Japn 314 Genji Monogatari:
Ideas and Interpretations
Besides the fact that this
--sustained prose narrative
--appeared very early in history and
--in a place remote and isolated from most of the world, and yet
--manifests an interest in the internal, psychological state of its characters that we associate with "modern" fiction...
What else can we say is interesting or intriguing about this narrative?
Of course, we could start by saying that:
--it was written by a woman;
--it is over 1,000 pages long;
--it spans two generations of characters
--As Haruo Shirane says in the video, it became a "compendium," an encyclopedia, a resource for poetry, the touchstone for what defines beauty, grace, elegance, what the aristocratic lifestyle is all about. As Shirane says:
It became the compendium for proper behavior, for aesthetic sensibilities. It was kind of like an encyclopedia of culture to which poets who were both aristocratic and non-aristocratic looked back.
--The Genji makes color, ambiance, elegance, refinement, grace, beauty, love, romance, courtship, poignant poetic exchanges, romantic trysts and adventures, spirit possession, jealousy, and daily court life of male and female aristocrats, etc., the very stuff of its narrative. That's why it has an eerily modern and realistic feel.
--it features poetry, poetics, intense emotion, anguish, sorrow, grief, moments of parting, seasonal moods, the weather and its effects
--by "poetics," we mean that it has an awareness of what the role of prose fiction can be, how it can model things for us, how it can fill in the gaps that the histories cannot provide by showing us what resides in the depth of the human heart.
[Remember the "Defense of Fiction" conversation in the Prologue!!]
The author understands (along with Ki-no-Tsurayuki) that great writing is what happens when the emotional cup "runneth over" and the author has no choice but to express herself about something, something that ought to be handed down to future generations. To fail to do so would be unnatural!
--and what was that "something" to which she was reacting in the year 1000 in Heian Japan?
No doubt, it was about the richness and depth of the human psyche; it was about human emotions, something writers in other times and places would not attempt to do in fiction until the late 1700s or early 1800s. Again, that's why it feels "modern" because it deals with interior emotions, feelings, psychological states. No writer would do this again for at least 5 or 6 centuries!
So the Genji was indeed "novel" if not technically a novel; because the novel form, the genre, does not yet exist!
--it also makes the passage of time a central part of the narrative;
--it does this by making the arc, the trajectory, of an entire character's life and experiences, the mistakes, the regrets, the lessons learned, etc., the focus of a complex narrative, and then extends that trajectory out to a second generation of characters;
--the work also has a certain languid pace. As translator Royall Tyler notes, "The original readers of Genji were in no hurry, and they appreciated a rich, copious work that required them to come forward, as it were, to meet it halfway."
I believe that we readers today still need to do that: we need to take our time and meet the text halfway--or even more than halfway. We need to try and take the Genji on its own terms. We must be willing to open ourselves to it.
--Since the medieval period, scholars have believed that the Genji expresses a certain Japanese appreciation for mono-no-aware or the "pathos of things," the sadness that accompanies many of life's transitions, indeed, the transitoriness of life itself;
-- in that sense, the tale seems to illustrate some Buddhist values, like the notion of the impermanence of things, the brevity and etherealness of human life, and the law of Karma, i.e., that things that occurred in earlier lifetimes may shape and influence events of one's own life time; if nothing else, past events establish certain parameters in which present events must unfold;
--there was also another Buddhist notion called Mappō or Mofa in Chinese (Chinese: 末法; pinyin: Mò Fǎ) signaling the end of an age when the teachings of the Buddha, and the laws (dharma) hold sway; so what lies ahead once this age is over will be some kind of breakdown and social chaos?
--this may be tied to the intuition of the author who sensed that she was living during a time when the Aristocratic Court life in Japan was at its zenith; she somehow sensed that no later age would shine quite like her own; hers was an extradoinary time when the Fujiwara Regents reigned supreme, the world as they knew it was at peace; it was a time when beauty, art, painting, calligraphy, dance, poetry, music; grace, elegance, refinement and longing could all be appreciated and savored;
--Tyler quotes another author who likens the Genji to a Mahler symphony in which "short, sweet melodic passages" add poignancy to "an endless dirge of impending doom."
--it may be this sense of "impending doom" that impels the author to work with a powerful motif of Light (Hikaru Genji, the Shining One) and Darkness especially visible in the final 10 Uji chapters when it takes not one but two characters--Genji and Aoi's son Yugiri and Prince Niou, son of Akashi Lady after she became empress--to replace one, Genji, and scenes of light and ethereal beauty are replaced by increasing darkness;
--there is something to be said for the notion that gender relations are also an extremely important topic in this narrative; where was power located in male-female relations? Where was the power at the Heian Court?
--"Marriage" in Heian times among the high-echelon aristocrats was not like a modern marriage today. We can't look at it that way! There was no formal marriage ceremony in a church or temple, no public "vows," no actual expectations for monogamy or longevity, staying together forever, etc.
By contrast, Heian marriages were mostly arranged marriages by the families and since marriage politics was a huge part of how governance worked in Heian times, these marriages were not about love, romance but about securing the next generation of elites and rulers to maintain the family status. Please see here for more details.
-- So, are we saying that there is no love or romance in the Genji? Not at all! Love, passion, sexual attraction drives characters in the Genji, even though true love and romance often fell outside the bounds of these political marriages!
--a fairly recent book by Doris Bargen argues that we must see courtship as initmately connected with LINEAGE and GENEALOGY so the basic aim of courtship was sexual intercourse and reproduction--so Heian Courtiers could take a shot at enhancing their lineage by placing an offspring strategically in the aristorcratic hierarchy: an Emperor, an Empress, a high-ranking "Consort" or"Intimate." This is how the Power Game was played!
