The Tale of Genji
Murasaki Shikibu
Praise for The Tale of Genji
“An enormous achievement.”
— The New York Times Book Review
“Both epic and intimate, [Genji] is a gorgeous evocation of a time and place that have long since disappeared. But it's also an exploration of feelings and relations between men and women, as fresh and beguiling to readers today as when it was first written. A new translation that makes Genji accessible to contemporary readers is a landmark event. [Tyler's translation] has clearly been a labor of love. In his beautifully written translation he tries to get as close to the original as possible, immersing us in eleventh-century Japan. Mr. Tyler's translation is richly embellished with footnotes that flag for us everything that Murasaki and her contemporaries would have taken for granted. All in all, Mr. Tyler's translation is likely to be the definitive edition of The Tale of Genji for many years to come.”
— The Wall Street Journal
“The Tale of Genji set an insanely high standard for anything that came after it. This latest edition is reader friendly at every turn, with generous footnotes, character lists and lots of illustrations to show what robes looked like, or swords, or houses. You have to reach for comparisons to Tolstoy or Proust to convey just what a captivating experience this story can be.”
—Newsweek
“Tyler's delicate ear for the language of the original helps breathe new life into the story of Genji.”
—The New Yorker
“Though [Murasaki's] setting was the royal Japanese court of one thousand years ago, her characters managed to draw the reader into their passion and terrors in an uncannily modern way. [Tyler's translation is] beautifully readable… it sets a new standard. Not only is this new English edition the most scrupulously true to the original, it also is superbly written and genuinely engaging. We are blessed to have Tyler's help in reading it.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“The remarkable thing about Genji is… that it is a masterpiece, the oldest full-length novel in existence, and still very much alive. It is even livelier in the new translation by Royall Tyler. Tyler skillfully catches the erotic flavor, the vivid characterizations, and the allusive poetry of this classic…. Readers will quickly find themselves immersed in a strange and distant culture whose inhabitants' loves, rivalries, suffering and follies we can identify with our own.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“An astonishingly rich, absorbing drama that has stood, and will doubtless continue to stand, the severest tests of time and changing literary fashions. There is nothing else on earth quite like The Tale of Genji. Utterly irresistible.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“One of the undisputed monuments of world literature. Tyler offers a version that effectively captures the indirection and shades of Murasaki's court language. A major contribution to our understanding of world literature; highly recommended.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Widely recognized as the world's first novel, as well as one of it's best… painstakingly and tenderly translated by Tyler. An epic narrative; it is also minutely attentive to particulars of character, setting, emotion—even costume. Tyler clearly intends his [translation] to be the definitive one. It is richer, fuller and more complicated than the others. Tyler's formality of tone offers readers a more graceful, convincing rendering of this one thousand-year-old masterpiece. Scholars and novices alike should be pleased.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Tyler has long shown himself to be one of the finest translators of Japanese in our era. In producing this new Genji translation, he has been able not only to draw upon his own skills as a writer, but also to build on the efforts and accomplishments of his predecessors… the Tyler version is by far the most helpful to the general reader.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“[Tyler] has crafted an elegant translation that remarkably renders this eleventh-century tale in language so lively, vivid and transparent, one could easily believe that the book was written by some gifted postmodernist. Royall Tyler devoted space to explaining, through the introduction and footnotes, nuances of the time, helping help us place them into a modern context. This edition of The Tale of Genji is beautifully realized, both as a translation and as a seamless art object.”
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer
THE TALE OF Genji
Murasaki Shikibu
Translated by
Royall Tyler
PENGUIN BOOKS
For Susan
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, USA
USA / Canada / UK / Ireland / Australia / New Zealand / India / South Africa / China
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com
First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2001
Published in Penguin Books 2003
Translation, introduction, and notes copyright © Royall Tyler, 2001
All rights reserved. No part of this product may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Illustrations on pp. 5–1107 reproduced by permission of the artist and original publisher.
Copyright Minoru Sugai and Shogakukan Publishing Company.
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Murasaki Shikibu, b. 978?
[Genji monogatari. English]
The tale of Genji / Murasaki Shikibu ; translated by Royall Tyler.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-670-03020-0 (hc.)
ISBN 978-0-14-243714-8 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-101-65762-1 (epub)
I. Tyler, Royall. II. Title.
PL788.4.G4 E3 2001
895.6’314—dc21 2001017748
Acknowledgments
I could not have completed this translation in any reasonable length of time without long-term assistance from the Australian Research Council. The International Research Center for Japanese Studies, too, provided extended support, as did the National Institute for Japanese Literature and the Japan Foundation. To all these institutions I am profoundly grateful.
I thank all those who commented on my initial drafts. They were kind about them, but they must have wondered whether there was any hope. Whatever merit this translation has took time to achieve, and glimpses of my work through others' eyes were very helpful. Tsvetana Kristeva, in particular, said exactly the right thing about my early translations of the poems, prompting me at last to mend my ways.
