The Tale of Genji isn’t my first Heian rodeo. I’d already experienced the shock of finding something so old but feeling so new when I read The Lady Ochikubo and I’d already thrilled at the weird tension between a completely alien culture but utterly relatable emotions when reading The Pillow Book. The thing about Genji is that it’s very long and that you can see the book developing in complexity and confidence as it progresses.
Most write-ups of Genji say that it’s in two parts; the first, charting Genji’s life until his death and then the second, the Ujii chapters about Genji’s (not actual) son and (actual) grandson. I’d argue that it’s in three, and that each is vastly more developed than the one before.
The first part (chapters 1-28) are focussed on telling the story of Genji. He’s born into the imperial family as the son of a low-ranking consort. The consort is scandalously the Emperor’s favourite and actually dies as a result of all the negative attention and backbiting from the senior wives. Because of this Genji is given a surname (Minamoto or Genji) and so is made a commoner, where his life chances are better because he can enter the imperial service and work his way up the ranks.
As a young man, he overhears a conversation about different women and the pros and cons of different ranks and personality types. This conversation them structures the bulk of the first section as Genji falls into various love scrapes and twists, trying out examples of all these different women. Despite being clever, accomplished and impossibly handsome, he makes mistakes in many of these relationships because he’s young and naive. In many ways, this first section plays out a lot like Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones - a thoroughly decent young man needs to learn emotional (and sexual) responsibility to become the whole good man he has the potential to be.
It’s also nothing like Tom Jones as the tone is not at all funny or ironic but very earnest and wistful. If anything, the tone of the book veers closer to the later eighteenth century’s cult of sensibility as all the characters in the book have a deep pull towards the beautiful, especially anything that is beautiful in a fragile or wistful way. Genji encounters women who reject him, women who accept him but probably shouldn’t, women who lead him on, and one who is killed by the disembodied spirit of a jealous ex. However, like Tom Jones, his amorous encounters get him in trouble and he finds himself banished from his previous paradise.
In theory, it’s on this exile that he cleans himself up, but he actually just goes with another woman. It’s actually on his return and reinstatement in the city that he sets out to do right by all the women in his life and behave responsibly. The great love of his life is probably the one a modern reader would have most difficulty with. Early in the book he comes across a ten-year old girl who reminds him of a lady he loves who reminds him of his mother. He bullies the girl’s family into letting him have her and then trains her up to be the perfect wife. (This is actually similar to what Thomas Day did in eighteenth century Britain, but Genji was more successful, his wife liked him). This woman is called Murasaki, and she’s held up as a paragon of female virtue throughout (and to be fair, she is eternally patient and even enjoys raising his children by other women). The ideal set-up he creates is one that wouldn’t be possible in society today, essentially a campus with different women in different sections with special gardens dedicated to them. It works for them though.
This leads to, what I would define as the second section of the book (chapters 29-30). Where the first section stuck with Genji, this one gains in complexity by following Genji, his growing family and the family of his friend and rival, To No Chujo. If the first is an early eighteenth century novel like Tom Jones or Roderick Random, this is like a nineteenth century social novel like Middlemarch. Where the characters all previously existed in their relationship to Genji, they now have their own stories which play out and interweave with his.
The cast list expands exponentially at this point, which can be a difficulty, especially with the Heian custom of not using anyone’s actual name. None of the characters so far have used their names and the monickers used are actually their position (meaning the ‘name’ changes as they get promoted) or a called after a significant motif in one of their chapters. Genji’s top wife, Murasaki is named after a wisteria plant that occurs in a poem in one of her chapters, even the author’s name of Murasaki probably comes from her identification as the author of this book. It’s been a struggle to maintain all the family/relationship dynamics so far, but it becomes a real challenge in this section.
Despite having settled down in this portion of the book, it is here that Genji does (what I think) is his most despicable thing. He finds one of To No Chujo’s scattered daughters, one that To No Chujo is not aware of, and sets himself up as her guardian and her protector. However, she’s so beautiful that he cant’ help also trying to force himself on the young woman, even as he’s the only protection she has. What’s interesting, is that even Genji knows this is unconscionable but can’t help himself. Given the author’s general support of Genji and his actions, there’s the implication that this strength of feeling is somewhat sexy.
The whole sexual relationship aspect of the book is really interesting, particularly in light of the book’s female author. It would seem that there is a whole ‘game’ of seduction that both parties generally accept, and Genji is praised for being a role-model at this game. Women were to keep themselves unseen, there are instances in the book of brothers never having seen their sister’s face, so any glimpse of a woman is instantly erotic. It might be the shadow in a screen, a sleeve poking from a curtain, or (most explosively) a glimpse of the hair. Even (and especially) a woman’s handwriting is erotic - and hearing her voice, rather than a go-between is a definite come-on.
Then the man edges closer and closer to the curtains, aiming to talk with her without intermediary. Then he begs to be let inside to sleep with her, teasing he with poems which she responds to. Her responses need to ideally be rejections with hints of acceptance. The woman has to say no but no definitely doesn’t mean no. (Some of the greater tragedies in this book occur when the woman’s no does mean no but there’s no cultural acceptance of this and the man takes it as a no-yes). The man then needs to make himself pathetic, crying that he can’t live without her and generally makes himself pitiable. Then the woman takes pity and he leaps forward, grabs her, takes her somewhere and has sex even as she protests. Before dawn he sneaks off, sending a flirty poem. She, dazzled by the night before then sends a flirty poem back - but not too flirty. It’s a game with lots of nuance, more than I could decipher, and lots of room for misunderstanding, which drives most of the conflict in the book.
Between the second section and the third, there is a chapter title but no chapter. This is presumably where Genji dies and it’s reminiscent of the black page of Tristram Shandy.
This third section (31-42) deals with two children of the generation after Genji’s (the next generation were dealt with in section two). It’s mostly about two men, Kaoru and Niou, and their dealing with three sisters connected with a village called Ujii, and so are often called the Ujii chapters. This section is vastly more complex than the previous two, following a number of characters as they negotiate the social intricacies of their situation, use of time jumps and flashbacks to twist the reader’s perspective and even the use of a fake-out death (followed by feigned amnesia).
It’s amazing how the first part was a straight-forward linear narrative following one character, the second a linear narrative following multiple characters but the third is like Pulp Fiction, controlling the reader’s perspective with clarity and control. It’s such a shame the book ends before this third section was completed because I want to know how it ends and how the characters escape their impossible situation.
There are so many other fascinating elements to the book, the importance poetry plays in every aspect of the character’s lives, the completely different expectations of masculinity for the men in the Heian court to a contemporary Anglo-Saxon or Viking one, the fact that the book is about important figures in government and no actual governing is ever done - one main character is head of the army, yet spends his whole time stalking women and developing his own particular incenses. It’s a fascinating book and a fascinating world.
The Tale of Genji is a very long book that charts the growth, development and ageing of, first, one particular character and then a whole society of them. It pays particular focus on change, the fragility of the world and the impossibility of holding onto past times. In many ways it is reminiscent of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, except I don’t frequently want to choke-slam the narrator. Forget how Proust can change your life, Murasaki can do it better.
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