The Tale of Genji

The Tale of Genji boasts rights as the first novel ever written, but the road getting here has been rough. The novel is nearly a millenium old, and a translation usually has to go through two hands (the Japanese translator and the English) before we have the pleasure of reading.

The first translation, by Arthur Waley, reads beautifully and still holds a place in many fans' hearts. It has also been liberally edited and sometimes loosely translated; one wonders how much of the original work remains.

Two recent translations compete for top honors. The more recent one, by Royall Tyler, boasts helpful footnotes and background notes. It also takes great pains to render the novel in stylistic terms that are very close to the original. At the same time, it can be hard to follow at times, since many of Shikibu's authorial conventions have been preserved.

Edward Siedensticker offers good accuracy, with prose that's elegant and precise. He really excels with the book's frequent poetry; his translations are the best in English. While his complete translation is true, he doesn't take Tyler's cares to translate Shikibu's stylistic quirks. His translation is, then, more immediately readable. But more footnotes wouldn't have been a hindrance.

I admire Royal Tyler's achievement, but I enjoy Siedensticker's. Perhaps the best course of action is to read both (if you have the time). Otherwise, it may be a good idea to compare passages and see which you prefer. In either case, Siedensticker's poems are indispensible.

The _Tale of Genji_ is indisputably the most boring novel I've ever read. This is no exaggeration: it was only because of its towering stature in Japanese literature and an inertia fueled by disbelief -- this is a classic? -- that I finished it; anything else this unpleasant to read I would have put down long before the ending. I am not the only one to have this reaction, which has become more common in the twentieth century. There is now apparently a word in Japanese that translates as "loathing of Genji".

I recognize that my review is way out of line with the praise heaped on it by other reviewers, but I think it's important to recognize that the average star-ratings for long works don't act the same way as they do for shorter works. For epically long novels, only the people who like them get through to the end and the people who dislike them don't feel qualified to write poor reviews, so only good reviews get written. I suspect that a lot of people who start Genji give up in disgust or boredom.

I anticipated liking the book. I love long novels (e.g., I've read _War and Peace_ several times). And I like reading Japanese literature, including authors who praise Genji to high heaven. As with many older novels, you have to anticipate some slow points. But I did not anticipate the whole thing being slow points.

The story follows the amorous adventures of upper-class Japanese men in the Heian period as they pursue women, who are sequestered out of sight behind screens and blinds. They are not even to be seen standing. This has some potential as a romance, right? Kinda like early chivalric works? Or at least it offers a window into a life totally alien? Hardly.

The basic structure of the book is that it is a series of seduction/rape stories which go on for so long that the characters have regrets and have to confront death. Sometimes the girls -- rarely women -- are so stunned by Genji's and the other men's social status and beauty that they willingly submit; other times the enthusiasm is decidedly lacking, though the girl may grow to appreciate the man.

The stories follow roughly the same arc: the man either accidentally catches sight of the girl or is told a rumor of her presence in a particular house. He initiates courtship, usually by having a messenger deliver poetry. The girl is reluctant or unsure how to respond. The man increases pressure; the girl continues to be reluctant or confused (and is accused of cruelty for not properly responding to the man's attentions). Then the pressure increases, perhaps turns to outright coercion (e.g., the man pushes the screen and grabs a kimono sleeve). Then the story skips to dealing with the consequences, which often leads to musing on how fleeting life is. This gets very repetitive.

It is made all the worse in that the characters have very thin personalities. The women spend their days in a near prison-like state and that doesn't give them much room to develop. They can be pretty, they can play the koto or sing, they can write good poetry, etc. But this is such a narrow range of attributes that they tend to blur together. It doesn't help that once a conversation begins, proper names are rarely repeated so when your attention wanders it is difficult to recover.

A related problem is that the men's behavior is offensive. Because modern morals are not those of the past, reading classics usually requires holding your nose through parts. In this case you'll be holding your nose so long that you'll suffocate. The men are almost universally predatory. Those who praise Genji today invoke moral relativism, but it's clear that the men know that what they are doing can damage their reputations and that some of the girls are traumatized by what happens -- even to the point of willing themselves to death. Early on, for example, Genji has an evening with a girl that he wants to keep hush-hush. Unfortunately she dies during the night. Since Genji shouldn't have been with her, he is confronted with the two problems: (1) the girl's maid wants to tell people that her mistress died and (2) the classic "body disposal problem". (Thank God for them mountain temples!) The girl's other ladies-in-waiting have no idea why their mistress has vanished and are living in a nightmare. This is timeless romance?

The last five hundred pages slowly improve, starting with the death of Genji's ideal wife. The last three hundred pages, once Genji dies, are better. They follow the responses to the advances of several men by two sisters and a half sister. Psychologists argue that people's memory of events is largely the product of the most intense moment and the last moment. So perhaps the people who write positive reviews are projecting the last couple of hundred pages back over the entire work.

