The Tale of Genji — One Thousand Years Later

by Suzanne Kamata

This year marks the millennium of The Tale of Genji, a literary work written by Lady Murasaki Shikibu and considered to the world’s first novel. Murasaki, a widowed courtier in Heian Era Japan, wrote about the lives and loves of women through the story of the “shining prince,” Hikaru Genji.

Genji, the exceedingly handsome son of the emperor and the emporer’s favorite concubine, philanders through 54 chapters. He has a love affair with his stepmother, marries Ai-no-ue, who is haunted by a jealous spirit who also adores Genji, and loves and leaves a number of women who later decide to become nuns. Setouchi, a writer and Buddhist nun who is the most recent translator of The Tale of the Genji into modern Japanese, points out that Murasaki was able to tell the stories of a number of unique and interesting women by writing about the prince’s love life.

Courtiers often communicated via poetry, thus the text is full of poems. Murasaki is widely praised for having succeeded in delineating the voices of her various characters in these verses.

The story has been translated into modern Japanese by a number of prominent women writers, including Akiko Yosano (1878-1942), perhaps Japan’s most popular woman poet. She published her rendition in 1912. Yosano omitted part of the original story and simplified other parts for the sake of readability.

In 1972, writer Fumiko Enchi (author of Masks) published a modern translation which included stories not included in the original text.

Setouchi’s translation, published in 1996, remains faithful to Murasaki’s version. In speaking to The Japan Times, Setouchi said that The Tale of the Genji, which she first read at the age of 13, “moved me more than any foreign work of literature I had ever read and that’s when I began thinking about becoming a writer.”

This epic novel, which has been translated into English, French, Chinese, and Russian, has inspired other writers, manga artists, filmmakers and dramatists as well. In Japan, the story was adapted for kabuki theater, and also performed as a musical by the all-female Takarazuka Revue. At least four films based on The Tale of Genji have been made in Japan, and Waki Yamato based her 1979 serial manga Asakiyumemishi on Muraskaki’s classic tale.

In the United States, writer Liza Dalby, the only Western woman to have become a geisha and a primary source for Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha, was inspired to write a novel based on Murasaki’s life – The Tale of Murasaki. Dalby has said that her reading of the novel, as a university student, sparked her interest in Japan.

This year, one can expect numerous events to commemorate this enduring work of literature.

Suzanne Kamata is the author of Losing Kei and the editor of the anthologies The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan and Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs.