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Overview
Written in the eleventh century by the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji is a masterpiece of prose and poetry that is widely considered the world’s first novel. Melissa McCormick provides a unique companion to Murasaki’s tale that combines discussions of all fifty-four of its chapters with paintings and calligraphy from the Genji Album (1510) in the Harvard Art Museums, the oldest dated set of Genji illustrations known to exist.
In this book, the album’s colorful painting and calligraphy leaves are fully reproduced for the first time, followed by McCormick’s insightful essays that analyze the Genji story and the album’s unique combinations of word and image. This stunning compendium also includes English translations and Japanese transcriptions of the album’s calligraphy, enabling a holistic experience of the work for readers today. In an introduction to the volume, McCormick tells the fascinating stories of the individuals who created the Genji Album in the sixteenth century, from the famous court painter who executed the paintings and the aristocrats who brushed the calligraphy to the work’s warrior patrons and the poet-scholars who acted as their intermediaries.
Beautifully illustrated, this book serves as an invaluable guide for readers interested in The Tale of Genji, Japanese literature, and the captivating visual world of Japan’s most celebrated work of fiction.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691172682 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/06/2018 |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Sales rank: | 255,660 |
| Product dimensions: | 7.30(w) x 10.20(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]
The Lady of the Paulownia-Courtyard Chambers
Kiritsubo
Kono kimi no onwarawa sugata, ito kaemoku obosedo, juni nite ongenpuku shitamau. Itachi oboshii to namite, kagiri aru koto ni koto o soesase tamau.
[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]
The opening scene of the Genji Album captures the final moments of Genji's "boyish appearance," the loss of which is lamented in the accompanying textual excerpt. In keeping with pictorial conventions, gold clouds part and architectural barriers fall away to reveal Genji at his initiation ceremony where his long tresses will be shortened and tucked inside his courtier's cap, modeled by the six men in formal attire who attend to the ceremony. The picture focuses on young Genji and his adolescent hairstyle, showing his hair trailing down his shoulders from loops above his ears tied with white ribbons that frame his innocent-looking face. Genji's countenance demonstrates the artist Tosa Mitsunobu's mastery of the conventions for depicting nobility in courtly narrative painting: white pigment (gofun) from ground shells to paint the face, precisely drawn lines for the eyes and nose, with bushy eyebrows and red lips, amounting to an abstract but subtly expressive visage. The solemnity of the occasion is conveyed through details of comportment: the slight tilt of the head, the firmly grasped baton, and the overall compliant pose of the initiate. Furnishings in the picture include a brocade-covered two-tiered shelf with a vibrant floral pattern against a gold ground, and a black lacquered footed basin to receive to the boy's shorn locks, all perhaps alluding to the attention to the ceremony's details paid by the sovereign himself. The Emperor, whose face is hidden behind blinds, as was custom, is seated in the upper left corner. His importance is underscored by the selection of the textual excerpt, which describes the ceremony from his point of view. The courtier to Genji's left, directly in the Emperor's line of vision, is most likely the Minister of the Left, the man who is about to become Genji's father-in-law. Genji's coming of age coincides with his betrothal to the young woman known as Lady Aoi, who, at sixteen, is four years his senior. The scene of initiation, although tinged with sentimentality, pictorializes a consequential political transaction between the Emperor and the Minister of the Left, with Genji in the middle.
The textual passage for this scene opens with the reflections of the sovereign as he witnesses his son's passage into adulthood. Until this moment Genji had barely left his father's side and had served as a poignant reminder of the Emperor's deceased love known as the Kiritsubo Consort (Lady of the Paulownia-Courtyard Chambers). Much of the opening chapter of The Tale of Genji describes an all-consuming love affair between the Emperor and Genji's mother, a woman of lesser social standing than his senior Consort, Kokiden. Their relationship reflects the Emperor's attempt at an assertion of political control over the Kokiden Consort and her powerful Fujiwara family, whose manipulation of the throne curtails direct imperial rule. The birth of Genji to a woman without a controlling Fujiwara patriarch behind her means a potential rival to the throne who would not be subject to control by the Fujiwara Regents. At the same time, without powerful maternal male relatives to occupy influential bureaucratic positions at court to support and protect him, Genji's position is precarious, prompting the Emperor to make him a commoner, thereby removing him as a potential successor. The Tale of Genji is thus a tale of the disinherited — the surname "Genji" being designated for such princes removed from the line of succession — in which the reclamation of this birthright and the redemption of Genji's mother's lineage subtends the entire work.