That's the charitable way of understanding the praise. But we can see a modern equivalent of Genji, a way of measuring its timelessness. I'm writing this review a week after a man in California was arrested for having kidnapped an eleven year old girl, holding her for eighteen years and having two kids by her. How curiously similar this is to Genji's treatment of his favorite wife (his favorite because he kidnapped her at age ten so he could shape her into his vision of womanhood).
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The above review initially generated a lot of 'no' votes to its helpfulness. I asked people to comment on it and this generated some interesting discussion. I'd especially point people to Steven Forth's defense of the work.

of all the ways of judging a book (or a film, or any other art-form, for that matter) here is a method i recommend. (1) start the book. (2) finish the book. (3) watch what happens. if you're still thinking about the book 3 months later you could say it was a good book. a very good book. if you're still thinking about it 12 months later, well, you have something very special on your hands. if you're still thinking of the book YEARS later, congratulations, you have a classic. which brings us to "Genji." have to admit, at first i was daunted by its size and complexity (puette's guide is a must). have to admit, i didn't particularly admire the main character much, either. have to admit, there were times i got bored. have to admit, i fell in love with murasaki (what a woman!). and finally, have to admit, i was glad to finally put it down, about 2 or 3 months after picking the thing up. but, of course, in a sense i never really put it down, because the damn thing keeps going through my head! and as time goes by i miss my "friends." i even miss that old hornbag genji!

So much has been said about Genji Monogatari: some say it is the world's first novel; others, the greatest novel ever written; others again an incomparable source of information on Heian Japan. For some it is a satire, for others a great love story. All these are probably true, but it depends on your point of view, culture and even your sex as to how true.

My reading showed me that it is one of the greatest of autobiographies. For me, Murasaki, whose own name we do not even know, is the true hero of the story. Genji himself is a cypher: yet for sure Murasaki loved him, or someone like him. In her book Murasaki stands revealed; it is one of the great acts of intimacy in world literature. She is tangible, present in every adjective, real, alive. She was a strong living personality, a passionate nature, possessing great sensitivity to nature (so much more than the conventional Heian pose) and one who loved deeply and was not able to express her love. Of Murasaki, the scholars tell us, we know nothing. But her book tells us as much as one person can tell another, and with such power that we can never forget her.

This is a book from a distant era. Its survival, composition, culture and conventions, even its authorship, have inspired scholarly debate. There is even a 'Murasaki question' to parallel the 'Homeric question', concerning who wrote the book. Homer is in fact a useful analogue, but we don't need to know any of this. Murasaki tells us all we need to know. Over 1,000 pages, 400 characters and many, many tankas, yet we never lose the way. I like to think that Murasaki never finished her book, and that somewhere she is still writing some later chapters, that someone who loved so deeply in 11th century Japan could be granted some special dispensation by those in charge.

And by a lady too.
This 1000+ page novel is the oldest known surviving novel ever written. It's about a troubled prince who is searching for the love of a mother by trying to love women both sexually and romantically. He ends up falling in love with his thirty something year old step mother who was his mother's cousin or sister (I can't remember) when he's like fifteen to fill the void of not having a mother. But a lot of things happen pertaining to complicated character webs and it's written in a beautiful, poetic way that CAN and will leave the reader confused. Especially involving the syntax of the novel. A lot of the love scenes, I've noticed, just stop and bounce to a completely different subject and I speculate it's because the author Shikibu didn't want to seem too entirely improper for her time. But that's just a guess. This is some heavy reading that I would recommend for people 18+, not for the reasons of "sexual" content but because of all the underlying meanings and little archetypes that could easily be missed by a less experienced reader and thus lose all purpose of plot. So as long as a you're a well-read individual, then go ahead and go crazy. It's a wonderful, inter-generational book that should be on every literature-lover's shelf.

...this is definitely one of the hardest books I've ever read, and the hardest review to give. I started this book nearly a year ago, and since they there have been numerous times I've picked it up and put it aside soon afterwards to read something more interesting. Lets say I was more excited about reading it in the beginning than actually reading it. I found the characters, especially the men, disgustingly shallow and selfish. I didn't like the constant rape of the male characters love interests, claiming feelings for them I hardly believed existed and then blaming the women for the sorrow they felt when the feelings were not returned. The men constantly cried, and I found it a very low way for the men to get attention from the women. Yes, I was beginning to repulse men as a whole because of this book.

After reading a few chapters a month, or here and there, (whenever I felt like something not as exciting) I finally came to Genji's death and I felt obligated to finally finish it. It did get a little more exciting at the end, when Niou and Karaou were fighting over the three daughters of the Eighth Prince. Those last courtships were exciting enough to make the last three hundred pages less painful.

