale.

But the English translators have done the unimaginably difficult thing of translating The Tale of Genji in its entirety and they do offer an approximation so perhaps it's bad form criticizing the results. As approximations of the original the translation issue is not with style but of receiving a difference in kind. There's the complete absence of poetry, for one. And for Murasaki as an incomparable observer of male and female character where is the wit and the sense of humor? Waley hints at it, especially with the passages where the noisy, young lady-in-waiting is featured about halfway through: "She could be seen at any hour of the day running this way and that at full speed (and usually in the wrong direction) with a zest never equaled in the annals of this ancient house". Seidensticker sticks to a factual retelling while Tyler's slothful prose doesn't appear equipped to handle the ironies that are undoubtedly there (not to mention that he often employs court names and rank instead of character names, a fidelity to the text I found extremely confusing). With Tyler this lack of verbal dexterity is especially deflating, since he has done such excellent scholarly work which is presented as helpful footnotes at the bottom of each page (the Chinese poems from which Murasaki is drawing, for example). Tyler's English is the least readable, though some would say Waley's is, but if you've ever read Scott-Moncrieff's À la recherche du temps perdu Waley's prose will not be a problem. His aim is creating the psychological atmosphere first (similar to one that is found in Madame de La Fayette's La princesse de clèves), so that the sentences aren't really all that important once you recognize the world Murasaki has created. You read his sentences so as not to be able to quote them. If you're looking for "what-happens-to-who-and-when only" then Seidensticker's is excellent - but it feels like what you'd get if you retold Shakespeare through Hemingway's prose: not only have you stripped away all the excitement but it feels like the psychology isn't telling the whole story. Yosano Akiko's ironical touch in her poems is magnificent, especially when describing those kinds of faithful men who would preserve their sense of well-being over sexual excitement (once again, a quality sacrificed when she's turned into an English person through translation), so I proceed eagerly, onward, exhilarated, as the tale exists today within her hands.

These versions do have their value, though. I'd recommend you compare the three versions next to each other to find out which one is the most appealing. I would also say that it's not absolutely necessary to read all one thousand pages plus to get a sense of Murasaki's genius given that the tale isn't plotted in a post-1789 democratic-era sense (that a novel must have a beginning, middle and an end). At some point "the main character" Genji fades from the scene and then the next generation takes over, almost becoming another tale altogether. For a sampling I would recommend the chapter focusing on Genji and his relation to his wife Aoi (chapter 9, called "Aoi"), or the ones dealing with his exile (chapters 12 and 13, called "Suma" and "Akashi"), or one of my favorite chapters, the one where great music is to be played in a concert, spring has appeared, and Genji, caught in the middle of a myriad of feminine sensibilities is at a loss for which woman to spend the night with (the short chapter 23, called "Hatsune" - Waley's version is the one to read).



Murasaki's Genius

紫の かがやく花と 日の光 思ひあはざる ことわりもなし
(紫に輝く花と日の光が思いたがう道理がない。)

Make no mistake
When the light of the day shines
On the violet Murasaki
The flowering is bright
Invoking us to its truth

Yosano Akiko's translation of Murasaki starts with this poem she wrote as a kind of honorary gesture to the woman who set the standard for all Japanese literature to come. The word Murasaki is "a violet flower," and it has been here much longer than the day. So many 20th century poets and novelists have cut their teeth on her work. Higuchi Ichiyo, for one, who when she wrote in her diary the following she had Murasaki in mind, "Still, if one writes but a one-page piece that appeals to the human heart and depicts human sincerity, how dare we say it has no literary value? I do not desire to live lavishly by dressing splendidly and dwelling in a grand house. I am attempting to establish a thousand-year legacy as a writer; why would I tarnish it with (writing that is a kind of) temporary extravagance?" And it looks like Ichiyo is well on her way: more than a hundred years later she appears on Japanese currency.

