Genji Monogatari (Tale Of Genji) | Date: 08 May 2011, 00:22
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The Tale of Genji is a classic work of Japanese literature attributed to the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu in the early eleventh century, around the peak of the Heian Period. It is sometimes called the world's first novel, the first modern novel, or the first novel to still be considered a classic. This issue is a matter of debate.
The first partial translation of Genji Monogatari into English was by Suematsu Kencho. A free translation of all but one chapter was produced by Arthur Waley. Edward Seidensticker made the first complete translation into English, using a more literal method than Waley.[2] The most recent English translation, by Royall Tyler (2002), also tries to be faithful to the original text. Diet member Marutei Tsurunen has also made a translation in Finnish.
Introduction
The Genji, as the work is commonly called by aficionados, was written for the women of the aristocracy (the yokibito) and has many elements found in a modern novel: a central character and a very large number of major and minor characters, well-developed characterization of all the major players, a sequence of events happening over a period of time covering the central character's lifetime and beyond. The work does not make use of a plot; instead, much as in real life, events just happen and characters evolve simply by growing older. One remarkable feature of the Genji, and of Murasaki's skill, is its internal consistency, despite a dramatis personae of some four hundred characters. For instance, all characters age in step and all the family and feudal relationships are consistent among all chapters.
One complication for readers and translators of the Genji is that almost none of the characters in the original text are given an explicit name. The characters are instead referred to by their function or role (e.g. Minister of the Left), an honorific (e.g. His Excellency), or their relation to other characters (e.g. Heir Apparent), which may all change as the novel progresses. This lack of names stems from Heian-era court manners that would have made it unacceptably familiar and blunt to freely mention a character's name. Modern readers and translators have, to a greater or lesser extent, used various nicknames to keep track of the many characters. See Characters for a listing.
Stature
The Genji is an important fictional work of Japanese literature and numerous modern authors have cited it as inspiration. It is noted for its internal consistency, psychological depiction, and characterization. The novelist Yasunari Kawabata said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "The Tale of Genji in particular is the highest pinnacle of Japanese literature. Even down to our day there has not been a piece of fiction to compare with it."
The Genji is also often referred to as "the first novel", though there is considerable debate over this — some of the debate involving whether Genji can even be considered a "novel". Some consider the psychological insight, complexity, and unity of the work to qualify it for "novel" status while simultaneously disqualifying earlier works. Others see these arguments as subjective and unconvincing. Related claims, perhaps in an attempt to sidestep these debates, are that Genji is the "first psychological novel", "the first novel still considered to be a classic", or other more qualified terms. It is, however, difficult to claim that it is the world's first novel without denying the claims of Daphnis and Chloe and Aethiopica in Greek, which author Longus and an unknown sophist respectively wrote, both around the third century, and Kadambari in Sanskrit which author Banabhatta wrote in the seventh century. (The debate exists in Japanese as well, with comparison between the terms monogatari -- "tale" -- and shosetsu -- "novel".)
Authorship
The debate over how much of the Genji was actually written by Murasaki Shikibu has gone on for centuries, and is unlikely to ever be settled unless some major archival discovery is made. It is generally accepted that the tale was finished in its present form by 1021, when the author of the Sarashina Nikki wrote a famous diary entry about her joy at acquiring a complete copy of the tale. She writes that there are over fifty chapters and mentions a character introduced near the end of the work, so if other authors besides Murasaki Shikibu did work on the tale, the work was done very near to the time of her writing.
Yosano Akiko, the first author to make a modern translation of the Genji, believed that Murasaki Shikibu had only written Chapters One to Thirty-three, and that Chapters Thirty-five to Fifty-four were written by her daughter Daini no Sanmi. Other scholars have doubted the authorship of Chapters Forty-two to Forty-four (particularly Forty-four, which contains rare examples of continuity mistakes).
According to Royall Tyler's introduction to his English translation of the work, recent computer analysis has turned up "statistically significant" discrepancies of style between chapters 45–54 and the rest, and also among the early chapters.[3] But this discrepancy can also be explained by a change in attitude of the author as she grew older, and the earlier chapters are often thought to have been edited into their present form some time after they were initially written.
One of the frequent arguments made against the multiple authorship idea is that the Genji is a work of such genius that someone of equal or greater genius taking over after Murasaki is implausible.
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