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Murasaki Shikibu — lesson illustration Standard

ART, STORY & MEDIA

Murasaki Shikibu

  • 11 spell
  • 5 known
  • 1 semi-open
  • 5 open
  • 1 math
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A NIGHT IN HEIAN-KYO

On a night around the year 1000, in the imperial capital of Heian-kyo — the city now called Kyoto — a lady-in-waiting wrote down which of her colleagues bored her. She served EMPRESS SHOSHI, whose father, Fujiwara no MICHINAGA, was the regent who governed by marrying his daughters to emperors. Her diary catches him teasing her about draft pages he had picked up. Those pages became The Tale of Genji, written near the middle of the Heian period, the age of aristocratic rule that ran from 794 to 1185.

  1. SPELL
    MICHINAGA
  2. SPELL
    SHOSHI
  3. KNOWN
    The lady-in-waiting served the emperor's wife at court. What title went in front of Shoshi's name?
    Answer: EMPRESS
  4. OPEN
    Michinaga teased her about the unfinished draft pages he had picked up. What would you have said back to him?

THE WOMEN'S HAND

Men at that court wrote in Chinese, the language of government and scholarship. Women wrote in the VERNACULAR — ordinary spoken Japanese, set down in the flowing phonetic script called KANA, so tied to women that it was nicknamed the women's hand. Prose FICTION, the genre called monogatari, was dismissed as light amusement, which left it unpoliced; nobody bothered to rule on what a tale could do. Sei SHONAGON, whose Pillow Book came out of a rival empress's household, worked the same territory; the diary judges her insufferably pleased with herself.

  1. SPELL
    SHONAGON
  2. SPELL
    VERNACULAR
  3. KNOWN
    What is the flowing phonetic script for writing ordinary spoken Japanese, so tied to women that it was nicknamed the women's hand?
    Answer: KANA
  4. KNOWN
    Prose writing of one kind was dismissed at court as light amusement, which left it unpoliced. What kind of writing was that?
    Answer: FICTION
  5. OPEN
    Two women at rival courts wrote about the same world, and one thought the other insufferable. What is a book you would want to read alongside its rival?

THE TALE ITSELF

The Tale of Genji runs 54 chapters. Its hero is the son of an emperor by a low-ranking CONSORT, one of the palace's secondary wives, and is pushed out of the succession into a life of love affairs. Nearly 800 short poems, called WAKA, are stitched into the prose, because Heian COURTSHIP was conducted in verse. Nobody stays fixed: characters age, lose beauty, and regret. The last 10 chapters, set in the villages at Uji, leave the hero dead and follow KAORU, NIOU, and UKIFUNE.

  1. SPELL
    CONSORT
  2. SPELL
    COURTSHIP
  3. KNOWN
    What is the name of the short poem form, nearly 800 of which are stitched into the prose of The Tale of Genji?
    Answer: WAKA
  4. SEMI-OPEN
    The last chapters leave the hero dead and follow three younger figures at Uji — name two of them.
    Needs 2 of: KAORU, NIOU, UKIFUNE
  5. OPEN
    If you had to send someone a message as a short poem instead of plain words, what would you want your poem to be about?
  6. MATH
    The Tale of Genji runs 54 chapters, and the last 10 of them are set at Uji. How many chapters come before the story reaches Uji?
    Answer: 44

ARGUING ABOUT THE FIRST NOVEL

Calling it the first novel invites argument. Greek and Roman prose romances came centuries earlier, and Japan already had tales like The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. What its defenders mean is narrower: psychological REALISM, characters whose inner lives shift over time and whose motives go unexplained. The author is half-hidden too. Murasaki Shikibu is a nickname built from her father's post in the ministry of ceremonial; her personal name went unrecorded. When EMPEROR ICHIJO praised the tale's learning, a jealous colleague nicknamed her Lady Chronicle, and she began pretending she could not read Chinese.

  1. SPELL
    ICHIJO
  2. SPELL
    EMPEROR
  3. KNOWN
    What is the term for the quality of characters whose inner lives shift over time and whose motives go unexplained?
    Answer: REALISM
  4. OPEN
    She hid how much she could read to escape a nickname. What is something you have played down so people would leave you alone?

READING HER IN SOMEONE ELSE'S ENGLISH

If you pick it up now, you are reading someone's English as much as hers. Arthur Waley turned it into a lush Edwardian romance and cut freely; Edward Seidensticker pared it back toward the plainer original; Royall Tyler kept the courtly INDIRECTION, where people are called by rank instead of name. Change translators and the hero changes temperament. What survives all three is what she pioneered: INTERIORITY, the sense that the person across from you carries a private weather you can only guess at — the reason her thousand-year-old COURTIERS still read like people.

  1. SPELL
    INTERIORITY
  2. SPELL
    INDIRECTION
  3. SPELL
    COURTIERS
  4. OPEN
    If someone tried to guess at your private weather, what would they get wrong?

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