My indispensable collaborator throughout was my wife, Susan Tyler, whose knowledge, insight, and understanding of The Tale of Genji have contributed more to this book than I could ever describe. It is dedicated to her.
I am grateful to Machiko Midorikawa, the Genji scholar who volunteered to read my entire manuscript against the original and who scrupulously pointed out where I had gone astray. I cannot thank her enough. It is a pleasure also to thank Michael Watson, who has long been helpful in so many ways, and Tom Harper and Gaye Rowley for their good humor and encouragement.
I am grateful to Minoru Sugai, who did the line illustrations, for allowing their republication here, and the Shogakukan Publishing Company, which originally commissioned them,
for making them available.
I wish to acknowledge, too, Mr. Yohei Izutsu, the owner and moving spirit of the Costume Museum in Kyoto, whose re-creations of Heian costumes and settings are an inspiration.
A final word of thanks is due to Wendy Wolf, Bruce Giffords, Peter Carson, Paul Buckley, Jaye Zimet, Clifford J. Corcoran, Maureen Sugden, and the entire team of people who worked on the project at Viking Penguin. Their enthusiasm and support were wonderfully heartening.
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Maps and Diagrams
Introduction
1. The Paulownia Pavilion (Kiritsubo)
2. The Broom Tree (Hahakigi)
3. The Cicada Shell (Utsusemi)
4. The Twilight Beauty (Yūgao)
5. Young Murasaki (Wakamurasaki)
6. The Safflower (Suetsumuhana)
7. Beneath the Autumn Leaves (Momiji no Ga)
8. Under the Cherry Blossoms (Hana no En)
9. Heart-to-Heart (Aoi)
10. The Green Branch (Sakaki)
11. Falling Flowers (Hanachirusato)
12. Suma (Suma)
13. Akashi (Akashi)
14. The Pilgrimage to Sumiyoshi (Miotsukushi)
15. A Waste of Weeds (Yomogiu)
16. At the Pass (Sekiya)
17. The Picture Contest (Eawase)
18. Wind in the Pines (Matsukaze)
19. Wisps of Cloud (Usugumo)
20. The Bluebell (Asagao)
21. The Maidens (Otome)
22. The Tendril Wreath (Tamakazura)
23. The Warbler's First Song (Hatsune)
24. Butterflies (Kochō)
25. The Fireflies (Hotaru)
26. The Pink (Tokonatsu)
27. The Cressets (Kagaribi)
28. The Typhoon (Nowaki)
29. The Imperial Progress (Miyuki)
30. Thoroughwort Flowers (Fujibakama)
31. The Handsome Pillar (Makibashira)
32. The Plum Tree Branch (Umegae)
33. New Wisteria Leaves (Fuji no Uraba)
34. Spring Shoots I (Wakana 1)
35. Spring Shoots II (Wakana 2)
36. The Oak Tree (Kashiwagi)
37. The Flute (Yokobue)
38. The Bell Cricket (Suzumushi)
39. Evening Mist (Yūgiri)
40. The Law (Minori)
41. The Seer (Maboroshi)
Vanished into the Clouds (Kumogakure)
42. The Perfumed Prince (Niou Miya)
43. Red Plum Blossoms (Kōbai)
44. Bamboo River (Takekawa)
45. The Maiden of the Bridge (Hashihime)
46. Beneath the Oak (Shiigamoto)
47. Trefoil Knots (Agemaki)
48. Bracken Shoots (Sawarabi)
49. The Ivy (Yadorigi)
50. The Eastern Cottage (Azumaya)
51. A Drifting Boat (Ukifune)
52. The Mayfly (Kagerō)
53. Writing Practice (Tenarai)
54. The Floating Bridge of Dreams (Yume no Ukihashi)
Chronology
General Glossary
Clothing and Color
Offices and Titles
Summary of Poetic Allusions Identified in the Notes
Characters in The Tale of Genji
Further Reading
Maps and Diagrams
Places Mentioned in the Tale
The City
The Inner Palace
A Ranking Nobleman's House
Inside the Main House
Introduction
The Tale of Genji was written a thousand years ago in Japan, but anyone can read it today. The notes are useful but not required. So great a classic, written in an ancient language about a vanished world, has been studied intensively, but its characters' thoughts and feelings remain as fresh as ever.
If Genji contains digressions, parallel plots, stories within stories, and shifts of view, so do many other long novels. Some readers feel the tale is not really a narrative but a series of more or less independent stories, but that is not an unfamiliar phenomenon either, since novels published as newspaper serials often come in more or less self-contained installments or sequences of installments. In any case, others find in it greater unity and design. Many extended novels like Genji treat the history of a family from differing standpoints, revealing secrets that the reader then shares while they remain unknown to certain of the characters. Other aspects of Genji may recall folktale or legend, tragedy or opera. It is true that the nineteenth-century English novel does not prepare the reader for a heroine (Murasaki) who dies two-thirds of the way through, for a hero (Genji) who dies a little later, between chapters, or for a closing chapter that ties up no loose ends. These things and others, such as the possibility of multiple marriage enjoyed by the men, certainly set the tale apart from the more familiar works. They also make it particularly intriguing.
