290. Back to Genji

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The limits of practice

When I lived in Noe Valley in the late 1980s there was a guy who decided to make some money playing guitar in public or semi-public places (laundromats and taquerias). The only problem was that he was terrible. I moved out of the neighborhood but ran into him again several years later when I was doing an errand in the valley. To my surprise, he had gotten quite good, after years of steady practice.

I thought of him just now as I passed, for the 2nd time today, and in a 2nd location, the street balladeer for the Union Square/Financial District Interzone. He’s been playing and singing for years and has not seemed to improve at all. He makes me miss our street saxophonist who was so good he was pulled in to play at art galleries for their "1st Thursday" events (I remember him playing on the fire escape of one above Grant street) . The only problem, as was finally revealed, was that he was wanted for murder back East. Him I gave tips.

Back to The Tale of the Horn-dog Pervert Genji

Since I have most of a month before I should return to TMM on my other blog, I’m resuming The Tale of Genji. While the previous, abridged version I was reading ended where it seemed like Genji was about to change his ways, this, not surprisingly, hasn’t happened. His complicated love life continues as before. 

Here's the edition I'm reading now:

The Tale of Genji
by Murasaki Shikibu Translated by Edward Seidensticker
Alfred A. Knopf, 1978

The Morning Glory
I just ran into something interesting, Genji is currently courting Princess Asagao who has resigned her position of high priestess of Kamo, and she is refusing to even see him. He sends her a morning glory with “sad, frostbitten little blooms” to indicate how badly she is treating him. The footnote says, “Asagao means ‘morning glory’ in modern Japanese. The name derives from this chapter....” Was this work as influential as Shakespeare in Japan? How well is it known today? Time for a visit to Wiki.

I had forgotten that Fugitsubo is the name both of his mother and his great love, and the mother of his secret son, who is now Emperor. Though I should say, one of his great loves. It sounds like reading Genji, for the average Japanese speaker, is a bit like reading Beowulf. Most people require a translation. But my comparison with Shakespeare may be apt. Though the book is probably better known to the average Japanese reader now than it was in the past because there are more and better translations.

The Maiden
There is a long quote in which Genji is defending, to his son’s maternal grandmother (I had forgotten this son existed), his decision to not promote the boy to a higher rank but to send him to university instead. He is to gain, “a good, solid fund of knowledge. It is when there is a fund of Chinese learning that the Japanese spirit is respected by the world...” I do not know enough about the Heian era in Japan to know if this represents a Confucian preference for merit over simple preference based on birth. But what’s interesting is the footnote the follows “Japanese spirit” that informs us that this was the first appearance of the phrase “Yamato-damashii” in Japanese literature.

Genji has moved. His new residence has separate quarters, and gardens, for Murasaki (his main “wife” or child concubine); the Akashi Lady (the mother of his daughter who is now being raised by Murasaki); the daughter of one of his dead lovers who is, I believe, a consort of the new Emperor and I thought the new Empress, but I could be wrong about that (yes, she is); and finally another lady from his past referred to as the Lady of the Orange Blossoms. His current love interest, who is stonewalling him, lives elsewhere. And he’s now Chancellor to the new Emperor, who has just become aware that Genji is actually his father. Genji only suspects that the Emperor has discovered this and the Emperor doesn’t know that Genji suspects he knows. If only there had been TV soap operas in Murasaki’s (the author) time. 

The Jeweled Chaplet
And now he’s discovered the grown (twenty year old) daughter of another of his great loves. His lovers have a disconcerting habit of dying young. And now she, too, has joined his menagerie in the wing under the care of the Lady of the Orange Blossoms, along with his son. The son who is in love with his cousin whose father is Genji’s great friend and rival... and who is also the father of this new girl. Only this girl and Genji's son are not blood kin.

It is remarkable how wittily Murasaki (the author) pulls all this off. One does want to see the places and especially the clothes described in such loving detail. Though what one really longs for is to smell these male paragons. Having read this far, I’m thinking that “shining” Genji is a confused translation as what Murasaki raves about is how good both Genji and his rival smell. I’m thinking the Japanese for “shining”  might better be translated as something like, the “delightfully fragrant” Genji. (There’s no chance this is actually true, but it should be true.) 

Murasaki never mentions the women smelling good.

The First Warbler
This may be the chapter that best captures the otherness of this time in Japanese history. As part of the New Year’s celebrations, Genji makes the rounds of his ladies. Visiting them each in turn, even the ones at his now secondary residence, and we get something of a review of the relationships. Granted, there are at least two daughters of former loves who have a different status, this is all quite odd and the fact that he decides to spend the night with the Akashi Lady -- who has not seen her young daughter living on the same grounds for years now -- only adds to the oddness. Murasaki (the character) is not pleased either. 

I am puzzled by the lack of any mention of male staff at these residences. Perhaps this is a side of things Murasaki (the author) is simply unfamiliar with. But you would think there must be some security, at least, around the Chancellor. And that plot complications would be bound to arise.

In this little collection of women around Genji are two very young ones who are daughters of former loves of Genji who have died, as so often happens with the women around him, starting with his own mother. He is in the position of guardian for them both, and for the one he has assisted in making her Empress. But he has also hit on both of them and is being particularly difficult with the other one, Tamakazura, while at the same time managing the courting of her by many others including one of his princely brothers. (Her own half-brothers are also courting her as that relationship is being concealed by Genji.)