Out of all the genius men and women of literature I am reading now, then, Murasaki Shikibu intrigues me the most. The genius of Shakespeare - great actor, businessman and poet - is something I can easily visualize, even though there is little to say about his biography in relation to his work. "Murasaki Shikibu" was not her given name at birth. Her father was enough of a poet and close enough to power to have a small selection entered in an imperial anthology. Her brother, though essentially lazy, was positioned well enough to become Minister of War. Like Margaret Fuller and Virginia Woolf her father's influence on her education was significant. Through him she sharpened her intelligence based on close readings of the classics of Chinese literature. Like Nijo three centuries later, Murasaki appears to have tried to secure her family's place in the cosmos on her own, since her father didn't realize his talents as much as he should have. A familiar pattern emerges of fathers whose intelligence was superior for their daughters but not superior enough to create lasting art on their own.

When Murasaki was born and when she died is guesswork. We know she was born of the great Fujiwara clan who ruled the court, but as close as this clan was to power birth didn't guarantee influence. How well individuals married determined the political environment and she served more than she stood out. Her husband was a much older man, had at least three wives that gave him children. He was a flamboyant character, and the records show that his high-handed methods as provincial governor caused disturbances "among the people". It is considered unusual that we have any records at all of these ladies-in-waiting. Murasaki was one, but her diaries show that it pleased her to keep plenty of distance between herself and the other women of the court ("So all they see of me is a facade. There are times when I am forced to sit with them and on such occasions I simply ignore their petty criticisms, not because I am particularly shy but because I consider it pointless. As a result, they consider me dull.") Eventually she became well-placed at the court due to her writing abilities, which was evidence that she might be an excellent tutor of the next generation of leaders. The walls of the imperial court were as claustrophobic as the Japanese workplace is today, where everything is noted and self-analysis is required (in this sense, poetry was and is the perfect vehicle for discovering truths of an enclosed environment, a way for circumventing everything from the ritual and the spontaneity of life that keeps "our world" a place of illusion). Her husband dies, and then not long after that she begins writing a tale that shapes the culture of her country for the next one thousand years. But at least up until the year 1100 - ironies abound - her daughter was known as the much greater poet.

Murasaki might not have stood out at court, but she knew exactly the nature of power. A glance could tell you everything about an individual's place in the power structure. But what set apart a glance from Murasaki to those easily flattered or impressed and who tend to express themselves that way is that she could see straight through to the nature of a person's substance. Much is made of the rules and formality of the Heian court where Murasaki resided, but I think we'd be fooling ourselves if we think we don't have these intense strictures ourselves. Our rules are embedded in a much looser social structure, but when considering the way we apply for power through a resume where one's entire life work must fit on a single page, the way we fashion a glance still counts for everything. I know that for myself I can pretty much tell the quality of a writer by no more than a glance at a few of her pages. The recognition of the glance, according to Murasaki as expressed in her diaries,
At normal times of informality, you can usually identify someone who has been less than careful about her appearance, but on this occasion everyone had tried as hard as possible to dress well and to look as attractive as the next. Just as in a beautiful example of a Japanese scroll, you could hardly tell them apart. The only difference you could detect was between the older women and the younger ones, and then only because some had hair that was thinning a little, whereas others still had thick tresses. Yet, strangely enough, it seemed that one glance at that part of the face which showed above the fans was enough to tell whether or not a person were truly elegant. Those who still stood out among such women were indeed exceptional (Bowring tr.)






The Nature of a Masterpiece

I have seen Murasaki's great male hero Genji described as a philanderer (or even more hysterically, a rapist), which makes me feel bad for those advocating this view, for the limited experience they must have had in their sexual relationships, real, imagined or otherwise. Murasaki explores love in all its tenderness and violence without flinching. As soon as Genji reaches maturity he never forgets any of the women who have touched his heart. He appears to suffer much more than he copulates. For creating a male hero like this Murasaki herself must have been exceptional. There are plenty of tears in this tale, but not any more than the guilt and regrets we find expressed in Jewish and Christian literature. Outside of translation issues, another huge barrier to enjoyment for the present-day reader is to find a way to read the tale outside of our economically privatized, middle-class conception of love. It may be hard to believe, but there was once a day when men and women went for lovemaking outside of the risk-averse, contraceptive version we practice today, a time when "no" didn't ALWAYS mean "no", and when the act was enjoyed on its own terms without having to let everyone in the world know who you are with.