The last third of the tale, after Genji's death, puts new characters onstage, in a new kind of setting. Starting out like an uncertain epilogue, this section soon takes on a life of its own, and the darkness and imperfection of its world serve to heighten the brilliance of Genji's. The failings that seemed so striking when they were Genji's pale beside the blunders and the folly of those who succeed him, and his remembered stature only grows. Nostalgia for his time builds, and against it the troubles of the characters in the late chapters seem both fated and pitiable.
The tale achieves this effect by making the characters and their settings throughout seem so real. The narrative is not expansively descriptive, but the telling touches it provides are just those that nourish a living image in the mind. Many people over the centuries have taken it for a record of life itself in its own time. The experience of reading it resembles that of looking through a small but very clear window into a complete and spacious world.
In its richness and variety, The Tale of Genji rewards not only reading but rereading. Greater familiarity with it reveals new depths. The reader's first glimpse of Murasaki is then no longer one of an unknown girl with a story that may be over in a few pages, but of a great woman seen in childhood as Genji himself saw her. The springs of later success and failure become clear, and so, too, the early movements of passion. Rereading may also heighten an awareness of the more profoundly unusual aspects of the work. Most of the tale is quite understandable as the working out of familiar human emotions, but in the long run the undercurrents that shape lives can be seen to be deeper and more powerful, if less personal, than the commonplaces of ambition, love, resentment, and pride. The tale's repeated references to karma, or destiny, and the supernatural then take on new meaning.
The Stature of the Work
The Tale of Genji must be the oldest novel still widely recognized today as a masterpiece. Its author was a woman whose work ranks in Japanese literature and culture as the Homeric epics, the works of Shakespeare, and Proust's Remembrance of Things Past do elsewhere. Within a few decades of its completion in the early eleventh century, it was deemed a classic, and writings on it multiplied over the centuries. The great poet Fujiwara no Shunzei (1114–1204) even declared study of it to be indispensable for anyone who would compose poetry, and his words were long remembered. The tale's popularity also made motifs from it perennially prominent in Japanese painting.
In modern times, scholarly and popular publications on Genji are still accumulating rapidly. Four major twentieth-century writers translated it into modern Japanese, one of them three times, and many others, too, have done modern translations. Scholars build careers on it. Genji is not just a book but a cultural phenomenon. It has been turned into movies, plays, dance, modern novels, Kabuki, comic books (manga), musical theater, and opera. A scene from it appears on a current banknote. Arthur Waley's pioneering translation (1933), followed by Edward Seidensticker's (1976), have made it famous in English, and there are also complete translations from the original into German, French, Russian, Chinese (two), and Korean. Others into Czech, Finnish, and It
alian are under way. This new English version joins a distinguished and growing company, which is as it should be for so great a classic.
A Short Summary of the Tale
A major ambition of many ranking gentlemen in the world of The Tale of Genji—the court in the imperial city that is now Kyoto—was to present a daughter to the Emperor or the Heir Apparent. For this reason the Emperor normally had a range of recognized relationships with women, less because of sexual acquisitiveness on his part than because he was required to make his prestige relatively widely accessible to the members of the upper aristocracy. Below his single Empress (Chūgū) he had several Consorts (Nyōgo) and, lower still, a certain number of Intimates (Kōi). His Mistress of Staff (Naishi no Kami) in theory a palace official, easily could also be in practice a junior wife. These imperial women were not equal. An Empress was normally appointed from among the Consorts, but by no means did all the Consorts have any realistic hope of such success, and the Intimates had none at all. Their birth rank was too low, and they lacked the necessary weight of political support.
Genji, the hero of the tale, is an Emperor's son by an Intimate who has lost her father and so has no support of any kind beyond the Emperor's personal devotion to her. It is not enough. The Emperor longs to appoint Genji Heir Apparent over his firstborn, who is the son of a Consort, but he knows that the court would never stand for it. He therefore decides to remove Genji entirely from the imperial family by giving him a surname (the Japanese Emperors have none), so that he can serve the realm as a commoner and a senior government official.
The name he receives, Minamoto, was first conferred on a historical Emperor's son in 814 and so has appropriate associations. When the boy receives it from his father (in chapter 1, “The Paulownia Pavilion”), he becomes “a Genji”—that is to say, a bearer of the Minamoto (gen, another reading of the same character) name (ji). This device allows him to belong to both realms, the imperial and the common, and so gives him maximum scope as a character.
Some contemporary readers insist that The Tale of Genji is less about Genji himself than about the women in it—their feelings, their experiences, their fates. However, it is to Genji that the narrative returns again and again during his life. He is, so to speak, its home. That is why this summary will follow his story, passing over in silence along the way a great many characters and scenes. It is meant neither to exaggerate Genji's importance nor to replace a reading of the tale, merely to orient someone about to start the book.
