Murasaki Shikibu

Japan's Greatest Novelist

Pretty yet shy, shrinking from sight, unsociable, fond of old tails, conceited, so wrapped up in poetry that other people hardly exist, spitefully looking down on the whole world—such is the unpleasant opinion that people have of me. Yet when they come to know me they say that I am strangely gentle, quite unlike what they had been led to believe. I know that people look down on me like some old outcast, but I have become accustomed to all this, and I tell myself “my nature is as it is.”¹

If you’re an introvert (as I am), with an inward focus who approaches the chaos of the wider society somewhat gingerly, I think that quote above will almost certainly resonate with you, maybe especially if you’re an author (as we authors seem to be more prone to introversion—not to be stereotypical). At any rate, it certainly does me (although no one has ever accusing me of being “pretty”). It could’ve been written yesterday, by someone we know personally. But, in fact it was written just over 1,000 years ago, by a woman who lived in a world that, on the surface, seems vastly different than ours, almost inconceivably alien in many ways. Who was she?

Murasaki Shikibu, the greatest novelist in Japan’s history, and—perhaps?—all history? Certainly, one of the most gifted, no matter what criteria we use. I’d like to try to introduce you to this extraordinary woman.²

Who was Murasaki Shikibu? As is typical, what we know about her is spotty, but more than many of her contemporaries. She was born in the 970s but we don’t know the year; 974, 976 and 977 are all suggested. Her family belonged to a minor branch of the powerful Fujiwara Clan and her father was a fairly successful official who held what we would call a doctorate in literature. Her grandfather was a noted poet, and one of her ancestors was a famous statesman and “man of letters” who played a large role in making the Fujiwara clan ascendant. In aristocratic Heian society where family connections meant nearly everything, Murasaki was the 5th cousin of Fujiwara no Michinaga (Japan’s ruler at the time), and that counted for something.

So Murasaki had the dual advantages of birth, and being raised in a family with a long literary tradition.

She had a brother her father seems to have doted on and had high hopes for. Her brother therefore was given the best classical education their father could provide. This of course focused heavily on Chinese history and literature. As I’ve mentioned before, girls were not supposed to be educated in this, but that didn’t stop Murasaki from joining in her brother’s lessons and her father apparently did not object. However, it was something of an embarrassment to him that his daughter was better at these studies than his son. He is known to have remarked, “If only you were a boy, how happy I should be!”

This gives us something of a flavor of what Murasaki’s upbringing was like and how it may have shaped her personality, and colored the novel she would eventually write.

She was betrothed at about age 20 to an older relative and married around 999. This is older than was typical for girls of this time. They had a daughter who later became a noted author in her own right. Her husband died in an epidemic in 1001. (This may be the same epidemic that killed Izumi Shikibu’s lover, Prince Tametaka, whose death is usually said to be 1002.)

For about five years after her husband death, Murasaki lived at home and it’s believed she started working on her novel during this period. In 1004, her father was appointed a provincial governor and he was able to arrange for Murasaki to join the court of Empress Akiko as a lady-in-waiting some time not too long after.³

In 1008, she began writing a diary and kept it for about two years. Scholars have noted that while it gives us a very illuminating picture of court life, rather like Shōnagon’s pillow book, it is not helpful when it comes to dates, being impressionistic rather than a chronological record.

The emperor died in 1011 and Empress Akiko went into retirement with some of the members of her court. It seems Murasaki is one of the women who stayed in her service, but we don’t know anything at all about her life during this period.

Some scholars believe she died in 1015, others think she became a nun around that time and died in 1031, but Ivan Morris remarks that there’s no real factual basis for this. There is what may be a reference to her still being in the dowager empress’s service in 1025, but her name is absent from a list of court ladies who attended Akiko in 1031. This leads to the tentative conclusion that she may have died or joined a convent sometime between 1025 and 1031.

Finally (as far as personal details go), where her name comes from is a matter of conjecture.⁴ On the one hand, Murasaki (literally “violet”) refers to the color of wisteria, which is the first part of her family name, Fujiwara (Fuji meaning “wisteria”). On the other, it’s the name of the first and most important heroine in her novel, The Tale of Genji. There is also a famous poem in which the name appears, and which the emperor supposedly cited when presenting her to Akiko’s Court. Which of these is the case, or if it’s a combination, or maybe something else entirely, is anybody’s guess.