On the nights when Genji was away, Murasaki used to make her women read to her. She thus became acquainted with many of the old-fashioned romances, and she noticed that the heroes of these stories, however light-minded, faithless, or even vicious they might be, were invariably represented as in the end settling down to one steady and undivided attachment (Waley tr.)

Much suffering on Genji's part is attributable to his appreciation of beauty on this earth which makes him very attractive to the women of the court. As a form of appreciation his sense of beauty is vast but it is also restless. And like all the men of the court it is situated within a world of political maneuvering.

Nor did anyone make much effort to break in on her seclusion, for suitors are in general more attracted to girls with fathers who can back their interests than to a fatherless one immured in dull seclusion. It was however just the accounts of her strange and depressing existence that had excited Niou's interest, and he was determined to get into contact with her (Waley tr.).

Simone Weil described beauty as a fruit which we look at without trying to seize it. The same goes for an affliction which we contemplate without drawing back from the pain. These two meditations when placed together fit Murasaki's vision perfectly.

Onward then to the heart of Murasaki's vision! It will take up the rest of my life to reach her in her own language but here's one steady and undivided attachment I do not mind settling down with.

___________________________________

Explanation of images in spoiler.
They are from fashion photographer Izima Kaoru and I believe highlight an important aspect of Murasaki's themes as they exist in contemporary life. There is nothing quite like a meditation upon the death of beauty at the moment it happens. Izima is simply putting into human form the sources of nature found in traditional Japanese poetry. When asked, "What do you think is the most poetic thing about death?" Izima answered "That death is the beginning of a legend as much as the end of a story, a way to fix the proof of his or her life as something universal into people's memories."

It is the women and not the photographer who have staged their death scenes with Izima's cooperation in the ongoing series "Landscapes with a Corpse". For those unfamiliar with these famous Japanese actresses and models it is probable these images will be viewed abstractly, and maybe for that reason will appear disturbing. But for someone like myself who have followed their roles with fascination and pleasure, their imagined deaths were disturbing in the way intimacy is when it abruptly ends.
1) Kimura Yoshino wears Alexander McQueen, 2007.
2) Koizumi Kyoko wears Sybilla, 1993.
3) Hasegawa Kyoko wears Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche, 2003.


While it's still up on YouTube the 2011 movie called The Tale of Genji: The Thousand Year Riddle,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H7iYk...
If for nothing it's very exciting to imagine Murasaki reading her tale to the emperor as depicted at 55:32 to 1:01:08. The emperor is seen comparing himself to Murasaki's creation, Genji. How does he match up? Not very well, he suspects. In this way and in so many others, since the reaction was supposed to be immediate we cannot really call what Murasaki wrote a "novel". The impact of her "tale" was meant to speak directly to power - we do not having anything like this in our present day. Everything written that reaches power in our time has to be, by nature, a finished product.

Review for the abridged penguin classics translated and edited by Royall Tyler -- 4 stars

This is basically a very long story about magnificent Genji dealing with his countless women and court intrigues.
This is a fantastic abridged version, the version I'll recommend to anyone who's curious about this story. Royall Tyler picked the best parts from the first 17 books, some are unabridged, others are slightly abridged, and then some of them are skipped altogether. He also simplified the naming of the various characters. You see, in the original it was rude to mention people's names, so the work refers to them by their job titles or in relation to other people. And since some character's titles change through their careers and the same titles are inhabited by different people it can be quite a frustrating and confusing reading experience. What we get as a result is a smoother and clearer story where you can enjoy the rich Japanese medieval court world with its arts, customs and poetry.

And also this time I appreciated how modern this story felt. When I read Beowulf or Homer I never feel that real people live in those pages. Perhaps that’s why contemporary retellings are so attractive. But this ancient work of literature is full of real humans, warm-blooded, messy, jealous humans that gives this book a timelessness. Such a fascinating experience, because remember, this book is a contemporary of the aforementioned Beowulf.

