Post your articles online and promote your website for free! Boost your sites ranking by linking it from the ArticleZap database! Free Article directory and instant translation publishing!
Murasaki Shikibu, generally considered the greatest classic of Japanese literature, which is thought to be the world’s first novel. Her real name is unknown; it is conjectured that she acquired the sobriquet of Murasaki from the name of the heroine of her novel. The main source of knowledge about her life is the diary she kept between 1007 and 1010. This work possesses considerable interest for the delightful glimpses it affords of life at the court of the Empress Akiko, whom Murasaki Shikibu served.
Some critics believe she wrote the entire Tale of Genii between 1001 (the year her husband Fujiwara Nobutaka died) and 1005, when she began serving at court. More probably, however, the composition of this extremely long and complex novel extended over a much greater period.
The Tale of Genii is not only the oldest full novel written anywhere in the world but also one of the finest. It captures the image of a unique society of ultrarefined and elegant aristocrats, whose indispensable accomplishments were skill in poetry, music, calligraphy, and courtship.
Much of it is concerned with the loves of Prince Genji and the different women in his life, all of whom are exquisitely delineated. If the novel is lacking in scenes of powerful action, it is permeated with a sensitivity to human emotions and to the beauties of nature hardly paralleled elsewhere. The tone of the novel darkens as it progresses, indicating perhaps a deepening of Murasaki Shikibu’s Buddhist conviction of the vanity of the world. Some, however, believe its last 14 chapters are written by another hand. The translation of The Tale of Genii (1935) by Arthur Waley (1889—1966) is a classic of English literature. Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan, which includes that of Murasaki Shikibu, was translated by Omori and Doi in 1935.