--More from Bargen: "In this narrowly confined social world in which everyone was acutely aware of his or her genealogical relationship to everyone else, courtship became intertwined with kinship that was formalized in family lineages marked by a polygynous marital system." Bargen argues that "the dynamics of the Akashi Chapter propel the reader backward to Genji’s initial political deprivation and its vindication through sexual transgression forward to what can be seen as Genji’s diplomatic path to a dual insurance policy for his genealogical ambition," which he achieves via the daughter he has with the Akashi Lady, hor thus meant that his MATERNAL line could provide Royalty because the Akashi Novice is actually Genji's mother (Kiritsubo's) cousin, so it is a clear family relation!!
--This outlook on Courtship and Marriage may help explain why "romance" or fulfilling individual desires or urges had to be sought elsewhere, outside of these formal marriages. What does it say that men and women had to "sneak" around and find ways to be together in dark rooms and hallways, in dilapidated out-buildings where they could be free from prying eyes? And let's face it, eyes were always watching, gossip and rumors could run rampant and undermine people's prized status. Everyone had to guard against being discovered, of the word getting out, and their reputations and standing at court becoming damaged.
--But, we can't forget that all these incidents are fictional! They are stories that people imagined and loved to tell. Of course they were often outside the parameters of everyday life. But are they conected to reality? Yes, we know they are...as we saw in the Prologue, but in what ratio or aspect?
--What are we to make of the fact that a female author chooses to write so much about this amazing "Shining One," Genji, whose light seemed to fill up his years and the text?
Is he her "ideal" male figure, a "Shining Prince"? Why does she focus on this ideal (but also flawed) young man and his many love affairs and escapades? Why does this fascinate her so? Why does she portray love and relationships the way she does? Was it something that was more absent than present in the "real" world around her, and that is why she and other writers would dwell upon them? Or was she writing about romance in this way because that is the way it really was?
--Could she be exposing--unveiling, or unmasking for all to see--exactly where power resided at the Heian Court and how the marriage system was used as a politcal tool, but one that did little to empower women?
--Or are there many things about Prince Genji that she admires? Is this the kind of person she and her circle longed to see or to know?
--Or, do you think she condemns him up and down the line?
--This period accepted various degrees of sexual freedom for both men and women, varying depending on rank, status and gender. Virginity, except perhaps principal wives, was not a requirement before marriage, and casual affairs were very common. Polygamy, with principal and secondary wives, official and unofficial concubines, regularized a wide variey of relationships in addition to casual affairs. We should remember that Genji and the others conduct their love affairs within the parameters of this system.
--So does the text deal with women's powerlessness in this polygamous setting? One could certainly argue that merely by depicting some of these things, by drawing our attention to them, the author is, indeed, engaging in a form of feminist critique even though no such notion of feminism or even individual human liberation was in the air at the time she lived.
But maybe feminism itself does not have to be present at the time a narrative was constructed for us to read it as a "feminist text." Contemporary feminist philosopher and critic Rita Felski makes the case that when considering feminist texts, it is important "to encompass all those texts that reveal a critical awareness of women's subordinate position and of gender as a problematic category, however this is expressed." Can we really deny that this sort of awareness is present in the Genji?
--Could it be that the Genji is about all the jealousy, the hurt, and sometimes the rage that gripped Heian court women because of the double-standard that granted permission for the male courtiers to pursue and seduce women at will? As Tyler notes, many argue that this grand narrative only seems to be about Genji; it is really all about the women who populate his world.
I can certainly agree with this view, but if she is unveiling, exposing certain things, unmasking the patriarchal system, what do you think is the most significant revelation that she makes? On what grounds, if any, could we say the author is challenging the patriarchy?
--and lest we forget, at the very center, at the very core of this narrative, lies the fact that Genji's own son by his father's consort, ascends to the Imperial Throne of Japan; does this, in effect, turn the patriarchy on its head? All the notions about "a line of monarchs unbroken" back to the age of the gods becomes highly suspect;
--everyone believes the emperor is Genji's brother but Genji and we know that he is Genji's son; and the monarch learns this fact as well. What does that say?
--Royall Tyler makes an interesting point. Quoting from Virginia Woolf's 1925 review of the first installment of Arthur Waley translation of the Genji (about 9 chapters) which she greatly admired but ultimately felt it lacked "Some element of horror, of terror, or sordidity, some root of experience has been removed from the Eastern world so that crudeness is impossible and coarseness out of the question, but with it too has gone some vigour, some richness, some maturity of the human spirit." But, Tyler would wonder, is there really no terror, no horror or sordidity in the Genji? What about the Yugao chapter? What about the spirit possession that reappears in Ch. 9, the Aoi or Heart-toHeart chapter?
--Tyler even sees something more, something like the horror of the "Game of Thrones," albeit without so much of the brutal, physical violence, because the Heian Era was a prolonged era of peace. But we can see in the Genji something very human and painful in the arranged marriages that characters must enter into for political reasons and the disastrous consequences that they may bring about.
--One of the most poignant scenes in the entire narrative occurs when Genji holds and welcomes his new son, Kaoru, by the Third Princess--whom he was asked to marry by the Emperor Suzaku--when he knows the child is not his own but Kashiwagi's.
Things come full-circle for him: what he did to his own father now comes back to haunt him. Is it karma? Whatever it is, it is powerful and deep.
--This leads Tyler to feel as though this narrative is more than merely about the manners, the aesthetics, the grace, the refinement, the beauty, the romance, the passion, the mastery of musical instruments, of poetry, of dance, of dress, of scents, incense, of the art of verbal exchange, color, the seasons and how they affect us--though, of course, all of these things are there!
But there is much more that is deeply imbedded at the very core of the tale. And some of that is terrifying and horrific, while other parts are deeply moving and marked by exquisite and sensitive use of poetry.