So yeah, read this version and if after finishing it you'll crave another 800 pages of Genji, only then pick up the unabridged text.

Review for the unabridged penguin deluxe edition translated and edited by Royall Tyler -- 2 stars

I've read almost 400 pages of this beast. And there's 750 pages left...
And this book became a chore and I'm not having any fun with it. It's time to through in a towel.
You know what this book is in a nutshell?

It is an OG chick lit. It was written by a court lady for the purpose of entertaining of other court ladies in a deeply patriarchal worlds where women were hidden from men behind doors and curtains. And composed poems and played music for men's entertainment. It is a story about sexy gorgeous heavily perfumed Genji trying to have consensual or more often non-consensual sex with every woman he fancies. This is a bodice ripper, or kimono ripper I suppose?

Every chapter is for a new woman. It goes like this: Genji meets some beautiful lady, becomes passionate, rapes her or sometimes seduces, then he writes letters with poems to her and weeps because of his feeling. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I know that astrologer prophesied Genji having 3 kids in his life with 2 of them becoming emperor and empress but i have a suspicion that half of Japanese kids at that time were illegitimate kids of his.

Here's an example:
The first thing Genji does after his wife dies in labor is going home and marrying and having sex with a young girl he abducted a few years earlier(she was 9) from her father(His Highness) because she reminded Genji of his lover and her aunt (Lady Fujitsubo), who is a primary consort of his father, the Emperor, and she became a consort because Lady Fujitsubo reminded the Emperor of his favorite dead lover and Genji's mother.

The problem is that there's nothing else to the story, no adventures, political intrigues. Which is understandable because these women never went outside by themselves and it was forbidden for women in that time to learn about history or politics.
This is the quote:
Genji marshaled all the arguments he could, but I should not have repeated any of them.
(Footnote: Because matters of history and government are not for a woman to discuss.)

So I guess I could've pushed through but I'm feeling my mortality and there's too many books I want to read in this life. Goodbye my sweet Genji.

Oh yes, I totally want to read about all the affairs Genji, the "shining" prince, had with dozens of other women. Not to mention most of these women looked like his mother in some way or another. (Freud would be esctatic.) One of these women wasn't even a woman at all, but a small child he pretty much abducted. Of course, this young girl looked like his mother.

The fact that this is the first true psychological novel in the world is interesting, it really is. But just because it is so doesn't mean it's interesting as a story.

Un testo incredibile! Dal punto di vista storico è stato molto interessante approfondire la conoscenza con la cultura giapponese che amo molto. Purtroppo l'opera è lunghissima, le note sono tanto indispensabili quanto infinite e questo ha sottratto fluidità al racconto. Le vicende sono piuttosto monotone e ruotano tutte attorno alla vita di corte del Giappone imperiale dell'XI secolo. Protagonista indiscusso è il principe Gengji, lo Splendente. Amato dalla quasi totalità delle donne giapponesi e probabilmente anche da tanti uomini per la sua bellezza, la sua grazia, la sua intelligenza, le sue capacità, e chi più ne ha più ne metta.

After having read all six of the Chinese Classic Novels, it seemed like a logical continuation to go on to the Classic Japanese novel Genji monogatari; not just because of the geographical proximity but also because Japanese culture was greatly influenced by China back then (the early 11th century) and I was expecting something in a similar vein. As it turned out, I was profoundly mistaken in that assumption – The Tale of Genji is something quite different and fascinating in its own, unique way.

Apart from their cultural and temporal remoteness, what probably throws off most contemporary Western readers attempting the Classic Chinese novels is their huge cast of characters, many of them figuring under several different names – something that can make the narrative very hard to follow. The Tale of Genji, however, manages to outdo this by not even bothering with names in the first place – all of its (supposedly around four hundred) characters are referred to only by rank or role, at the utmost a nickname by way of some association (with a place, a colour, a flower etc.). Even “Genji” is not really a proper name but a designation given to Imperial offspring outside the line of succession. Now, as the novel spans several decades and generations, ranks and roles keep changing, and you end up with not only one character having several different designations, but also the same designation being used for several different characters. This alone would probably have sufficed to make the novel nigh unreadable, but thankfully the translator and editor of the edition I have been using, Royall Tyler, kindly placed a dramatis personae not only at the end of the book but also in front of each individual chapter, and I cannot emphasise enough how extremely helpful this was (and even then, I got confused on a couple of occasions and had to backtrack to figure out in which relationship a given character stood to another, or to Genji, or to the Emperor).