That’s a capsule description of her history. What was she like as person and how did she come to write her epic novel? My introductory quote, which comes from her diary, gives a good impression, I think, but it can be enlarged upon (again, mostly based on her diary). She seems to have disliked the gossip and banter that were a large part of court life and that most others, especially her fellow court ladies, indulged in. She had a “virtuous” reputation, meaning she didn’t engage in casual affairs that many (or most) of the other ladies did.⁵ She comes across as markedly critical of others she felt were frivolous or whose behavior she disapproved of. The accusation she was rather prudish is probably justified.

Historians and literary commentators like to highlight a diary entry she wrote about Sei Shōnagon. It has an unusually biting and maybe even bitter tone, beginning: “Sei Shōnagon has the most extraordinary air of self-satisfaction. Yet, if we stop to examine these Chinese writings she most pretentiously scatters about the place, we find they are full of imperfections…” (Ivan Morris’ translation.)

Murasaki goes on to admit Shōnagon is a “gifted woman” but criticizes Shōnagon’s behavior, including “making such an effort to be different,” giving “free rein” to her emotions under “the most inappropriate circumstances” and says she’s bound to be seen as “frivolous” because she has to “sample every little interesting thing that comes along.” She predicts a bad end for Shōnagon as a result. (All from Morris’ translation.)

As Morris and others have noted, it’s hard not to see some jealousy in Murasaki’s words. But what stands out about this “acidulous” critique⁶ is that Shōnagon had left the court at least eight years before Murasaki wrote it. However, Shōnagon was still in contact (on friendly terms) with at least one for Murasaki’s fellow court ladies (Akazome Emon) and must’ve still been casting her spell of the court for Murasaki to resent her enough to castigate her in her diary.

This, and the fact Murasaki and Shōnagon served different empresses from different factions of the Fujiwara family, is the basis for the well-known “rivalry” between them.⁷ She and Shōnagon were certainly as different as two woman could be (as I said in my post about the latter). Murasaki didn’t enjoy Shōnagon’s reputation as a sparkling wit and “bon vivant” (as I might put it). And where Shōnagon may have indeed tended to flaunt her erudition, Murasaki took pains to hide her knowledge of Chinese literature and classics.

This is shown by what happened when the emperor read some of The Take of Genji; he commented that the person who wrote it must have been “very learned” and very familiar with Japanese history, which Murasaki was. The emperor was paying her a compliment, but it led to Murasaki being known as “The Lady of the Chronicles” which she deeply resented.

Instead of seeking the limelight, Murasaki kept to herself and poured everything she knew into her novel, exactly as we’d expect of an author of her type. She immersed herself in poetry (as she says) but also in the popular tales of her day, which were the “feedstock” she used to nurture her nascent ideas and create her entirely new masterpiece.

There’s another trait I suspect is behind Murasaki’s feeling Shōnagon was “frivolous” which highlights how different, yet complimentary, they were. Shōnagon did in fact want to “sample every little interesting thing that comes along.” That’s what she loved and what she exceled at (in addition to thriving on the spirted, if not always very nice, back-and-forth of court life). It is Shōnagon’s ability to notice, appreciate, and comment on “every little interesting thing” in her brilliantly lucid, insightful way that makes The Pillow Book such a classic and so fun to read.

Murasaki was much more focused and deliberate and, along with her extraordinary literary talents, had a genius for organization. Again, two more different ways of approaching the world can hardly be imagined.

With that, I’m going to try to say what I can about her novel.

Honestly, it’s not much. The Tale of Genji is not just the first psychological novel and the first great novel, it also could be the longest true novel (about twice the length of War and Peace) and in some ways, more daunting. It consists of 54 “books” that run to over 630,000 words; it spans over 75 years and four generations, and has over 400 characters who play a significant role in the plot, most of whom are related to each other. Unlike the “floating” nonconsecutive “narrative” of The Pillow Book, the timeline is meticulously laid out and maintained, so we always know what years and months is being referred to and how old the main characters are. Murasaki rarely departs from her strict chronological order and when she does, it’s always deliberate, not an oversight.

This degree of precision is nothing short of amazing (and would be, even in modern times), and for centuries, people have pored through the novel, apparently hoping to find a mistake in either the chronology or the characters’ relationships and their genealogy. According to Morris (a leading expert, as you might guess, from my reliance on him), they haven’t found one.

