Lady Murasaki Shikibu, recognized as Japan’s
greatest author, wrote The TALE OF GENJI (Genji
Monogatari), the world’s first novel and one of the
best. Her reputation parallels that of Shakespeare:
Her obscurity and her family’s low position in the
medieval HEIAN aristocracy have led a few to question the authenticity of her authorship of the
Genji, a masterpiece that has wielded immeasurable influence over subsequent writers from her
time to the present.
The few details available about her life derive
mostly from her diary, Murasaki Shikibu Nikki, and
from official records. Like CHRISTINE DE PIZAN and
SEI SHONAGON ¯ , she was a daughter of a court
scholar. In the diary she claims that as a child she
mastered, much more quickly than her brother,
such subjects as Chinese (the official language,
much as Latin was for medieval Europe) so that
her father regretted “she was not born a man”
(Bowring 1982, 139). In 999, she became wife to
the older Fujiwara Nobutaka, who died two years
later, leaving her with a daughter. It is believed she
began writing her masterpiece, the Genji, shortly
after she was widowed; approximate dates for the
novel’s composition are 1001–10. She apparently
never remarried, but her diary suggests that the
powerful Fujiwara Michinaga took a romantic interest in her, and a court chronicler states she was
his concubine, although scholars dispute that
claim.
Even though the exact relationship between the
two is unclear, her diary implies that Michinaga invited her to tutor his daughter Sh¯ oshi, a consort of
Emperor Ichij¯o. Her diary recounts life at court
during the years 1008–10, the period of the pregnancy of Sh¯oshi and the birth of her son. Michinaga may have asked Murasaki to write the diary as
a record of the glorious birth of Prince Atsuhira, a
victory over the rival royal consort, Teishi, whose
entourage included the author of The Pillow Book,
Sei Sh¯ nagon.
One piece of information gleaned from the
diary is the origin of her pen name Murasaki. She
tells that one evening a drunken nobleman approached the women hidden behind their
screens—as custom dictated—and asked if
“Murasaki” was present, in reference to the favorite
concubine of Genji in the author’s famous novel.
The author replied, “I cannot see the likes of Genji
here, so how could she be present?” (Bowring
91)—an insinuation that court nobles fall short of
the ideal set by her fictional Genji. Lady Murasaki’s
given name remains unknown, since propriety demanded that ladies’ private names not be publicly
revealed. Shikibu, which serves as her given name,
alludes to her father’s rank at the Bureau of Rites.
Her diary also reveals that the emperor was impressed with her erudition when the Genji was
read to him and that, to her horror, Michinaga
took drafts of her masterpiece from her room
without her permission. These events serve as indicators that Genji was recognized as a superior
piece of literature in her own time, and its reputation as a monumental work survives to this day.
Shortly after completing the diary, Murasaki disappears, and nothing is known about her final
years (although in later eras strict Buddhists will
claim she is in hell, suffering for the “sins” she
penned).
The one other remaining text by Murasaki is
Murasaki Shikibu Sh¯ u, a collection of waka poetry,
mostly extracted from the Genji and the diary. But
her towering stature as an author rests upon her
supreme achievement of the Genji narrative.
Bibliography
Miner, Earl, Hiroko Odagiri, and Robert E. Morrell.
The Princeton Companion to Classical Japanese Literature. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1985.
Murasaki Shikibu. Murasaki Shikibu: Her Diary and
Poetic Memoirs. Translated by Richard Bowring.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982.
Barbara Stevenson