Similarly helpful are the extensive explanatory notes Tyler has added as well as the gresat number of illustrations spread throughout the book, which are not only decorative but very frequently help the reader visualise clothing, furniture or other items of daily use referenced in the narrative. I was really happy with this particular edition and think it is exemplary in pretty much every respect – this is how editions of literary texts from remote epochs and places should be done. Tyler makes The Tale of Genji approachable to modern readers without modernizing it, and the same thing can be said about his translation – obviously, I do not have the first clue about how faithful it stays to the original, but it reads very well; the language has an easy, rhythmical flow, but without trying to make readers forget that they are perusing the translation of an ancient Japanese novel. Even with all of Tyler’s efforts, however, the novel remains tantalizingly opaque in many places, many of the customs – in particular those regulating relationships between the sexes – appearing strange or outright bizarre to a modern reader. But as it turns out, this is not a bad thing at all, quite to the contrary, as this distance and the resulting struggle by the reader to comprehend generate significance and as the strange customs frequently reveal surprisingly recognisable structures.

The Tale of Genji starts off with a death, the death of Genji’s mother, who his father the Emperor was so much in love with that he could not bear to let her leave when she fell sick, thus indirectly causing her death. The Emperor eventually goes on to take a new wife which resembles the previous one (i.e., Genji’s mother) very closely, and which Genji falls hopelessly in love with (and has sex with, resulting in a son a few chapters later who will eventually become Emperor in turn, i.e. take over the position of Genji’s father). And as if that was not enough, Genji (who during all this time is having countless – I gave up trying to keep up by chapter 4 – other affairs) comes across a 10-year-old child which very much resembles the Emperor’s wife (and thus Genji’s dead mother) who Genji declares his soul mate and abducts in order to bring her up to be his perfect lover (i.e., become a version of the Emperor’s wife, the one who is the spitting image of his mother). And all of this is thematically tied up with a discussion Genji and his friends have in chapter 2 about whether there is such a thing as an ideal woman… It is all quite dizzying, but also strikingly familiar – French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan would have had a field day with the way the Oedipal theme here runs through several substitutions, permutations and deferrals until signifier and signified become hopelessly entangled. One can easily imagine a Lacanian reading of the novel based on the Freudian Fort/Da dialectics on this alone, and that is even before the following generations come into play… Obviously, I am not going to do this here, but I have to admit that I am sorely tempted.

Now, many people might not care about Lacan or even Freud, but even readers without any interest in psychoanalysis will very likely be struck by how deeply psychological The Tale of Genji is. I always assumed that self-reflexive subjectivity was for the most part an invention of 18th century bourgeoisie, most notably Kant and Rousseau and that Stendal was the pioneer of the psychological novel. But as it turns out, they were (well, Murasaki Shibiku was) already doing it several hundred years before in Japan. It seems likely that Murasaki got there by a somewhat different way (I will speculate a bit on that farther down), but her keen insight into what motivates human beings, her rich and nuanced descriptions of the inner life of her protagonists rival that of Stendal or any other nineteenth century psychological novelist. Even though The Tale of Genji takes place among the upper crust of Japanese feudal society (we meet several emperors, and almost all main characters are highly placed court officials), there is nothing about politics or warfare here – the novel deals exclusively with private affairs, the only subject (the narrator remarks at one point) suitable for women to write about. The novel’s scope is hence confined to the domestic, but what might seem a limitation ends up giving it focus – as an analysis of the mechanics and power shifts in Romantic relationships I think it is only rivalled by De l’amour and Proust’s Recherche à la temps perdu.