Morris also suggests that more has been written and discussed and debated about The Tale of Genji than any other single literary work. He might be right, although I think the Iliad should be in the running. Certainly, an incredible amount of scholarship and commentary has been devoted to it over the centuries.⁸

No small amount of this has, in sad fact, been devoted to trying to prove Murasaki didn’t write it. People once claimed her father wrote it (with her adding details), or Michinaga himself had a hand in, and that the last ten chapters (which are especially esteemed) were written by someone else entirely. It’s only been since the 18th century (around the last 250 years or so), that it’s become accepted that she is indeed the sole author of this work.

The reason is simple: orthodox Confucians couldn’t stand the idea that the two most famous literary works in their country’s history were created by creatures so lowly and despised as mere women. Buddhists piled on, both because their doctrine in those days relegated women to an inferior place in the cosmic order (contrary to what we might think) and because they felt Murasaki’s powerful, evocative, and “worldly” writing would lead people astray.

This led to the weird situation where Buddhists condemned Murasaki to Hell for writing her book at the same time Confucians (and others) were straining to prove she actually didn’t write the book. Misogyny really does make people do stupid things.

Also fascinating is the near obsession (I guess you could say) Japanese scholars once had over why Murasaki wrote her novel. Early on (again according to Morris) they believed it was for religious reasons; even that she wrote it as a penance for composing a poem that was offensive to the Buddha. Morris mentions that in the Kamakura period (which immediately followed the Heian period) reading The Tale of Genji was assigned as a penance. (Morris remarks that many a long-suffering student would be in sympathy with this view.)

So why did she write it? Murasaki herself tells us, putting the reason in the mouth of her principle hero, Prince Genji, when he’s chatting about fiction with a girl who is his new ward (once again, Morris’ translation):

It is a matter of [the writer’s] being so moved by things, both good and bad, which he has heard and seen happening to men and women that he cannot keep it all to himself but wants to commit it to writing and make it known to other people—even those of later generations…”

In other words, she wrote for the same reason any author pours her heart and soul into a story: she had to.

Having gone on this long, I might as well say something about the circumstances The Tale of Genji is thought to have been written in. Like a lot of cultural icons, it has its own origin story, which goes like this.

The High Priestess of the Kamo Shrine (a major shrine in Japan) asked Empress Akiko for something to read in the phonetic script (as opposed to Chinese). Akiko felt that popular tales of the day were a bit passé and many of them were too spicy for a high priestess. (And I bet you thought spicy romance stories were a modern invention! 😉) So she asked Murasaki (who, being from a literary family, had the proper background) to write something new for the High Priestess. Murasaki retired to a temple on the shores of Lake Biwa (not far away) and spent all night praying for inspiration. It was an particularly beautiful moonlit night and by dawn her prayers were answered.

Murasaki now faced the problem of recording her story, if only in outline form. She (it’s said) removed some the temple scrolls on which a sutra was written and jotted her first two chapters on the backs. This was (of course) a sin, and as penance she copied out all 16 scrolls of the sutra in question and presented them to the temple. (The Heian version of being kept after school to write sentences? Am I the only one who’s still heard of that?)

Morris remarks that when he was in Japan, visitors could still go to the temple and be shown the room where Murasaki wrote her chapters and even the ink stone she used. (Yeah, right.)

It’s a charming, if somewhat silly story. Scholars all agree on that, but not much else in the way of specifics. As I noted above, it’s generally believed she started it after her husband died (maybe 1002) and from her diary we know parts of it were in circulation at court in 1008.

Beyond that, things are obscure. Another famous Heian dairy, the Sarashina Diary, refers to 50 books being available in 1022, and mentions it was hard to find copies. Since The Tale of Genji has 54 books total, it may be Murasaki was still working on it at this time, but the chronology various scholars offer are all over the place. It’s an unsolved mystery and destined to stay that way, absent some spectacular find.

Did she finish it? The novel ends awkwardly, so the consensus is probably not. Arthur Waley (who did the first popular—and rather loose—English translation of it from 1925 to 1933) argued she did, and the ending is deliberate. Most scholars and literary critics feel the end is not in keeping with Murasaki’s style or attention to detail. For what it’s worth (putting on my developmental editor hat), I agree. The ending is kind of messy in what it leaves hanging and Murasaki was the antithesis of a messy author.

