The true name of the writer known as Murasaki
Shikibu is not known. Murasaki is the name of a
central character in her novel The Tale of Genji,
and Shikibu is the name of a position held by the
writer’s father. Upper-class women in the Japan of
Murasaki’s time lived secluded lives, their charm
intensified by the mystery that surrounded them,
and that mystery surrounds the writer still.
It is known that Murasaki was born into a
minor branch of the Fujiwara family, the clan that
held most of the power in Japan of the Heian period
(794–1185); her father was a provincial governor.
Murasaki had a brother and was able to
eavesdrop on the lessons in Chinese that, as a
young nobleman, he was obliged to master. In her
diary she records her father’s reaction when he realized
that she was quicker than her brother at understanding
difficult passages: “‘Just my luck!’ he
would say. ‘What a pity she was not born a man!’”
The diary goes on to relate how she gave up reading
Chinese because she was criticized for using a
skill that was considered inappropriate for women.
In 998 Murasaki was married to Fujiwara no
Nobutaka, an older man who already had more
than one wife. Her daughter, Katako, was born in
999, and her husband died two years later. It was
as a widow that she began to write her great novel.
In 1005 or 1006, she entered the service of the emperor’s
powerful right-hand man, Fujiwara Michinaga
(966–1027), as a companion to his daughter,
who was to become the Empress Shoshi
(988–1074). Shoshi loved learning, and she and
Murasaki took to secretly reading Chinese classics
together. Murasaki says in her diary, “we carefully
chose a time when other women would not be
present.” Although they had to be discreet about
their study of Chinese, composing poetry in Japanese—
especially improvising a poem in response
to the immediate situation—was a highly valued
skill in the ritualized world of the court, and
Murasaki excelled at it. Some of her poems are preserved
in her diary. There are also 795 poems included
within the text of The Tale of Genji.
Murasaki kept her diary for about two years
during her time at court. It records intricate details
of court life—its etiquette, its ceremonies, and the
complex rivalries among the women. It also reveals
Murasaki’s struggles with loneliness and with the
sense of helplessness that accompanied being a
woman without a male protector in a male-dominated
world, as well as her efforts to attain the sense
of detachment from worldly passions that is the
Buddhist ideal. Of her own personality, she says:
Pretty and coy, shrinking from sight, unsociable,
fond of old tales, 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 tell myself,“My nature is as it is.”
Empress Shoshi was widowed in 1011 and
moved to a mansion outside the court; it is likely
that Murasaki moved with her. There are suggestions
in Murasaki’s writings that she may have retired
to a Buddhist convent.
Critical Analysis
The Tale of Genji centers on the character of the fictitious
Prince Genji, “the shining prince,” a man of
devastating charm who loves and is loved by many
women. But its action, divided into 54 books or
chapters, covers four generations and nearly 100
years, and there are more than 400 characters.
In the very first sentences, aspects of Murasaki’s
approach can be discerned. The book begins:
In a certain reign there was a lady not of the
first rank whom the emperor loved more than
any of the others. The grand ladies with high
ambitions thought her a presumptuous upstart,
and lesser ladies were still more resentful.
Everything she did offended someone.
Probably aware of what was happening, she fell
seriously ill and came to spend more time at
home than at court. The emperor’s pity and affection
quite passed bounds. No longer caring
what his ladies and courtiers might say, he behaved
as if intent upon stirring gossip.
The lady whose predicament is so sympathetically
described here is a minor character in that she dies
on the fourth page, after having given birth to
Genji. Her influence is felt throughout, however,
because her early death is clearly central to the personality
development of Genji, who spends his life
seeking someone to take the place of his beautiful
mother. The passage introduces themes that run
throughout the book: the obsession with rank and
its collision with human affection, and the damaging
resentments that inevitably arise among
women when they are confined and must jostle for
the attention of men who are free to come and go
as they please.
There are aspects of the supernatural in the plot
involving one of Genji’s rejected lovers, the Lady of
Rokujo. Consumed by jealousy and resentment,
she becomes a malicious spirit who is capable of
taking hostile possession of the bodies of Genji’s
more valued lovers, even after her own physical
death; the deaths of two characters are attributed
to her malevolent influence. Lady Rokujo’s pain is
presented so vividly that her supernatural power
gains psychological conviction.
The story of Genji’s career as a government official—
successful in spite of setbacks caused by repercussions
from his amorous affairs—and of his loves
occupies the first 41 chapters. Genji is presented as
artistically talented, sensitive, and capable of love,
yet somehow blind to his own responsibility for
the pain suffered by the women he loves or has
loved. The remainder of the book focuses on
Kaoru, the son of Genji’s second principal wife,
Princess Nyosan, who learns as an adult that he is
not in fact Genji’s son. Kaoru’s friendship with his
cousin, Prince Niou, dissolves in an amorous rivalry
that has tragic consequences for all involved.
The action of this section takes place in a small
town, away from the luxury and glamour of the
court, and the tone is much darker.
The Tale of Genji is not only widely recognized as
the finest of all Japanese novels; it is the first work
of prose fiction anywhere in the world to present
rounded characters with psychological depth.
English Versions of Works by
Murasaki Shikibu
The Diary of Lady Murasaki. Translated and with an
introduction by Richard Bowring.New York: Penguin,
1996.
Murasaki Shikibu, Her Diary and Poetic Memoirs.
Translated by Richard Bowring. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1982.
The Tale of Genji. Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978.
Works about Murasaki Shikibu
Bowring,Richard.Murasaki Shikibu: The Tale of Genji.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Field, Norma. The Splendor of Longing in “The Tale of
Genji.” Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1987.
Keene, Donald. “The Tale of Gengi” in Seeds in the
Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to
the Late Sixteenth Century. 477–514. New York:
Henry Holt & Co., 1993.
Knapp, Bettina L. Images of Japanese Women: A Westerner’s
View. Troy, N.Y.:Whitston Publishing, 1992.
Morris, Ivan I.“Murasaki Shikibu” in The World of the
Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan.
251–264.New York: Kodansha International, 1994.
Shirane, Haruo. The Bridge of Dreams: A Poetics of
“The Tale of Genji.” Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University
Press, 1987.