I should have given this a lower score, but I just couldn't. Since this is considered the first novel ever written, I feel it is important for people who read the classics should read it, and see how far the "novel" has come since its birth in tenth/eleventh century Japan. In the future when I have run out of things to read, I may try this gargantuan novel again. Perhaps when I get older and have a better grasp on poetry, I may appreciate it more.

I have the Royall Tyler translation and was looking forward to comparing that with Seidensticker's work, but I found that the editors or proof-readers responsible for this edition (Seidensticker's translation) did the publisher and all concerned a disservice in not spotting the error in the Introduction (page ix was missing and in its place page x was repeated). I initially gave this a solitary star because this sort of error should not have been made. However, I have since persevered and read it in comparison not only to the Tyler translation but also the 2010 Arthur Waley translation (Tuttle Publishers) and personally found that Seidensticker reads most easily among the three. Seidensticker's first line read: "In a certain reign there was a lady not of the first rank whom the emperor loved more than any of the others." Tyler's: "In a certain reign (whose could it have been?) someone of no very great rank, among all His Majesty's Consorts and Intimates, enjoyed exceptional favour." Waley's: "At the Court of the Emperor (he lived it matters not when)there was among the many gentlewomen of the Wardrobe and Chamber one, who though she was not of very high rank was favoured far beyond all the rest;" sic. Not familiar with Japanese, I am unable to say which was the more faithful translation.

The Introduction by Seidensticker himself was about as informative as that in Tyler's. Denis Washburn's Introduction in the Waley translation was mainly a long synopsis of the story.

It seems like the reviews for all the translations are presented here. The version covered here is Seidensticker's.

The Tale of Genji stands out on numerous levels. It is an onmibus work of fiction, potentially the world's first novel. Certainly the first to stand the test of time. It is a story set in Heian period, where one can see the differences in Eastern and Western thought through the social dalliances of Genji and his children.

It may be assuming a bit much to look for broader meaning in the novel, but the reader is left with a deep feeling of the ephemeral nature of happiness, and the feeling that "things were better in the past" Indeed while people are lauded, it seems like there is never time enough for the great things in life, and the great romances so rarely meet their initial promises.

There are certainly several areas people can and have taken issue:

1 - This greatly lauded hero is a philanderer at best, and a pedophile at worst.

2 - The book is inconsistent and rambling, frequently making non-linear leaps in timelines. Perhaps this is the result of multiple authorship.

3 - The last 400 pages or so (after Genki's death) seem extraneous, as if the author was surprised to be finished, so she kept going.

The first criticism could be taken in multiple ways. Perhaps this was just how the royal elite acted in the Heian period. Or perhaps we are supposed to appreciate the irony of someone talking of best intentions and acting in the worst, all to the praise of broader society.

The second criticism may be partially due to difference in Japanese and Western thinking. Indeed we are used to more directness. Part of it can be written off as inexperience from a pioneering author.

I have no good answer to the third criticism, as I felt that at 1000+ pages the book was too long. It could have just as easily been 300 pages. But given the timeframe this was written, and that it was a genre creating novel, it is too much to enjoy Hemmingwayesque conciseness.

In summary, the book may be a little much for someone without a great interest in Japan or comparative literature. But for anyone in the latter two camps, it is required reading.

This translation by Edward G. Seidensticker sidesteps the errors of earler translations to paint a vivid portrait of the real & imagined environment of the world's oldest novelist. Murasaki Shikibu wrote about what she knew best: the rarified world of the Imperial Court of Heian Japan. Her characters may have been recognized by her contemporaries, but the paragon Genji would be a difficult character to identify. The many women in his life - he seemed to love all women - were familiar to her court cognoscenti.

This fascinating tale follows the life of a mythical(?) "shining prince" of perfect manners and sublime taste, the paragon of Heian ideals. The story may have some chapters missing; there is an abrupt break from the story of Genji's life to the story of his son, a similar paragon but less successful with the women in his life.

Not a tome for the faint-of-heart, the book is quite hefty, despite being in paperback. It is worth the read - and the wade - not only for the story but for Murasaki's thinly veiled barbs at contemporary women in the court! My copy is dogeared and marked from frequent re-reads, notations, and references.

I can't believe the "translator" Seidensticker is a "professor of Japanese" at Columbia Univeristy and a noted translater. Besides the English being stilted and awkward, Seidensticker failed to understands Japanese culture. To make an old foreign classic understandable to English speakers, the translator must not just translate verbatim. It is the translator's job to preserve the elegance of the original while making it understandable to foreigners. Seidensticker failed to do either. The result is a book that failed to preserve the beauty of the original and makes little sense in English. He seemed to be not only translating "out of sight, out of mind" as "invisible madman" but also "someone wrote it down in short hand" as "someone with short arms, small hands, and tiny fingers wrote it down." It is unbelievable that a reviewer gave it a 5 star rating. It must be someone who had equally little understanding of Japanese literature and not very demanding in good English writing.