What prevented her from finishing—ill health, retirement to convent (in which writing such a story would’ve been inappropriate), death—we can only speculate. Maybe she just ran out of steam after 20 years, set it down for a break and never returned to it, even if she meant to. Life is like that.

No matter. She created a monument, even if it’s not quite finished. That’s more than enough.

Finally, what’s it about?

Now I’m going to have to admit defeat. No summary or precis or synopsis can possibly address that adequately. At least, not one I’m capable of. The main theme is romance in the broadest sense; all the vagaries, twists and turns of the human heart and manifestations of love and sex. It delves into the psychology of the main characters in a way that’s realistic and recognizable today; their motives, their jealousies, their fears, joys and disfunctions. A detractor might call it the first soap opera, if a soap opera were married to Crime and Punishment. The characters can seem paradoxical in that the “good” characters often don’t seem “good” by our standards, or even the standards of times past. This is particularly true of Genji: he is held up as this brilliant icon—the Shining Prince—who sometimes behaves in ways we find deplorable today, even criminal. Other characters are also portrayed sympathetically despite behaving in ways that were reprehensible in Murasaki’s day.

These aspects—particularly why Genji is so admired while doing some of the things he does—present a challenge for modern readers. That’s not a flaw in the book, but an example of the dual nature that inhabits everyone, regardless of outward appearances.

This is all combined with a deep Buddhist sensibility about life and impermanence Murasaki expressed in her diary when she wrote:

All things in this life are sad and tiresome. But from now on I shall fear nothing. Whatever others may do or say, I shall recite my prayer tirelessly to Amida Buddha. And when in my mind the things of this world have come to assume no more importance or stability than the vanishing dew, then I shall exert all my efforts to become a wise and holy person. (Morris translation.)

Put it all together, stir for awhile and maybe there’s a sense of what The Tale of Genji is.

Or maybe not.

Okay, I’m done. I promise this is longest post I’ll ever write. I doubt I’ve scratched the surface or succeeded in any meaningful way. If you’ve gotten this far, I’m grateful beyond words and I hope something in this way-too-long post made it worth your while. Leave a comment and I’ll try to make it up to you in the future.

If you’re interested in knowing more, the best background I’ve found is The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan, by Ivan Morris. In some ways a bit dated, I still think it’s indispensable for understanding Heian Japan, and it’s accessible (for the most part—I still can’t grasp the part about the calendar). Most of what I’ve written here is pretty much a book report on his work.

If you want actually read The Tale of Genji, good translations aren’t that easy to find, given its length and the difficulties it presents to the translator. The version I prefer (recommended to me by my friend the Japanese lit professor) is the unabridged translation by Dennis Washburn.

And last, thank you for reading. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

1. This statement, from Murasaki’s diary should be taken as a caution not to fixate on the superficial aspects of other people and cultures. Sure, we can look at another culture—what they wear and how they express themselves, what they believe in and their habits and customs and think “Oh, that’s weird, I don’t get it” and maybe we don’t get it (I can’t figure out all the details of the Heian lunar calendar, despite having read about it multiple times), but that’s not what matters. What matters is we’re all just people under the skin and we’re much more the same than we’re different. If we could only realize and embrace that, and stop being so alienated from each other, maybe we could stop treating people we feel are different from us, or that disagree with us, so badly. It’s a nice thought, and I’m writing this in that spirit.

2. I know I’m not supposed to say things like “the greatest.” It’s not polite. I’m supposed to temporize or qualify and say “one of” or “considered to be” or “in the opinion of” or something. After all, greatness in the Arts is subjective and people disagree and who am I to make that kind of judgment? The gall!

Okay, point taken. I’ll stand by what I said anyway. I see no value in watering down or eliding or diluting my opinion, subjective as it is, for fear of stepping on notional toes. All too often, scholars—of which I’m not one—get so diffuse in their statements that whatever they’re trying to say disappears into a gray muddle of qualifiers that, especially when embedded in dense academic jargon, makes me wonder what motivated them to devote so much effort to their subject, if they’re unwilling to speak plainly about it. And then they wonder why people hardly pay attention to them.

So, just to explain why I think my judgement isn’t entirely frivolous, I’ll try to state my case for Murasaki Shikibu (and Sei Shōnagon) being “the greatest.” To me, it comes down to this:

Japan has produced many brilliant writers in the last 1000 years, including some in the last few decades. No one can deny that. But those authors (the more recent ones) enjoyed all the benefits of the modern paraphernalia of writing, which include not just typewriters and word processors and anything else that helps us record our thoughts, but editors and publishers and industry that exists to make their work available to readers in the most polished form.