There is an additional facet to Murasaki’s work, however, which figures neither in Stendal or in Proust (or at least is nowhere near as prominent as in Genji monogatari) and that is a keen awareness of gender relations. In Japanese feudal society, the relationships between men and women appear to have been at least as strictly regulated as those between differences in rank, with distance being the all-important factor. And this means literal distance – there is a whole arrangement of barriers separating men from women in The Tale of Genji, starting with several layers of clothing, moving on to curtains, to wall screens, doors, and walls – symbolic and real space working together to keep the genders apart. Even while most of the interaction in the novel takes places between people of different gender, for the most part they are not even visible to each other during their conversations, but talk through some kind of barrier and the closeness between two people is indicated by the degree of physical separation between them. The males often invest considerable effort and guile just to catch a brief glimpse of a woman’s face or figure, which very frequently leads to them hiding and outright spying on a woman they are interested in (and at this point, I could have sworn I heard Lacan chuckle). It is important for women to keep that distance as otherwise their reputation and possibly even existence is threatened; but it will come to nobody’s surprise that the men on more than one occasion pierce those barriers even against resistance of the female behind them. Murasaki does only very rarely judge openly – the narrator generally keeps her distance, and only in a few instances draws attention to herself – but lets her characters condemn themselves by their own words and actions. There is more than one case of a male noble complaining about a female who had the misfortune to catch his eyes being “childish” only to then loudly denounce her as a wanton after she has given in to his forceful advances (and more often than not against her will). As the novel unfolds, it effectively presents something like an encyclopedia of rhetoric devices for dominating women – and I was struck by how much those devices resembled those chronicled in Kelly Sue DeConnick’s and Valentine DeLandro’s comic Bitch Planet, Vol. 1: Extraordinary Machine, the first volume of which I happened to be reading at the same time as Genji. Both works obviously are very different from each other – but also very (and depressingly) similar in their cataloguing of ways in which women are manipulated and subjugated by a male-centered discourse, which apparently has not changed much during the last thousand years.

Genji, although far from innocent of this behaviour himself, at least differs from the novel’s other male characters in that he appears to genuinely care about his women, trying to give all of them at least some amount of attention and frequently taking care of their livelihood. And if this sprawling, dispersed novel has something like a centre, it would certainly lie in Genji’s relationship to one of them, the Murasaki under whose name the author of the novel has become known. She is the girl Genji abducts when she is ten years old, something the author makes quite clear was not at all a common occurrence in feudal Japan, and in spite of those rather inauspicious beginnings, the love between him and Murasaki runs as a red thread even through all of Genji’s numerous affairs and general inconstancy. With all of Genji’s ceaseless womanizing, the novel does get a bit repetitive and even a bit of a slog in parts, but the reader’s interest never quite flags completely before it is rekindled by the enchanting description of a lavish feast or the narration of a particularly adventurous tryst. And then, about two-thirds into the novel, Murasaki dies, and the chapter following this death, describing Genji’s reaction to it, is one of the most touching and heart-rending piecer of literature which I have ever read. The only comparison I can think of is the ending of Samuel R. Delany’s n  Through the Valley of the Nest of Spidersn – in fact, once one starts to think about it, there are rather a lot of similarities between Delany’s novel and The Tale of Genji: Both present a decades-spanning love story between two people embedded in a closed community, both are centered around amorous relationships, both are (although for entirely different reasons) somewhat hard to get through on occasion, but reward the reader with a huge emotional pay-off…. of course, both novels read entirely differently, but the similarities are of a sufficient density to make me think that Delany consciously used Murasaki’s novel as a model for his own. All of which is a bit off-topic, but it shows, like the parallel to Bitch Planet I mentioned above, how The Tale of Genji, in spite (or possibly because) of all its strangeness and opacity, still can resonate with contemporary readers.