Courtly narrative painting at its best employed architectural settings to convey social relationships, and the album painting for the Kiritsubo chapter is no exception. The Emperor's role as the spiritual and political center of society is expressed by his transcendent position in the upper left, where he observes the ceremony from behind the hanging blinds. Out of deference, his body is depicted only from the shoulders down. The three diagonal beams that traverse the picture demarcate separate hierarchical spaces within a building: the inner core (moya) in the upper left, the surrounding aisle (hisashi), where Genji sits, and the outer aisle, occupied by two courtiers in the lower right. Adjacent to the Emperor, and positioned directly behind Genji, is a curtained dais symbolically guarded by a pair of sculptural lion-dogs placed in front. The ensemble marks the site as the Seiryoden (Hall of Cool and Refreshing Breezes), the Emperor's residence within the palace. The setting is charged with political meaning: the initiation of Genji's half brother, the designated Crown Prince born to the Kokiden Consort, took place in the official Shinshinden (Hall for State Ceremonies). The Emperor's personal involvement in Genji's coming-of-age ceremony, held in his private quarters, implies that for him, Genji takes priority over the Crown Prince, foreshadowing a lifelong rivalry between the half brothers and a theme of public versus private kingship. Genji will never ascend the throne like his half brother, the future Emperor Suzaku, but he will achieve a symbolic form of sovereignty, ultimately rising to the exalted status of "honorary retired emperor" (jun daijo tenno). The tale legitimizes Genji's claim to this position in its first pages, using imagery of resplendence and otherworldliness to describe him, calling him the "radiant prince" (hikaru kimi). The album's first painting mobilizes the symbolism of architectural settings and the empty imperial dais appearing to float above Genji's head to establish themes of identity, rivalry, and shadow imperial rule that structure the entire tale.
Now the breaking day Finds me still sighing in the dark
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Broom Cypress
Hahakigi
Mi no usa o Nageku ni akade
Akuru yo wa Torikasanete zo Ne mo nakarekeru
koto to akakunareba, shojiguchi made okuritamau.
[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]
This second pair of leaves in the album, Hahakigi (Broom Cypress), takes us from the rarified atmosphere of the imperial court and aristocracy to the world of provincial governors and middle-ranking women. Genji, now seventeen, decides to spend the night at the city residence of the Governor of Kii Province. The painting is set amid the sweltering midsummer heat on the grounds of the governor's newly renovated villa, which is replete with shaded walkways traversing man-made streams, and a spring constructed by damming up part of the Nakagawa River. Sparks of red pigment suggest the intermittent radiance the fireflies are said to have cast on the banks of the garden streams, adding a magical quality to the scene. The burbling spring (izumi), with its associations of water delivered from the gods, and elixirs of youth, adds to the site's otherworldly air. In the top half of the painting, two attendants in courtiers' hats (eboshi) lie stretched out, asleep on a walkway. A black lacquered ladle bobs on the water, its long handle resting on the walkway, while the gold pitcher and white sake cup nearby suggest the night's revelry.
The wine has no soporific effect on Genji, who, unlike his men, is restless, and loath to sleep alone while at the governor's villa. The bottom half of the painting depicts the results of Genji's nocturnal wanderings — a dramatic encounter with the woman known as Utsusemi, the young stepmother of the Governor. Genji rises at the sound of voices and overhears a conversation between Utsusemi and her younger brother Kogimi. The stepmother was known to stay at the villa with her female attendants from time to time, and on this occasion was staying there while her husband ritually purified his own residence. She sparks Genji's interest, in part because her marriage to a man of the provincial governor class puts her beneath him within the "middle ranks" of the aristocracy. He has never had a liaison with a woman of middle rank, but their virtues were explained to him by three more romantically experienced men in a spirited and metaphorically rich conversation earlier in this chapter, the famous "rainy night appraisal" (amayo no shinasadame). Genji hears the woman call for her attendant Chujo, literally "Middle Captain," a name that matches his own courtier's title at the time. Finding the door unlatched, he approaches the prone woman and pulls back her coverlet, saying, "I heard you call for a Captain," implying that his audacious entrance was at her own request. Whatever playfulness might have been intended is lost on the woman, who cries out for help only to have her screams muffled by her own robes.
