The Tale of Genji

I decided to tackle one of Japan’s most famous literary works. This would be my 4th culturally significant book behind The Journey to the West, Musashi, and Shogun.

In hindsight the reviews on Amazon were pretty accurate:
“If you want a samurai epic with lots of action this book is not for you”
“If you cant accept reading footnotes to understand the subtleties what’s going on, this book is not for you”
“If you aren’t interested in poetry, this book is not for you”

Ultimately the book was not for me, although I am glad I read it. It has an overall archaic tone with difficult vocabulary and is extremely slow paced. I found it tedious and scholarly. I think it’s apt to compare it to classics like Macbeth or Romeo and Juliet, although with significantly more characters and length.

The stories surrounding Murasaki, The lady from Akashi, and the sisters from Uji were all wonderful and very engaging. It’s too bad I felt the rest of the book was dross.

There was a particularly memorable quote which I think is a good approximation of The Tale of Genji’s overall theme:

“Ah, she reflected, there is nothing so pitifully confined and constricted as a woman” – Murasaki

There were many aspects of Japanese culture during the Heian period that I had no idea about until reading this:
– Women seemed to be in a constant state of despair
– Rape was pretty normal
– People used to scent those classic folding fans with their personal fragrance and write poetry in the creases, they would then give the gifts to the person they were courting so the recipient could waft their lovers fragrance in their face when they were not around
– Poetic notes were often tied to stems of specific flowers or cuttings of tree branches as symbolic gestures
– Northern Japan is famous for high quality paper (Michinokuni)
– People became religious in their old age and went off to die in the mountains alone as monks or nuns to become food for the beasts
– Clothes were scented with incense (this much I knew, but I always thought it was the smoke from the incense. Apparently just having the garments in with the incense in a sealed box can give off a pretty pleasant aroma which makes sense because the unburned incense has a much more distinctive aroma to me~)
– Writing notes seems to be preferred to speaking
– People judged proficiency and artistic talent in writing pretty hard
– People in general seemed to not talk face to face a lot, there seems to be a lot of standing curtains or screens being used for the purpose of people not seeing each other
– Men did not talk to unfamiliar women face to face even when courting them, one of the women’s gentlewomen or parents would relay messages between them
– Men did not have the opportunity to see or hear a woman until he was quite intimate with them
– In the event there were no curtains nearby and a man appeared, a woman could hide her face behind her fan to avoid being seen
– Men seemed to rape women if they ever saw them, and thus the previous 4 points have a lot of significance

Next on the list is to read about communism in Cambodia (The Khmer Rouge) in a book called “Survival in the Killing Fields”

Until next time!