There is a surprising amount of poetry in this novel (at least I was surprised by it): Almost every time one of the characters sees some striking scenery, or experiences a particularly intense emotion, or has something interesting happen to them – in short, pretty much every time something in any way extraordinary happens, the experience is shaped and crystallized into a poem by the character it is happening to. And as if that wasn’t enough, poems also are an important means of communication between characters – they keep sending them to each other, and judgement on the quality of the poem often is synonymous with judgement on the person who wrote it. These poems are no spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, however, but are carefully crafted, full of clever wordplay and subtle literary allusions (and as such they are of course quite untranslatable – this is where the efforts of translator / editor Royall Tyler reach a truly heroic peak; and while there is no way to faithfully render the poems into English, he at least manages to give readers an appreciation of what the poems must be like in the original). Apart from their inherent quality and the light they shed on the characters presumably composing them (the poems being expressions of a character, their quality does vary somewhat, not all characters in the novel being equally accomplished poets), I think the poems fulfill a third, possibly even more important function for the novel as a whole: In order to be able to transform their experience into elaborately fashioned poetry, the characters need to step from the immediacy of that experience, to view it from a distance and ultimately, they need to distance themselves from their own selves.

Considering how central distance both literal and figurative is in The Tale of Genji, it is probably no surprise to find it structuring the most fundamental of the individual as well; there is a distance, a deferral inside the individual itself, and that distance not only enables the characters’ constant poeticizing but also the turning inwards on oneself, the self-observation and psychologizing that appears so strikingly modern about this novel and which now turns out to result from the profoundly feudal, hierarchical and rank-obsessed society it was written and is set in. (Or, one would at least like to imagine, maybe it is the other way around and the ancient Japanese penchant for allusive, wordplay-heavy poetry let not only to psychological observation but also to the kind of highly formalized thinking that determined Japanese society of that time and has lasting effects on the Japanese way of life until today.)

The world's first, and possibly still the BEST, novel written by a known author! How can I not recommend this? (There are novels preceding Genji, such as Utsubo and Ochikubo, by unknown authors. They are pretty good, too, by the way.)

It was written in the early 1000's (impossible to pinpoint the year because it was written and released over many years), primarily for the court ladies. I have read several versions of modern Japanese translation, part of the original text, and I have a copy of the Tyler translation. I have not read other English translations, but I can say Tyler's translation is fair.

Translation is a sophisticated work. It's not just about swapping Japanese words for English ones. The translator must have healthy understanding of the sociocultural background of the original novel. In a case like this, the translator must also know the difference between classic Japanese and modern Japanese; a word that is still in use might have meant something else before. Then the product must read well as English prose.

The Japanese language often omits the subject of the sentence. (A sentence always has a subject in meaning. However, in Japanese, the subject is omitted to the point that omission is the norm.) This means the audience must be able to figure out what the subject is. Due to cultural changes over the years, this isn't easy even for Japanese readers today when reading classics like this. And the sentences in the original are extremely long, so even when the subject is stated, it's easy to get confused by the time you reach the verb, which is placed at the end of the sentence in Japanese. The English sentences, on the other hand, must have subjects to be structurally correct. I think Tyler translation works out a good solution, being clear while also keeping some of the original beauty.

I am pleasantly surprised to find that quite many people are enjoying this novel, and not just for the exoticism. With all the differences between Genji's world and our modern world, there is something so relevant, something that attracts us. We haven't changed much in essence; we still fall in love with the wrong person. We still suffer in love. We get a strange kick out of our romantic suffering. And life goes on while we are caught in the drama.

Was Genji a womanizing jerk? I don't think so. Note that this novel was written by a woman, primarily for female audience. Yes, he gets into many relationships, and many are "wrong" kinds. The readers still sensed his genuine kindness and brilliance. That's why we've been reading it for 1000 years.

A word about Young Murasaki
One of the main female characters, Murasaki, is about 10 years old when Genji, about 18 yo, spots her and decides to take care of her. Are you outraged? Easy, their consummation takes place years later. Also, we might want to take into consideration that people matured much faster in the old days. Genji is supposedly 12 when he first marries to Aoi, 16.

By the way, men read this novel, too. The very reason Murasaki Shikibu was hired as a lady-in-waiting for Empress Shoshi was to keep the Emperor's interest with this novel. Male courtiers eagerly made copies of this novel; in fact, the oldest existing manuscripts are made by male calligraphers -- done in their private time. In their day jobs as court officials, they wrote official records in Chinese characters.