The precise moment depicted in the picture is unclear, but it appears to show the dawn after their encounter. Nevertheless, it could stand in quite well for his initial moment of contact. Given the indirectness of courtly painting, the portrayal here of Genji physically touching the woman is bold, perhaps recalling, as Noguchi Takeshi has suggested, the influence of erotic Genji paintings that were known to have circulated in medieval Japan. Genji places a hand on her upper back and guides her forward as she turns her head, her long hair cascading down her robes. Her diminutive frame is striking and alludes to the way Genji is said to sweep her up and carry her into an interior room. Genji returns the woman to where he found her in a crowded storage room, here indicated by the large lacquered chest (karabitsu) decorated with golden butterflies in the foreground. The textual excerpt of the adjacent leaf also suggests a morning-after setting.
The painting's emphasis on Genji's figure and his amorous adventure is countered by the poem, which represents the woman's voice and her inner turmoil. Calligraphically the excerpt begins at the top right of the blue paper sheet with the darkly brushed character mi, which literally means "body" but more commonly refers to one's fate or station in life. The woman's misery and regret expressed in the verse capture not only the complexity of her feelings toward Genji (she is simultaneously attracted to him and upset at the way he has forced himself on her), but also her preoccupation with the disparity of their social standing. Her late father, a relatively high-ranking courtier, a Middle Counselor, intended to send her to court in the hopes that she would become a consort of the sovereign. When her father died before his dreams for her could be realized, she settled for the security of marrying the older (or as Genji repeatedly calls him, "over the hill") Vice Governor of Iyo, whom she seems to despise. That she should now be the object of attention by this handsome son of an emperor when she is no longer free causes her to regret the choices she has made in the past. At the same time, the overwhelming guilt she feels toward her husband prompts a concern that he may have witnessed the previous night's transgression in his dreams.
Given the hopelessness of her situation, she decides to maintain her dignity rather than risk becoming a trifle for a young man who has already garnered a reputation for promiscuity, and she resolves to resist any further advances. She is said to resemble the "supple bamboo" (nayotake) that bends but does not break under pressure. By the end of the chapter, when Genji is rejected after attempting another tryst, he feels humiliated but impressed by the strength of her character. The woman's ability to evade Genji prompts him to liken her in a poem to the "broom cypress" (hahakigi), legendary from earlier poems as a shrub that vanishes on approach. She similarly envisions herself as the ethereal tree in her reply poem to Genji and describes the "worthless hovel" where she, the broom cypress, was planted. This final poem in the chapter conveys the woman's preoccupation with her social status, while the mysterious image of the hahakigi epitomizes her characteristic elusiveness and gives the chapter its name.
"The lady from the west wing has been here playing Go since noon," Genji heard someone say. Thinking that he would like to get a glimpse of the two women facing each other across the game board, he quietly stepped forward and stood in a space behind the blinds.
CHAPTER 3[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]
A Molted Cicada Shell
Utsusemi
Hiru yori nishi no onkata no watarase tamaite, go utase tamau to iu. Sate mukai itaran o mibaya to omoite, yaora ayumi idete sudare no hasama ni iritamainu.