Much more important, all those authors—recent and not—benefit from a rich tradition that they can (and did) learn from and were inspired by; that shaped them and their writing in fundamental ways.

And that tradition started with Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shōnagon. Yes, those two women also had a tradition they were heir to, but what they did with it was revolutionary and extraordinary. No one had done anything like that before in Japanese history and no one has done it since. There was no such thing as a psychological novel when Murasaki wrote hers. There was hardly such a thing as a novel, especially in Heian Japan, much less a great novel. (Tales, yes; plenty of them. But a novel in the modern sense? No, I don’t think so.)

Just as impressive, what they wrote stands shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip (if not head and shoulders above) with the very best of anything written since, despite 1000 years of experience and evolution that they didn’t have the benefit of—that they started.

What modern writer will be looked back on, 1000 years from now (assuming there’s anyone to look back), and have it generally said in their culture: “Them. They began this and they are as relevant now as they were then.”

I certainly can’t think of any. And that is why they are the greatest.

If others have a argument as to why they’re not, I’ll certainly listen to it. But it’s gonna be a tough sell. 😉

3. On Wikipedia, I saw some odd-sounding theories about why Murasaki was admitted to the court. Reputable scholars I’ve read don’t mention them and they sound like the kind rumors people like to make up when they find the facts—such as they are—too prosaic. In other words, it’s Wikipedia being Wikipedia, and I don’t take them too seriously.

4. Shikibu refers to an official post her father held, as with Izumi Shikibu.

5. It’s been speculated she had an affair with Michinaga but the evidence is sketchy and, if so, it’s doubtful she pursued him. (As evidence, he wrote her poems she was reluctant to respond to.) Overall, it feels more like a rumor that was made up to throw some shade on her reputation for being chaste. Michinaga, whatever his involvement with her, is on record as doubting she was as virtuous as she pretended to be, but his testimony might be regarded as self-interested and thus dubious.

6. That was a new word to me; Morris uses it and I think it ought to get more play! 😊

7. Personally I get a bit irked when people talk about a rivalry between Murasaki and Shōnagon, because they served in the courts of “rival” empresses. I think that’s misleading. Our society, and in fact our whole culture, is largely based on competition; it’s one of our foundational elements. So we think in terms of rivalries, we love a good rivalry, and they get played up to a rather absurd degree. This of course is especially true in sports, which would be basically nothing to us if it weren’t for long-standing rivalries that have become cherished cultural possessions.

So I guess it’s a natural for us to talk about rival empresses in Heian Japan. But for all their exalted status, Heian empresses were only pawns, to an even greater degree than the emperors. Their function was just to make more emperors. The rivalries were between male members of the dominant Fujiwara family, who actually ran things.

The empress Shōnagon served, Teishi, was the daughter of Fujiwara no Michitaka, who ruled Japan until his unexpected death in 995.

Murasaki served in the court of empress Akiko, who was the daughter of Fujiwara no Michinaga, Michitaka’s brother. Michinaga ruled Japan after his brother’s death, having engineered the disgrace and effective ouster of his brother’s son and chosen heir.

Michinaga then arranged for his daughter (Akiko) to replace his niece as empress, when she was only 10 years old. His niece (Teishi), died from childbirth at 22 in the year 1,000, five or six years before Murasaki joined Akiko’s court.

So I find the notion that these two empresses were “rivals”, in any meaningful sense, misguided and, to be honest, distasteful. To call a 13-year-old girl the rival of her cousin who died tragically at a young age is something I think we should avoid. They were both pawns in the political games played by the older male members of their family.

That said, Empress Akiko lived an exceptionally long life, outlasting nearly all her contemporaries (she died in 1074). Because of that, and her astuteness and political acumen, she gained a stature no other Heian empresses (and few emperors) achieved. At least one scholar (Arthur Waley) likened her to Queen Victoria in Great Britain.

So in this one case, I guess we could say that a pawn was actually promoted to Queen. And there’s something to be said for that.

8. There’s an encyclopedia on The Tale of Genji that alone is something like 1,200 pages. And that’s a drop of water in the vast ocean of Genji scholarship.