[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]
Unable to free himself from thoughts of Utsusemi, Genji has her younger brother arrange yet another encounter for him at the governor's villa. Genji waits for the boy near outer wooden doors, allowing him to steal a glimpse inside the women's rooms. The painting depicts this moment of espionage with the top half of the black lattice shutters enclosing the aisle room raised ever so slightly for the peeping Genji. This is the first of six pictures in the album that depict the trope of voyeuristic peeking known as kaimami (literally "peeking through the fence"), in which male characters espy women who are ostensibly unaware of being observed. These fleeting moments of spectacle play important roles in the narrative: as plot pivots that incite male characters to engage in new sexual pursuits; as devices that reveal the mental world of a character through internal monologues inspired by the viewing of women; and as a means of drawing attention to particular female characters, whose physical features and personal attributes are deliberately discerned through the eyes of the male spectator.
Following the compositional pattern of other kaimami scenes, Genji, understood as a surrogate for the viewer, stands in the lower right corner and gazes leftward toward figures, usually women, immersed in their own activity and seemingly unaware that they are being watched. Spatial partitions including bamboo blinds (sudare), a standing curtain (kicho), and a folding screen (byobu) are perfectly arranged so that nothing obstructs Genji's view. The composition artfully includes exposed architectural beams and interior furnishings to construct space cells within the scene. Three figures in the room are contained within one such cell, which includes an oil lamp with red flame, and a Go board with tiny black and white stones in play. Lamplight is a common feature of kaimami scenes, which are often nocturnal, drawing the voyeur to an object bathed in atmospheric light.
The scene within Genji's field of vision reveals striking contrasts between the two women facing off at the game board. His gaze first lands on the elusive Utsusemi, the woman he has been pursuing, and the figure closest to him in the image. He sees her only obliquely since she maintains a modest posture even in these private quarters when no one should be looking. He notes her extremely thin hands, which she attempts to keep hidden beneath her robes, and her narrow head. Apparently, his previous nocturnal encounter with the woman did not allow for such scrutiny, and he concludes that while she is far from a great beauty, her composure, elegance, and grace merit admiration.
In contrast, the attire of the other woman, described in the tale as directly in Genji's line of sight, leaves little to the imagination. She is said to be far more relaxed, to the point of dishabille, with her robes open to the waist of her red trousers and exposing her chest. Even if Tosa Mitsunobu, the decorous court painter, decided to forego this detail in the album leaf, his rendering of the figure's plump cheeks, budlike red lips, and smiling eyes corresponds to the voluptuous and pretty features said to have captivated Genji. This young woman is the "lady from the west wing" mentioned in the first line of the album's calligraphic excerpt, the Governor of Kii's sister, who has spent the day in her stepmother's quarters. As the daughter of the provincial Iyo Vice Governor, she is described in the tale as having been raised with little attention to social decorum and appears rather uncouth to Genji's eyes, though not without charm. It is this guileless young woman who falls prey to Genji's advances when the savvier Utsusemi flees the scene and leaves her stepdaughter in her place.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments, vii,
Note to Reader, ix,
Introduction, 1,
The Tale of Genji Album of 1510 Chapters 1–54, 23,
Appendix: Album Calligraphy Key, 240,
Glossary, 242,
The Album: Works Cited and Consulted, 244,
Bibliography, 246,
Index, 247,
Image Credits, 254,
What People are Saying About This
“Almost from the moment of its creation in the eleventh century, Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji has inspired visual artists. Now Melissa McCormick has brought forth a compelling and beautiful edition of the Genji Album, the oldest complete suite of illustrations of this masterpiece of world literature. This is an achievement to be celebrated and savored by anyone who has ever been touched by Murasaki’s genius.”—Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve “This is a remarkable presentation of the whole sweep of Genji in both text and image, one that will open up Murasaki’s tale to a wider audience than ever before, and still deeply satisfy specialists. McCormick’s exquisite book is beautifully written—a real pleasure to read.”—Andrew M. Watsky, Princeton University“Reading McCormick’s book is as illuminating as it is pleasurable, not only on account of the insightful ways in which it illustrates the subtle relationships between word and image in the late medieval album that it focuses on, but also on account of its capacity for identifying new narrative symmetries and patterns within the seemingly endless possibilities afforded by the original Tale of Genji.”—Gustav Heldt, translator of The Kojiki: An Account of Ancient Matters, author of The Pursuit of Harmony: Poetry and Power in Early Heian Japan